Building Infrastructure for Adaptive Leadership in Turnaround Schools

• In Event: 30.024 - Under Scrutiny: Redesigning the Instructional Infrastructure of "Turnaround" Schools

Abstract

Over the last two decades, research and rhetoric on leadership for school improvement have cast the work of school turnaround as essentially a technical challenge (Heifetz & Linsky 2009), i.e., comprised of problems for which the definition and solution are clear, albeit complex.  In this framing, effective school leaders can improve performance by articulating a clear and compelling vision, hiring the right people, setting high expectations, closely monitoring student progress data, etc., (cf. Lane, Unger, & Souvanna, 2014; Schaffer, Reynolds, & Stringfield, 2012).
 
Set apart from this work is a line of scholarship that examines the distributed and relational aspects of leadership in building instructional capacity (cf. Spillane, Halverson & Diamond, 2004). On this view, cultivating teacher relationships matters because through collegial interactions, cognitive, social, and material resources are created and shared (cf., Bryk et al, 2010; Coburn, 2001). These resources, or social capital, become available to individuals as they engage with others in a given network or community.  Given the right conditions, interactions between and among leaders and teachers can serve as the basis for generating, testing, and revising insights about supporting students and so lead to significantly improved student outcomes (Bridwell-Mitchell & Cooc, 2016). Cultivating and sustaining these conditions is the critical challenge of instructional leadership. Given the uncertain and dynamic nature of instructional practice, sustaining such conditions for teachers and other staff to learn together requires adaptive, rather than technical expertise.
 
In this presentation we unpack these ideas in the context of school turnaround. Our discussion is grounded in the examples of three schools, each serving students who live in extreme poverty, and facing enormous pressure to rapidly and dramatically improve student learning outcomes as measured by standardized tests.  In presenting these cases, we speak as practitioners: while both authors have histories as academics (and one of us currently holds a faculty position), we lead an organization that was contracted to operate the schools, and so was responsible for hiring, designing and supporting the instructional model, professional development, business processes, facilities, etc.

From the start, our ideas were informed by sociocultural and social capital theory, as well as scholarship on organizational leadership in non-school contexts. We understood that leadership for instructional improvement would hinge on the actions of many individuals, and that an early and ongoing task of the school leader would be to create the conditions for adults to work and learn together.  After three years marked by both failures and successes, we have sharpened our understandings of effective adaptive leadership as anchored by three core factors: a shared recognition of the importance of valuing difference, building trust, and a commitment to sense-making conversations as the basis for decision-making and growth.  In the presentation we define each of these factors and document our ongoing efforts to redesign organizational infrastructure to support their development, providing potential leadership pathways for other turnaround operators.

Authors

• Marcy Singer-Gabella, Vanderbilt University

• Daryl Ogden, Project GRAD USA