Conference Agenda

Over the last several decades, the educational systems in Ireland and the United States have undergone significant reforms leading to new forms of educational leadership that take a distributed approach to school improvement. In the context of shifting student demographics, accountability movements, and the recent upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, both formal and informal leaders have been central to addressing the evolving needs of youth (Spillane & Lowenhaupt, 2019; Mehta, 2013; McLeod and Dulsky, 2021). At the same time, systems-level improvement efforts have sought to leverage leadership across roles and levels, relying on these leaders to implement instructional and organizational reform.

We draw on distributed leadership theory as we consider the dynamic ways in which leaders across positions influence school improvement (Spillane et al., 2002, Harris et al., 2022). According to this theory, “leadership practice is constituted in the interaction of leaders and their social and material situations. (Spillane et al., 2001, p. 27). As such, leadership occurs across individuals, interactions and the artifacts that mediate those interactions. This emphasis on leadership as practice that is distributed across relationships has led to research studies, policy initiatives, and changes in the infrastructure of educational leadership (Harris et al., 2022). At the same time, there is much to learn about how to build capacity among leaders to engage in distributed leadership.

Our presentation spans two distinct educational systems with differing approaches to distributed leadership. In Ireland, policymakers have devoted considerable attention to supporting senior school leaders including a particular focus on distributed leadership and a review of formal middle management/leadership roles being undertaken by appointed teachers (Department of Education, 2018, 2022. In the United States, the proliferation of emerging leadership structures such as instructional coaching, leadership teams, and teacher leadership has led to a growing set of possibilities and roles, in many cases without formal infrastructure to support the leadership demands of this work (Woulfin & Rigby, 2017; Lowenhaupt & McNeill, 2018). Taking a comparative approach, we use qualitative case study methods to examine the distributed nature of leadership in these two contexts with a focus on two preparation programs in each site (Yin, 2009). Through document analysis (Bowen, 2009), we will examine how distributed leadership is conceptualized in policy documents and program materials. Drawing on our own experiences with the design and implementation of leadership preparation for middle and non-traditional leaders, we will examine common themes across contexts and surface distinctions with implications for distributed leadership capacity building in the two educational systems.

In our findings, we will examine how these systems have built capacity for distributed leadership. We examine the relative affordances and challenges of explicit infrastructure for distributed leadership in the Irish case as compared to the organic evolution of informal leadership opportunities in the US case. We explore how this difference has shaped educators’ positions and dispositions for taking on leadership roles. We end with implications for policy and practice given the ongoing reliance on distributed leadership for school improvement in an increasingly complex education landscape.

In the context of growing interest in improvement research in education and continuous improvement, one core problem to address is how to bridge gaps in improvement knowledge and expertise. A second problem to address is the tension between traditional accountability metrics-driven improvement systems and more progressive performance-based and continuous improvement systems. As New York state policymakers seek to use improvement research in their accountability system redesign and spread continuous improvement expertise among practicing professionals, backbone organizations that function as diverse stakeholder boundary-spanners, improvement knowledge generators, and improvement capacity builders, are, arguably, necessary. The purpose of this paper is to describe the New York context and raise questions about two main challenges framed as research questions.

Research Questions:

What are the optimal strategies for communicating and disseminating equity-oriented research findings and recommendations to diverse stakeholders? What structures and strategies can policymakers, local school system leaders, and improvement researchers employ to facilitate improvement research and continuous improvement utilization?

Perspectives:

As a number of scholars have highlighted (e.g. Haverly et al., 2022), leading instructional improvement is an endeavor fraught with challenges and considerations that influence what is prioritized in the day-to-day functioning of a school. While pragmatic considerations may be high on the list of drivers for behavior, moral considerations are as well. Such moral considerations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and in light of social justice imperatives especially among youth of color and those most vulnerable or marginalized, can drive an equity-focused improvement shift.

Such a shift relies upon innovative research methodologies and frameworks (Ishimaru, 2022; Eddy-Spicer et al., 2022).

Approach to Inquiry:

In this chapter I used autoethnographic methods to chronicle and surface my experiences leading a backbone organization situated in a higher education institution and funded by the state of New York to “inform, inspire, and improve” in the P-12 education space. I did this work reflexively and using an ecological lens (Adams, et al., 2017; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006).

Findings:

I have discovered the following present as high leverage activities: 1) direct engagement with stakeholder groups representing large numbers of members through presentation and publications in member communications; 2) direct engagement with state education department agents in the role of “thought partner” as well as co-designer of continuous improvement professional development opportunities. In relation to question two I have discovered the importance of 1) surfacing a theory of improvement through dialogue with multiple policy agents to encourage sense-making and build coherence across entities and organizations with regard to improvement initiatives, 2) thoughtful integration of practice-oriented expertise with improvement research knowledge and improvement expertise in the development and delivery of continuous improvement-focused professional development, and 3) building improvement infrastructure from an equity-center.

