From Implementing “What Works” to Fostering Agency for Continuous Improvement: Problem-Solving Competencies for School Leaders (Poster 4)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 9:35 am
  In Poster Session: The Changing Landscape of Leadership Preparation, Partnerships, and Social Justice Advocacy

Abstract

Designing well-adjusted solutions to contextually-specific problems of practice is becoming an essential skill to respond to increasingly complex school challenges. The continuous improvement (CI) movement has emerged as a popular answer to help leaders design solutions to endemic problems of practice. Although popular, recent evidence has shown the CI logic is far from trivial. At its core, CI is a problem-solving dynamic to foster educational leaders' agency. Before CI can take off as a method of improvement, educational leaders need to develop a problem-solving mindset as a platform to implement this logic of improvement. This conceptual paper introduces a competency framework identifying fundamental competencies for problem-solving to help leaders unleash their agency to solve wicked problems of practice

Authors

• Miguel Órdenes, Universidad Diego Portales

• Elizabeth A. Zumpe, University of Oklahoma

• Rick Mintrop, University of California - Berkeley