Tensioning in Continuous Improvement

• In Event: Advancing The Teaching and Learning of Collaborative Continuous Improvement in Education

Abstract

Objectives: We argue for the development of an attention to the work of tensioning. Tensions are central to the work of continuous improvement and how they come to be constructed is consequential for how improvement work unfolds. Tensioning can enable leaders of improvement efforts to develop clearer and more robust investigations of systems, reframe their conceptions of problems in their settings, interrogate existing practices and processes, align and cohere improvement efforts.

Theoretical framework: Generating a collection of improvement practices is crucial for building a collective language and knowledge base that can be used to guide the development of improvement leaders and coaches. Our attention to practices is undergirded by social practice theoretical lenses (e.g., Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011) that views situated action, or practices, as consequential to social and organizational life. Tensioning is one such practice. Tensions serve as central sources of transformation and change in organizations and social systems (Engestrom& Sannino, 2011). Tensions enable actors to grapple with the logic and purpose of taken-for-granted practices and processes that constitute their daily work and make decisions to shift, modify, upend, or transform practices and processes.

Method: To illustrate tensioning in the work of improvement, we offer three stories: A story of tensioning in an improvement effort that was unproductive; a story of engaging tensions to generate alignment and focus in an improvement effort; and a story of tensioning through alignment. We use these stories to highlight tensioning work across a range of contexts to motivate the need for intentional development around tensioning.

Substantiated conclusions: Our three stories illustrate how tensioning unfolds in continuous improvement work. In the first story, we reveal how tensioning emerged as a result of misalignment and confusion, where tensions were constructed out of frustration. In the second story, we illustrate how a justice-focused improvement network engages tensions in order to generate a focus and direction, enabling the network to move forward. In this story, educators juxtaposed outcomes rooted in existing systems of schooling against more critically-driven visions of schooling. In the third story, we highlight how tensioning emerges through alignment in purpose, goals, and strategy across an educational system. Here, we illustrate what sorts of tensioning work unfolds when purpose, goals, and strategies discipline the everyday work of improvement.
Significance: Our proposed poster will illustrate tensioning as a practice that is constitutive of all improvement work. Using stories, we make visible the way actors within improvement work come to construct and engage tensions in ways that enable them to move improvement efforts forward or sustain them across time. In our full poster, we offer suggestions for the kinds of activities and tasks that those responsible for developing educational leaders may employ to help them see and engage with the work of tensioning in order to develop tensioning as part of a broader repertoire of practice.

Authors

• Carlos Sandoval, Clemson University

• Jonathan R. Dolle, WestEd

• Rebecca Colina Neri, Stemuli Studios, Inc.