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The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. How to Get There: The Individual and the System. The Individual and the System. The Individual.
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The Moral Imperative of School Leadership How to Get There: The Individual and the System
Relational trust foments a moral imperative to take on the hard work of school improvement... Reform also requires teachers to take on extra work: for example, engaging with colleagues in planning, implementing, and evaluating school improvement initiatives. Similarly, reform asks teachers to confront conflict, as this commonly occurs in organizational change processes. A context characterized by high relational trust provides an answer. In the end, reform is simply the right thing to do. (p. 123) Bryk and Schneider (2002) School Improvement Initiatives
The Individual:Martin’s (2002) Responsibility Virus Fear of Failure Tools for Inoculating • To win and not lose in any interaction • To always maintain control of the situation in hand • To avoid embarrassment of any kind • To stay rational throughout • The Choice Structuring Process • The Frame Experiment • The Responsibility Ladder • The Redefinition of Leadership and Followership
The Individual: The Choice Structuring Process • The Choice Structuring Process provides seven steps for framing a problem, with at least two solutions and brainstorming about their strengths and weaknesses.
The Individual: The Frame Experiment • The Frame Experiment aids leaders in changing the frame from the governing values (“I know the right answers; others are uninformed or ill-intentioned. How do I get others to see my way?”) to an Altered Frame (“I may not see or understand everything others may see or know what others know. How do we access our collective intelligence?”)
The Individual: The Responsibility Ladder • The Responsibility Ladder is a seven-step procedure for avoiding the breading of over- or under-responsibility.
The Individual: Redefining Leadership • Redefining Leadership involves going from splitting responsibility unilaterally to doing so through dialogue, making apportionment discussable and subjecting performance and results to public (not private) testing (transparency of performance).
The Individual: Responsibility Virus • Informed choice versus win, don’t lose • Internal commitment versus maintain control • Open testing versus avoid embarrassment • Be authentic versus staying rational The Responsibility Virus guarantees failure. Fear of failure generates more failure, and so on. Martin (2002)
Restraint, modesty, and tenacity. Badaracco (2002) • A sacred heart – innocence, curiosity, and capacity. Heifetz and Linsky (2002) • Personal humility and intense professional will. Collins (2002) “Instead of problem-solution paradigm, (leaders) relay on an act-learn-act-learn approach” and “craft a compromise by avoiding either/or thinking and looking for both/and outcomes” Badaracco (2002) Individual: Leadership Virtues
System: Dimensions of Climate • Structure – Clarity and Organization of Roles • Standards – The feeling of pressure to improve performance • Responsibility – Feeling encouraged to solve problems on your own • Recognition – Feelings of being appreciated and rewarded for a job well done • Support – Feelings of trust and mutual support within the organization • Commitment – Sense of pride on belonging to the organization
System transformation, of the kind we are talking about, will take at least 10 years. Fullan (2003) System: Transformation
System: Strategic Directions • Reconceptualized the role of school leadership. • Recognize and work with the continuum of development. • Get school size right. • Invest leaders developing leaders. • Improve the teaching profession. • Improve the capacity of the infrastructure.
System: Reconceptualize the role of school leadership • The role of the principal is closer in conception to that of the chief operating officer. The role is identical to Jim Collins’s (2002) Level 5: Executive (builds enduring greatness)
System: Hargreaves Instructional Continuum Performance Training Sects Professional Learning Communities • Transfer knowledge • Imposed requirements • Results driven • False certainty • Standardize scripts • Deference to authority • Intensive training • Sects of performance • Transform knowledge • Shared inquiry • Evidence informed • Situated certainty • Local solutions • Joint responsibility • Continuous learning • Communities of practice
System: School size • Principals can more readily develop morally driven cultures in these small schools, but they also need to interact across schools. High schools especially have to be downsized to 600 students or so.
System: Invest in leaders developing leaders • The best leaders have multilevel moral imperative, personal humility, and intense professional will; they avoid the responsibility virus and see their role as systematically developing leadership in others so that sustainability can be achieved.
System: Improving the teaching profession • Two sets of policies: • One that focuses on the individual development and performance of teachers and administrator. • One that improves the working conditions of teachers (more time to work together, more support from professionals, etc.)
System: strengthening the infrastructure • Transforming the system involves strengthening the infrastructure for developing school leadership. Policies and programs a the local and state level aimed at developing leadership is crucial. Policy which provides frameworks for what is expected and performance-based requirements for career-long development.
