Fostering district coherence amid complexity: Affordances of a professional learning series for fostering district leaders’ collective agency

• In Event: Comparing Political Dynamics of Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs): Insights From Latin America and the United States

Abstract

School systems in the United States are often described as ‘incoherent’ (Spillane et al., 2022). A patchwork of state and local governance and hierarchical bureaucratic organizations create a context in which school leaders tend to be beholden to multiple conflicting goals from a variety of stakeholders (Honig & Hatch, 2004). In most localities, schools are managed by a district headed by a superintendent appointed by a locally elected school board. The superintendent is expected to oversee the implementation of policies from the state and federal government, as well as to lead strategic goal-setting and improvement from within. Meanwhile, other district administrators — often appointed to oversee the implementation of a variety of discrete federal and state policies — tend to be organized into specialized departments with little interaction with one another (Honig, 2003). After the demise of the federal policy of No Child in 2015, states were given authority to set standards and accountability targets, and California introduced local control accountability (Furger et al., 2019). This means that schools in California are now required to both implement state standards and assessments tied to ambitious learning horizons and to develop a local accountability plan that includes locally-set improvement goals developed bottom up with input from various stakeholder groups.

This paper emerges from a multi-year university-district research-practice partnership focused on bringing about district-wide instructional improvement while situated amid the complex political context of California. The partnership started a collaboration between university researchers, district leaders, principals, and coaches to co-design professional learning routines and artifacts to spread ambitious instruction district-wide. However, over several years, we repeatedly became challenged by the puzzle of how to foster district-wide instructional improvement in a traditionally ‘incoherent’ district. We tried many initiatives towards this end. This paper focuses on one relatively successful endeavor: to build the capacity of district administrators to use a method of continuous improvement to identify and address shared local problems.

This paper draws on a study of the affordances and challenges of a professional learning series to foster district leaders’ problem solving competence. Data were collected through participant observation, audio records, and artifacts from professional learning sessions over eight months. During some sessions, university partners taught district leaders an element of a multi-step method of continuous improvement, and district leaders applied this element to identify and address a shared problem of practice. During other meetings, university partners helped district leaders prepare to teach the method to their principals and reflect on the results. Tracing episodes of flow, obstacles, and emerging insights in their group learning, we found that district leaders learned how to establish shared priorities amid a multitude of demands, make broad problems more concrete and actionable, distinguish an internal locus of control, become aware of assets in their organizations for solving their problems, and identify practical metrics for making incremental improvements visible. Through this new learning, they began to develop collective agency to identify and address shared problems together, providing foundations for fostering coherence for district-wide improvement.

Authors

• Elizabeth Zumpe, University of Oklahoma

• Corrine Aramburo, University of New Mexico