The Work and Complications of Hub Leadership in Educational Improvement Networks

• In Event: Creating Systemic Change for Improvement and Transformation: Affordances and Limitations of Five Efforts to Improve Instruction at Scale

Abstract

Purpose:
The purpose of this analysis is to develop a framework detailing the practical work and associated complications of leading hub organizations in educational improvement networks. While networks have gained currency as an organizational form with potential to support districts in advancing educational access, quality, and equity, hub leadership has functioned as a tacit and unexamined assumption on which the network movement is predicated. Hence, our focus on developing an analytic framework useful for assessing and supporting the work of hub leaders.

Theoretical Perspectives
Our analysis draws on of three literatures that provide complementary perspectives for examining hub leadership:

Research on the development of districts and schools as coherent instructional systems (Cobb et al., 2018; Forman et al., 2017; Johnson et al., 2014; Peurach et al., 2019).
Research on the development of improvement networks as collaborative learning systems (Bryk et al., 2015; Peurach et al., 2016; Russell et al., 2017).
Research on temporary organizations characterized by newly established relationships among collaborating teams that share responsibility for defined projects and pursung objectives (Bakker, 2010; Burke & Morley, 2016; Lundin and Söderholm, 1995).

Modes of Inquiry
This analysis works inductively from reports of the preparation and practice of hub leaders to an analytic framework detailing a) key domains of practical work on which hub leaders routinely focus and b) categories of issues, problems, and challenges that complicate this routine work.

Data/Analysis
This analysis draws on semi-structured interviews with 26 experienced hub leaders from 13 improvement networks recognized for the quality and effectiveness of their work. A combination of closed and open coding yielded a provisional framework detailing domains of work and associated complications. This framework was then validated and refined a) via presentation-and-feedback at multiple convenings of hub leaders b) by using it as foundation for practice-based leadership support in one large-scale improvement network.

Results
Contrary to common assumptions, our analysis suggests that the vast majority of the work of hub leaders focuses on organizational development, with only a small portion focused on technical improvement activity. Specifically, the work of hub leaders falls into for primary domains:

Developing and managing the hub organization.
Developing and managing the network as an organization.
Managing environmental relationships.
Engaging in (and supporting) improvement activity.

This work, in turn, is complicated by six conditions:

Legacy approaches to educational improvement in districts and schools.
The ambitiousness and scope of improvement activity.
The lack of existing capabilities for network-based educational improvement.
Networks as voluntary, temporary organizations in which the hub has no formal authority or institutionalized funding.
Network demographics, including size and geographic distribution.
The lack of professional development and learning opportunities for hub leaders.

Significance
Transforming districts as coherent instruction systems has become central to educational reform in the US, with networks a key source of support for this transformation. This research provides new insights on the first-order work of hub leaders in drawing districts and networks into collaborative learning systems focused on advancing educational access, quality, and equity.

Authors

• Donald J. Peurach, University of Michigan

• Jennifer Lin Russell, Vanderbilt University

• Jennifer Zoltners Sherer, University of Pittsburgh

• Kelly McMahon, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Emma Parkerson, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching