Developing Improvement Science Leaders. Comparing Leadership Preparation and Leadership: Development Experiences and Early Lessons — Fordham University–NYPS Partnership

• In Event: Bridging Institutional Divides for Continuous Improvement: The Improvement Leadership Education and Development (iLEAD) Network

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe efforts to teach leadership practices related to continuous improvement within the context of university-based preparation and a multi-district partnership. The university has adopted an improvement science-like approach to developing educational leaders, while its partner districts are encouraging and supporting current leaders in using improvement science to frame their school improvement work. Through collaboration, the university and districts are documenting their leadership preparation and development approaches through graduate programs and leadership development experiences and the growth and development in current and aspiring leaders’ understanding and use of improvement science for persistent problems in student learning.
Perspectives/theoretical framework
Improvement science provides focus and rigor for effective problem solving for educational improvement, by attending to variation in performance, taking a systems approach to understanding the causes and contributions to problems, trying out solutions through iterative inquiry and encouraging networking and collaboration in this process (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015; Langley et al., 2009). While recent efforts in adopting improvement science-like leadership practices have been promising (Benoliel & Barth, 2017; Cosner & Jones, 2016), less is known about how to prepare and develop school and district leaders, particularly for low performing schools.
Designing an effective leadership preparation or development program requires more than structured opportunities for application, however (Darling-Hammond, Meyerson, La Pointe, & Orr, 2010; Orr, 2007). It calls for instructional coherence (Forman, Stosich, & Bocala, 2017), scaffolded progression of theoretical and research knowledge and skills (Popham, 2007) and guided applied dissertation research (Zambo & Isai, 2013).The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (Carnegie Project on the Doctorate, 2013) offers promising approaches by encouraging coursework and dissertation projects to be more aligned to problems of practice and theory-practice applications. Ideally this would entail laboratories of practice as mini-projects to try out theory and research to address small problems of practice and to engage in action research or other action learning-related research on problems of practice for dissertation research (Hochbein & Perry, 2013; Zambo, 2011; Zambo & Isai, 2013). Similar considerations can be extended to leadership development programs, particularly to focus principals’ problem solving as a form of collaborative inquiry (Byrne-Jimenez & Orr, 2007).
Methods/modes of inquiry
Using a case study approach, this paper examines how purposefully teaching improvement science improves leadership outcomes, using several leadership development experiences. The first is based on multi-cohorts (n=20+students) of one university based doctoral program designed to develop use of improvement science-based leadership practices. Using a problem-solving analysis method (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995), laboratory of practice results and structure course feedback, lead faculty track growth in doctoral students’ improvement science applied knowledge and skills and compare to district leaders’ feedback on their current principal’s’ practices. The second case study is of a pilot program for current school leaders in one urban district on learning and applying improvement science practices in continuous improvement for a targeted instructional area.

Author

• Margaret Terry Orr, Fordham Graduate School of Education