Adaptive Change
We are all faced with change on a regular basis. Some of these situations require “technical” change. That is, we encounter situations that require us to change, and the change is already within our current skill set or is being required by some authority above us. Adding two instructional days to the calendar is a technical change.
Then, there is “adaptive” change. Getting all children to proficiency by 2014 is something that will require multiple adaptive changes. These are the kind of changes that cannot be solved by someone higher up who provides answers. These changes require new discoveries, experiments and adjustments from different places in the school or district. They involve changing attitudes, values and behaviors. Adaptive change depends on having the people who are involved in the situation internalizing the change.
The Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education has developed a “Framework & Approach” that addresses adaptive change and how to provide leadership for the process. The framework is based on an “Ecology of Change” and is focused on several key ideas:
q Leadership Practice Communities: The unrecognized key to educational improvement is the reconstitution of leadership teams, at the school and district levels, from a cooperating group of separately responsible individuals to a genuinely collaborative team supporting a single, system wide process of instructional improvement.
q Seven Disciplines of Improving Instruction: A focused and deliberate effort to improve teaching and learning in the classroom must be at the heart of any successful school improvement initiative. CLG has identified seven disciplines to improve instruction district wide.
q Three Continua: The Three Continua capture three distinct yet interrelated dimensions around which schools and districts should be organized and operated so that the improvement efforts can create necessary energy for change, generate leadership throughout the system and produce new knowledge for solving novel improvement problems.
q 4Cs: Transformative change requires a systemic understanding of the problems district and school leaders are trying to solve. The 4Cs are Context, Conditions, Competencies and Culture.
q Phases of Change: Transformative change requires time, and it requires strategic phasing and staging of efforts to build a strong foundation or reinvent schooling.
Over the next several weeks, we will feature each of these key ideas in ISN News. Stay tuned.
Teacher Leadership Meeting
The Kentucky Teacher Leadership Network Meeting, sponsored by the Kentucky Leadership Academy, SAELP and LEAD, will be held June 11-12 at Churchill Downs in Louisville. The purpose of the meeting is to share instructional practices, strategies and projects that leadership team network members are implementing across the state.
Registration for this meeting has been extended through May 15. Districts and schools not in the network still have time to register. Featured presentations include:
Ø Richard Elmore, professor of educational leadership at Harvard University
Ø leadership team members from Delaware
Ø KDE-led sessions on the Guide to Reflective Classroom Practices
Ø Jefferson County Public Schools’ World Class Teacher Leadership Standards
For additional information and to register, go to Teacher Leadership Network Meeting.
Quotable Quotes
“We write to discover what we think.”
Joan Didion