Culture and Change in a Catholic School Context

• In Event: Assessing Leadership for Adaptive Change Through the Lens of Complexity Theory

Abstract

Objectives
Urban Catholic school leaders are besieged with a specific set of challenges including: shifting student demographics (O’Keefe, 1996), faculty retention (Breslin, 2000), and economic pressures on families, schools, parishes, and dioceses (O’Keefe & Scheopner, 2006). To enact genuine reform in their schools—leadership for adaptive change is needed. This paper presents two long-term case studies of Catholic school principals—Helen Matthews, principal at St. Catherine’s School (SCS), and Katherine Cochran, principal at Fiorella Academy —examining how they distributed leadership throughout their school communities and created a common school culture as means to initiate the process of adaptive change linked to broader instructional reforms.

Theoretical Framework
For this study, leadership for adaptive change comprises two dimensions. First, adaptive leadership acts to distribute power and authority throughout a system. And second, leadership for adaptive change assumes a sociocultural orientation toward systems transformation, attending to beliefs and values as well as the actions, practices, and policies they inform (Gee, 1996; Sergiovanni, 1984). In concert, these features of adaptive leadership attend to the nature and quality of interactions among system elements, generating a context where systems have autonomy to adapt to changing needs and conditions, guided by common cultural values. Further, complexity theory is used to understand the principals’ efforts at adaptive change.

Methods & Data Sources
Qualitative data for this investigation of two Catholic school principals were gathered as part of a larger project examining the experiences of principals participating in the Lynch Leadership Academy. Data analysis began with open coding of interview and observational data using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Within-case themes were established followed by cross-case analysis of the two participants.

Findings
The principals in this study were able to transform their schools and disrupt the status quo by emphasizing school culture and related system norms, as well as by distributing power and authority throughout their schools. Both made cultural change a centerpiece to their efforts. After seven years in the same school, Principal Matthews has distributed control and engaged in adaptive change. After two years in a new school setting, at Fiorella Principal Cochran is still working to establish shared beliefs—focusing first on cultural rather than structural changes (Archer, 1988). The experiences of the two study participants reveal different points in the process of adaptive change, though common developments emerged as well.

Scholarly Significance
To survive in the current educational marketplace urban Catholic school leaders cannot accept the status quo. They must embrace change to improve their schools, maintain their student populations, reinforce their financial foundations, and, in essence, become relevant in a 21st century world. By establishing a set of shared beliefs and building on these ideals to promote related structural changes, the urban Catholic school leaders in these two case studies brought about adaptive change in their school contexts, increasing their school’s ability to survive.

Author

• Anna Noble, Boston College