Fostering Mindsets for Equity-Focused Continuous Improvement in an EdD Program

• In Event: Adapting Continuous Improvement Methods to Advance Equity-Related Goals

Abstract

Prominent models of continuous improvement (CI) imagine leaders who are strong organizational problem solvers committed to addressing equity-relevant problems of practice using a “human-centered” approach to change (Bryk et al., 2015; Eddy-Spicer & Penuel, 2022; Mintrop, 2016). However, existing research suggests prevalent countervailing improvement mindsets that arise within the institutional contexts of educators, including seeing improvement as a matter of implementing “my solution” (Author, 2019) and a tendency to morally frame problems through deficit discourses (Garcia & Guerra, 2004). Two emerging innovations in leadership development—developing an equity lens and using improvement science —both pose counter-normative demands on leaders’ mindsets and practices (Biag & Sherer, 2021). To bring forth new equity mindsets, leaders must become aware of the structural and historical roots of equity problems, become aware of privilege and bias, and use asset-based views when defining problems. To leverage the promise of improvement science, many leaders must unlearn solution-driven and accountability-oriented mindsets about improvement, and become more focused on solving problems, ‘seeing the system’ of root causes, developing empathy with people who need to be part of the change, and iteratively designing and implementing new solutions with the help of practical measures.
This paper asks: (1) what are the key learning needs entailed for leaders to adopt mindsets conducive for CI with an equity lens? (2) Which learning activities are particularly powerful for enabling shifts in leaders’ mindsets? The paper reports on an action research project within one online EdD program in Massachusetts that follows critical improvement science as a signature pedagogy and in which the authors are faculty members. Data include student work artifacts (including key course assignments and program milestones) and interviews of about 25 EdD students during their first and second years of a three-year program. We identify learning needs in how students are challenged to become critical consumers of research literature, understand how identity and deficit-based discourses can influence problem framing, learn how to shift from identifying broad problematic conditions of inequity to defining an actionable problem ‘of practice,’ understand the system that produces the problem, identify agency-forward and asset-based drivers of change, and learn methodological techniques to become ‘user-centered.’ Tracing students’ learning over the program, we report on key pivot points in leaders’ learning and show how the most impactful learning activities involved leaders understanding the structural roots of oppression, challenging the framing of problems, exploring how their own social identities shaped their view of problems and solutions, and integrating research knowledge and local knowledge from voices and perspectives of diverse stakeholders to challenge students’ assumptions about the problems and attachments to predetermined solutions.
These findings suggest it can be powerful to center equity and critical consciousness in the teaching and use of improvement science methods (Hinnant-Crawford, 2020). Doing so means attending more carefully to the front end of the improvement journey including how problems are defined and framed, whose voices are included, and how to identify change drivers that avoid perpetuating oppression and instead foster agency and self-determination.

Authors

• Elizabeth A. Zumpe, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Phitsamay Sychitkokhong Uy, University of Massachusetts - Lowell
  Presenting Author

• Stacy Agee Szczesiul, University of Massachusetts - Lowell
  Presenting Author