Importance

This presentation provides one example of the developmental journey of a backbone organization in the New York state context and with discussion of current and “on the horizon” opportunities and barriers to building sustainable research-informed improvement infrastructures.

Connection to Theme:

This presentation focuses on a backbone organization promoting equity-oriented and improvement-research informed professional education opportunities.

Three professional practice standards are Ministerial Orders in Alberta, Canada—Superintendent Leadership Quality Standard, Leadership Quality Standard, and Teaching Quality Standard. The three standards are interrelated, interconnected, and interdependent among the nested levels. Complexity theorists argue that nested systems exhibit emergent properties. The interactions, relationships, and feedback loops between the nested levels give rise to the system's overall behaviour. Changes or disruptions at one level can propagate and impact other levels, creating a complex web of dependencies and influences. The theoretical framework for the design and analysis of this study was informed by complexity theory. The conceptual framework, which is consistent with complex organizations, was adapted using implementation science detailing three implementation drivers (competency, organizational, leadership) that supported implementation of the three standards (Fixsen et al., 2019; Sims & Melcher, 2017).

A four-year, longitudinal, convergent mixed-methods study was conducted using three methods to gather data: surveys, case studies, and document review of school authority and provincial documents. Surveys were gathered from teachers (n = 5536), school and system leaders (n = 1832), and superintendent leaders (n = 108) in 35 school districts. Case studies (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) were carried out in up to 10 school districts each year. Superintendents, system leaders, principals, assistant/vice principals, and teachers (cumulative n = 536) participated yearly in either focus groups or interviews from the participating school districts. The data were gathered concurrently and analyzed separately (Bazeley, 2018; Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2018; Onwuegbuzie & Teddlie, 2003). Complementary analysis was used for integrating the data in response to the following three research questions: How well and in what ways are the professional practice standards being implemented? What barriers and supports do teachers, principals, and system leaders identify in the implementation process? What impacts are evident from the implementation of the professional practice standards?

One of the key merged findings was that participating teachers and leaders became more proficient with collecting and applying numerous sources of evidence to inform, improve, and strengthen their daily practice. In school districts where educators focused on sources of multiple sources of evidence that provided outcome data, as well as fidelity data, participants used their daily practice as the site of their continuous professional learning and development (Brown et al., 2021; Timperley, 2015). Results indicate that cultivating a culture of daily evidence-informed practice was crucial not only for successful implementation of professional practice standards towards optimal teaching and learning, but also enabled educators to predict student achievement more accurately.

Objective/Focus: The ETBI’s program is designed to refine and extend the instructional practices and classroom management practices of secondary teachers in Ireland by having a team of teachers and principal attend 12 days of training over a two-year period. That training being guided by the research on educational and systemic change.

Questions:

1. Has attending to change wisdom been successful in guiding the program initiation,

implementation and shift to continuation/sustainability?

2. What blocks and supports educators within a system working to enact and sustain change

wisdom focused on extending/refining teachers’ instructional repertoire?

3. Has the ‘program’ been able create the internal capacity to sustain change?

4. What must change to facilitate the program extending beyond seventeen years?

Paper Structure: Three components: (1) the objective, purpose and research guiding the design and implementation of the program; (2) the rubrics designed from change research to guide and facilitate the discussion of the results; and (3) the identification of what is, and what is not working juxtaposed with five other systemic change projects in two other countries.

Methods: This qualitative research process is motivated by Ellis’ (2001) work in this text, Research on Educational Innovations. He describes three levels of change. The ETBI’s focus is on Level 3 which focuses on researching the impact of innovations on a system. Elmore argued that Level 3 research is rare, and when attempted, usually fails.

We also design and analyze our efforts using change rubrics constructed from change research, e.g., Levels of Use innovation from Hall and Hord’s Concerns Based Adoption Model; the factors from Fullan’s work on the initiation, implementation, and sustaining change and the peer coaching process from the work of Showers and Joyce. In another paper, we discuss the research on teacher and principal Stages of Concern from the work of Hord and Hall (201 ).

Data Source/Results Findings, Learning: Data from our efforts is analyzed applying rubrics constructed from change research from the Concerns Based Adoption Model. The rubrics have three levels: (1) Mechanical Use, (2) Routine Use, and (3) Refined more Integrative Use. From that we can ascertain what is working and where we are falling short. A discussion occurs after each of the rubric.

Perspective/Problem of Practice: The findings presented in Cuban & Usdan’s (2003) text, Powerful Reforms with Shallow Roots, confirms Ellis’ findings. Cuban and Usdan also reported on the rarity of sustained systemic efforts…they found that when the grants disappear, the effort disappears.

Importance of Study: We are working to act on the extensive research related to educational change to extend the thinking and action related to longer-term, systemic-level change with a focus on improving the life chances and learning chances of students. In parallel, the research also identifies extending/refining all teachers instructional practices within a system as a key focus for the content of systemic change (Fullan, 2011; Leithwood et al., 2009).