Creating Capacity for Learning and Equity in Schools

Instructional, Adaptive, and Transformational Leadership

Mary A. Hooper, Victoria L. Bernhardt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317361879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Liderazgo en educación

Creating Capacity for Learning and Equity in Schools provides a comprehensive guide for aspiring and practicing leaders to strengthen their capacity to create high levels of learning and equity. Chapters explore key theories and research, provide resources for developing personal and organizational leadership capacity, and guide leaders through a reflective process to help them link theory and practice. Hooper and Bernhardt's model for excellence and equity provides a pathway for educators to create and sustain learning communities in schools. Exploring three leadership approaches—Instructional, Adaptive, and Transformational—this textbook prepares and develops leaders to engage school communities through effective instructional leadership, data-informed decision-making, and a vision for learning and equity for all.

Special Features:

• Theory to Practice (T2P) Framework—A series of structured exercises help readers review and reflect on existing organizational practices and develop new action plans.

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• Case Studies—Encourage individual reflection and collective discussion on key leadership scenarios.

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• Examples in Action—Challenge readers to analyze new connections and leadership processes.

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• A companion website—Includes additional resources and tools for instructors to facilitate activities in the classroom.

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PART I

Introduction

Chapter 1

LEADERSHIP MODES FOR CREATING CAPACITY

Creating capacity is not accomplished by an event, but rather is an ongoing process requiring a high level of commitment to learning and continuous improvement. Becoming a school community such as the one “imagined” in the Preface requires a dual focus on both individual and collective development. Leaders committed to creating capacity for learning and equity must first focus on their own identity, purpose, knowledge, skills, and dispositions before engaging others in organizational development efforts.

The focus for creating capacity is on enhancing both individual and collective abilities to leverage actions and interactions that enhance productivity while identifying, understanding, and addressing challenges limiting productivity. From a personal development perspective, the leader’s productivity is related to her/his personal sense of purpose and mission. In the context of organizational development, the productivity of the school community is related to achieving excellence in the service of a shared vision. Both relate to capacity. Creating this capacity requires specific, intentional, and deliberate actions linked and described as Leadership Modes. Creating personal and organizational capacity includes strength ening personal knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to these specific Leadership Modes, while simultaneously attending to organizational learning. Leaders committed to creating capacity for learning and equity need to understand the dynamics of organizational learning as a context for their personal development in the Leadership Modes essential to create capacity for learning and equity.

This chapter introduces three Leadership Modes required for creating capacity, reviews a simple logic model for the application of the Leadership Modes, and describes the Theory to Practice (T2P) Framework that serves as the basis for engaging readers in the process of reviewing new concepts, reflecting on connections, and identifying actions to refine their leadership practices.

LEADERSHIP MODES FOR CREATING CAPACITY

Instructional Leadership, Adaptive Leadership, and Transformational Leadership function as the three Leadership Modes that frame this model for creating capacity for learning and equity.

FIGURE 1.1 Leadership Modes

The mode of Instructional Leadership provides direction for the leader to ensure the effective utilization of research-based instructional strategies aligned to explicit and rigorous curriculum standards and to monitor and manage performance through appropriate informal and formal assessments. The intent of the Instructional Leadership Mode is to ensure the implementation of a rigorous and coherent instructional program aligned to a shared vision. The Adaptive Leadership Mode ensures learning and equity by defining approaches for leading data-informed continuous improvement and establishing a shared vision. Finally, the Transformational Leadership Mode clarifies an expectation for leaders to establish and support an inclusive community of learning by cultivating conditions that create respectful and culturally responsive engagement and collaboration in the service of achieving what Kouzes and Posner (2007) describe as an uplifting and ennobling vision for learning and equity.

The intentional and deliberate sets of related behaviors linked to each of the three Leadership Modes are further defined in Chapter 2 by the identification of Leadership Commitments. Leaders who fully engage in the commitments of each of these three Leadership Modes, while intentionally refining and strengthening structures to support learning communities across all organizational boundaries, are able to create capacity for both learning and equity. This capacity ensures the cultivation of a culture that lives and sustains beyond the leader.

THE LOGIC OF CREATING CAPACITY FOR LEARNING AND EQUITY IN SCHOOLS

This book is written for current and aspiring leaders seeking to develop or strengthen their ability to create capacity for learning and equity in schools. The model presented in the book serves as a frame for leaders to intentionally and thoughtfully review specific theories, reflect on personal and organizational leadership behaviors, and develop actionable plans for refining and improving leadership practices. High-performing schools are characterized by well-developed leadership systems providing continuity and sustained support for organizational and personal learning.

