Reimagining schools will require us to question our fundamental assumptions about how schools work.
Here are some theories and practices I look to for informing organizational culture, learning, and technology integration.
Argrys & Schon (1976) on Double-Loop Learning
If there is a foundational concept of organizational learning that can help schools break the cycle of reproducing the same old system of cells and bells, it's Chris Argrys & Donald Schon's concept of Single-Loop Learning and Double-Loop Learning. For decades, schools have been trying to get better and better at doing school-as-usual. What we need is a need breed of schools who question the basic assumptions of why we do school and how we do it. Shift from single-loop learning to double-loop learning.
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Jane Wei-Skillern on Network Leadership
Mission over Organization |
Reimagining schools can't and won't be done alone. It's too big of a problem for any one person or organization to solve. That's why I love Jane Wei-Skillern's notion of Network Leadership to bring together resources across organizations and industries to solve big problems.
Check out her website The New Network Leader to learn more and read case studies. |
Schwandt & Marquardt (2000) Organizational Learning Systems Model
Organizations don't learn in a simple linear fashion, and schools are no exception. Schwandt and Marquardt’s (2000) OLSM provides an appropriate foundation to use as a framework for reimagining schools because it addresses important aspects communication, disseminating and diffusing knowledge and information, taking action and reflecting, and using memory to make meaning (2000). These are all important aspects of fully integrating education innovations into schooling practices. Furthermore, Schwandt and Marquardt’s (2000) OLSM framework appreciates the interconnected, systems nature of organizational life, rebuffing tendencies to assume organizational learning and innovation occurs in a linear process or step-by-step fashion. At the same time, the model addresses the tension between schools needing to perform at a high level for stakeholders, most immediately students, but also for any country’s social and economic development, while also needing to learn from practice to make schooling better to meet the changing nature of education’s role in society and the workplace.
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Change doesn't happen in a straight line. Our schools are a web of interdependent processes, stakeholders, inputs, and outputs. |
Amy Edmondson (2012) on Teaming
Teaming is “a way to gather experts in temporary groups to solve problems they are encountering for the first and perhaps only time.” (Edmondson, 2012, p. 4) As schools become increasingly global organizations, the concept of teaming remind us of our reciprocal interdependence on one another, and taps into the power of the diversity within organizations. According to Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, “[t]eaming is a way to get work done while figuring out how to do it better; it’s executing and learning at the same time.” (2012, p. 4) Stated differently, teaming is learning at work, a foundational principal for all improvement.
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Schein (1974) on Organizational Culture
While an organization’s beliefs, values, and norms manifest and are observable in the way people interact, the organizational philosophy of a school, the embedded skills in organizational members, the habits of thinking in an organization, linguistic paradigms, shared meanings, and formal rituals and celebrations, the concept of culture adds four important aspects (Schein, 2010). The concept of organizational culture implies structural stability; that is, it provides predictability for what organizational members should do and how they should act (Schein, 2010). Any education innovation necessarily disrupts this predictability. Second, organizational culture is deep rooted and rarely directly observable or felt (Schein, 2010). Therefore, education innovation requires uprooting, or changing, some deeply held beliefs. Furthermore, organizational cultural is characterized by its breadth; once established, it affects all of a group’s functioning (Schein, 2010). Considering education innovation, this implies creating an innovative school requires all members to adopt changes. Finally, organizational culture is patterned or integrated into the all of the beliefs, values, and norms of an organization; that is, culture is the glue that holds everything together (Schein, 2010). Applied to education innovation, this asserts a school’s culture of innovation (or lack thereof) is woven into the very fabric of the school’s existence.
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Reimagining schools means reimagining school culture. |
Elena Aguilar on Coaching
To drive change in our schools, our leaders and teachers don't need performance evaluation systems dependent on test scores and other outmoded measures of progress. They need coaches - and Elena Aguilar's The Art of Coaching nails it on the head. She appreciates systems thinking, pushes for social justice, and respects principles of adult learning. Elena makes the art of coaching practical and offers novice and experienced coaches with the tools they need to start an effective coaching program.
Knowles (1980) on Adult Learning (Adragogy)
We need professional learning for faculty, staff, and leadership that respects principles of adult learning. If more PL checked these five boxes, we would hear fewer groans on PL days and see more change in our professional practice and schools.
Adults have intrinsic motivation to learn things that matter to them. |
Weick (1979) on Sensemaking
Sensemaking is understood as a process that is grounded in identity construction, retrospective, social, ongoing, and driven more by plausibility that accuracy. |
Karl Weick defines organizations as “collections of people trying to make sense of what is happening around them.” (2001, p. 5) Describing sensemaking, For school leaders, this means, “perceive[ing] the nature of the game and the rules by which it is played, as they are playing it.” (Ancona, 2011, p. 5) For faculty and staff, operationalizing sensemaking means to developing plausible understandings of actions in the moment, collectively testing these understandings, and either accepting and refining new understandings through multiple iterations or rejecting them in favor of alternative constructions (Ancona, 2011). In other words, if we want to change schools, we need to attend to people's "why" for changing and checking how they are interpreting changes as we go along, not at the "end" of the change process.
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TPACK and SAMR for Technology Integration
TPACK. Future educators need the pedagogical, content, and technological know-how to bring the change we need in schools. Design the learning, then select the tools.
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SAMR. Contrary to popular belief, there is no hierarchy in the SAMR model. That is, "redefinition" is not any better than "substitution." Select the technology that fits the learning you want to see from your students.
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Kolb (1984) on Experiential Learning
Learning is... |
Ron Ritchart on Thinking Routines
Coming soon
Adaptive Schools on Meetings
Coming soon