Discussion 1: Building a Culture of Growth
Leadership is key to capacity building and establishing a culture of growth. Effective leaders work collaboratively with others and use the group to change the group, contributing to the sustainability of the organization. Leaders who build a culture of growth value the experience and expertise of staff, support learning initiatives, and welcome new innovative ideas. As a leader, establishing a collaborative culture sends a clear message to your staff, resulting in increased collaborative efforts and a commitment to improving student learning. Although there may be some staff members who embrace this change, there are others who will be resistant to the change. For this Discussion, you will analyze the four elements of Cultivating Collaborative Cultures and how they impact organizations.
To Prepare:
Review Fullans four elements of Cultivating Collaborative Cultures (Culture of Growth, Learning Leadership, Capacity Building, and Collaborative Work). Reflect on the components needed to build culture throughout the organization.
Review the Boylan article. Focus on the systemic leadership employed throughout the organization to implement system-wide change as you consider how you will build culture.
An in-depth analysis of the four elements of Cultivating Collaborative Cultures and what they mean for special education leadership. As a special education leader, address the following:
How can you support learning and innovation and build a culture of growth within your organization?
How will you attend to the key attributes of collaborative work to ensure deeper learning experiences for students with exceptionalities?
Learning Resources
Required Readings
Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Chapter 3, Cultivating Collaborative Cultures (pp. 4776)
Florian, L. (Ed.). (2014). The SAGE handbook of special education (2nd ed.). London, England: Sage Publications Ltd.
Chapter 28, Universal Design for Learning (pp. 475489)
Boylan, M. (2016). Deepening system leadership: Teachers leading from below. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(1), 57-72. doi:10.1177/1741143213501314
McLeskey, J., Waldron, N. L., & Redd, L. (2014). A case study of a highly effective, inclusive elementary school.The Journal of Special Education,48(1), 59-70. doi:10.1177/0022466912440455
Kurth, J. A., Lyon, K. J., & Shogren, K. A. (2015). Supporting students with severe disabilities in inclusive schools: A descriptive account from schools implementing inclusive practices.Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, DOI: 1540796915594160.
Fullan, M. (2010). Motion leadership: The skinny on becoming change savvy. Retrieved from http://michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/11_TheSkinny_US.compressed.pdf
Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Chapter 3, Cultivating Collaborative Cultures (pp. 4776)
Chapter 3
Cultivating Collaborative Cultures
Men Wanted
For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Ernest Shackleton
The fate of leaders today may not be quite so dire as described in Shackletons alleged advertisement for his expedition to the South Pole, but the role is daunting nonetheless, as leaders need to engage and motivate others to collaborate on new solutions. The combination of rapid change, emerging technologies, and global complexity requires new processes for knowledge building. Charismatic heroes will not save the day. Rather, we need leaders who create a culture of growth; know how to engage the hearts and minds of everyone; and focus their collective intel- ligence, talent, and commitment to shaping a new path. They recognize that what pulls people in is meaningful work in collaboration with others. They use the group to change the group by building deep collaborative work horizontally and vertically across their organizations. They develop many leaders who, in turn, develop others, thereby contributing to the sustainability of the organization. It is this consistent, collective shaping and reshaping of ideas and solutions that forges deep coherence across the system.
Chapter 2 detailed the need to establish a focused direction that engages everyone with shared moral purpose, a small number of goals, a clear strategy for achieving them, and change leadership that mobilizes action. In this chapter, we examine the driver of collaborative culture as a dynamic force that uses relationships and shared expertise to turn complexities and fragmentation into a focused, coherent force for change. Its not about just creating a place where people feel good but rather about cultivating the expertise of everyone to be focused on a collective purpose. We have identified four elements of cultivating collaborative cultures: culture of growth, learning leadership, capacity building, and collaborative work (see Figure 3.1). Leaders who master these four elements will leverage collaborative culture within and across their organizations and build coherence for impact.