This book is based on a very simple logic model. Principals committed to ensuring that all students have access to highly functioning and productive classrooms must have a commitment to their own effectiveness as well as a sustainable approach for preparing and developing an effective leadership system within the school.

A well-defined approach for preparing and developing school leaders includes defining the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of effective leaders that focus on the capacity to create conditions for learning. This focus on learning relates to multiple levels and layers of personal and organizational learning. While such learning influences all of the various components of the organizational system, a priority for creating capacity is for leaders to focus on engaged instruction to ensure teaching and assessment practices are continually refined and improved to meet the needs of all students. The intended, long-term output of this logic model is increased student success that includes, but is not limited to, achievement measured by accountability systems.

FIGURE 1.2 Logic Model

The role of comprehensive and systemic data must not be understated in creating capacity for learning and equity. Data-informed decision-making is about making decisions based on gathering, analyzing, and using appropriate data (Bernhardt, 2013). Educational leaders, both in and out of the classroom, who are equipped with data-informed decision-making abilities know how to transform the learning organization by gathering and organizing data, and then engaging staff in using the data to respond by appropriately adapting structures and processes. This logic model provides a focus for leaders to frame their personal development and is best applied in the context of a well-defined approach to applied practice.

THEORY TO PRACTICE (T2P) FRAMEWORK

The book includes an intentionally designed T2P Framework. The purpose of the T2P Framework is to support individual leaders in personal learning associated with each of the three Leadership Modes through the introduction of theory and applied practice opportunities grounded in reflection on personal and organizational behaviors. The Leadership Modes described in this book are based on theoretical perspectives from a variety of fields including Human Resource and Organizational Development, Cognitive Psychology, and Management, as well as research on K-12 instructional practices and school leadership. The integration of theory and practice provides a focus for leaders to review new ideas, reflect on the ideas in existing organizational practices, and then develop action plans to refine their personal leadership behaviors.

An often used opening to leadership workshops and seminars used by the authors includes the reminder that BOTH theory and action have value.

Theory without action is useless; Action without theory is costly.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s perspective on the importance of integrating theory and practice provides a parallel thought.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Leaders committed to creating capacity for learning and equity must be prepared to maintain an open-mind to explore new ideas and perspectives.

Anyone who has traveled on an airplane in the past decade recognizes the familiar script of the flight attendants as they remind passengers that in the event of an emergency, they should place the oxygen mask over their own noses and mouths before assisting others who may need help. In the context of leadership development, leaders must attend to their own learning and growth first before attempting to create capacity in others. As a guide for personal development, this book provides an approach for linking research and theory with practice grounded in reflection.

Facilitated reflection can be a powerful approach for leaders seeking to expand their worldview by assimilating new knowledge and perspectives from theory while gaining an understanding of how such theory might relate to the context of their practice (Densten and Gray, 2001). Ensuring the authenticity of reflection requires that leaders maintain a commitment to an honest examination of not only their practices, but also the underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions that informed their behavior (Reynolds, 1998). Deliberate, systematic reflection is essential to ensure meaningful and deep learning related to creating capacity for learning and equity.

Reflection is …
The practice of analyzing experiences and observations by focusing on the processes involved.

Reflection is not …
simply a summary of experiences.

Meaningful reflection requires an honest assessment of current capacities and conditions as a precursor to planning for application. Prior to delving into the sections of the text that relate to each mode of leadership, readers are encouraged to complete a narrative self-assessment as a means of determining a starting place for strengthening their own capacity. The T2P Framework presented in this text includes a systematic focus for learning, analysis, and application that ensures intentional and systematic reflection while providing unlimited possibilities for leaders to adapt new ideas to various contexts.

Designed to support the integration of ideas with the specific context of the reader’s leadership experiences and opportunities, the T2P Framework is based on three cognitive processes: Review, Reflect, and Refine. Leaders skilled in these cognitive processes are able to adopt the T2P Framework as a mental model for both personal and organizational learning. The application to organizational learning will be introduced in Chapter 2, while each chapter in Parts II, III, and IV addresses the application of the T2P Framework for personal development.

The T2P Framework has three phases and is initiated with a Review of new information related to each of the three Leadership Modes. Prompts challenging the leader to note key ideas in the literature are designed to support the acquisition and understanding of new information presented in the text through discussions of theory and examples in action that demonstrate the theory in practice. The next phase in the T2P Framework challenges leaders to Reflect by analyzing connections among the new informat...