At the Brink: The Capacities and Capabilities of a Statewide Charter School System

• In Event: Conceptualizing Educational Change Through the Lens of the Complex Adaptive System: An Exploration in Quantifying the Metaphor

Abstract

This paper presents the final results of a large scale research on a statewide charter school system facing major statute changes. Complexivist organization and leadership theoretical frames help us map and interpret leader networks across and beyond these charter schools where we find important implications for leaders across this organization facing emergence in a far-from-equilibrium state. High leadership capacity, low diversity and limited leader redundancy indicate a low potential for organization emergence among clusters of closed (school level) networks with limited capacity to organize beyond the school. We also outline some powerful high-potential factors found for leading system emergence in the state education ecosystem by connecting unique, strong tensions and innovations evolving new pedagogies and infrastructures for learning.

Authors

• Eugene Gary Kowch, University of Calgary

• Dianne Gereluk, University of Calgary