Educational Leaders' Thinking About School Change: Between Improvement Science and the Garbage Can

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Ethical Leadership and Organizational Learning

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how education leaders think about organizational change amidst calls for continuous improvement and an institutional environment associated with garbage can decision-making. The theoretical framework analyzes organizational change as problem solving, compares models of problem solving that describe more rational or more intuitive thinking, and points to the centrality of heuristics in the cognition of social actors embedded within environments. Using verbal protocol analysis and inductive coding, the 2-year study analyzes written work, interviews and observations of 10 leaders in an Ed.D. program as they attempt to address organizational problems through design development research. The study finds across the sample a set of heuristics about organizational change that indicate an implementation, rather than problem solving, mindset.

Authors

• Rick Mintrop, University of California - Berkeley

• Elizabeth Zumpe, University of California - Berkeley