School Improvement Amid Adversity: Collective Agency at the Next Level of Work

• In Event: Important Issues in Leadership for Improvement

Abstract

School improvement depends upon collective agency, but little is known about how collective agency develops in chronically low-performing schools. Such schools tend to face contexts of adversity that constrains collective agency when inviting defensiveness, helplessness, and conflict. This paper draws upon participant observation in two work groups in one challenged middle school to analyze development processes that enable and constrain collective agency. The study finds that both groups exert collective agency at times, but it is a limited collective agency at the “next level of work.” The next level of work is enabled when someone takes initiative with simple tasks that emphasize self-affirmation. Such processes do not enable mastery of the challenges posed by adversity, and collective agency remains fragile.

Author

• Elizabeth Zumpe, University of California - Berkeley