Figure 3.1 Cultivating Collaborative Cultures
Note also that the nature of these collaborations is multifaceted. They focus on intraschool collaboration, increase schoolscentral office partnerships (see Johnson, Marietta, Higgins, Mapp, & Grossman, 2015), use lateral school-to-school networks within districts, and engage in district- to-district consortia and wider networks for teachers and educators.
Culture of Growth
Mind-set matters. Every action leaders take sends ripples through their organizations. The messages may be intended or unintended but can either build coherence and commitment or foster tension and frustration. Organizations that support learning, innovation, and action build a culture of growth. Leaders who possess a growth mind-set build capacity in others and help them achieve more than they expected of themselves. They see talent and potential and have strategies to unleash these qualities in others. Leaders who value a growth mind-set need to consider not just their words but also the messages they send as they pursue solutions to the challenges they face.
This mind-set of a culture of growth plays out in policy decisions and strategy. We consider two examples that convey strong messages to the organizationone that concerns leadership development and the other that focuses on planning. The first example centers on the policies and practices for developing leadership capacity. The stance a district takes in the development of its leaders has a strong impact on culture. Consider two popular TV shows as a metaphor and ask the following question: Is our organizational culture more like Survivor or The Voice? If you answered Survivor, the district likely selects leaders from a pool of volunteers; puts them through rigorous competition processes; places them in unfamiliar, hostile environments where competition and a win-at-all-costs mentality is fostered; and limits resources and trusting relationships. A negative culture of winners and losers emerges. Potential is overlooked, while individualistic and negative behaviors are reinforced.
Those who choose The Voice likely begin with volunteers but also cultivate those they feel have potential; use the selection process to enhance the natural talents of candidates by providing expert mentors, coaching and resources (backup singers, lighting, etc.); and incorporate authentic performance tasks. The result is that skills are enhanced, confidence is increased, and a culture of collaboration emerges.
Lets translate this metaphor to districts and schools to consider how the culture of growth may be cultivated through the selection of leaders and teachers. When districts and schools believe that the solution will come from hiring external individuals, they send a message that the current staff is not up to the task. This creates a deficit culture that is apathetic at best, and demoralizing at worst, as everyone waits for someone to come in to save the day. We worked recently with a district that waited nine months for a principal they had hired from across the country to take up the post. In the interim, the school was stalled and the talent of the school leadership team was not realized. There were teacher-leaders inside the school who understood the dynamics, culture, and contexts of the staff and students. They had effective ideas about strategies to turn the school around but were kept in a holding pattern. This sent a strong message that things are so bad here that only someone from 2,500 miles away can save the day and current staff are the problem, not part of the solution. This was a missed opportunity to build the collective talent, intelligence, and expertise to leverage collaborative culture.
When the organization values the talent and expertise of its people, it creates leadership development strategies that grow internal capacity. Its primary selection pool is drawn from within and augmented by external hires as needed. It creates a stream of successive development opportunities to grow leaders at all levels; selects them based on proven performance of authentic tasks; and provides ongoing coaching, mentoring, and development. It intentionally builds collaboration and learning for formal and informal leaders at all levels. In other words, collaborative cultures develop the next generation of leaders (as well as do better in the immediate term).
The same comparison can be made in the selection and development of teachers. Do we believe all teachers can perform at high levels, or are we trying to fix them with prepackaged program solutions? Do we rely on just hiring the best, or do we provide support for them to collaborate in meaningful ways? We know that doing work that has meaning is more motivating than any extrinsic rewards. People have an innate desire to belong and contributeto be part of something bigger than themselves.
Our second example pertains to planning: using the example of the need to develop a district plan for 21st century education. All districts are grappling with the tension between implementing new standards and addressing emerging digital innovations. Consider two alternative district approaches for creating a plan and the impact of each approach on district culture:
District A recognizes that the status quo will not allow them to sustain current levels of success, so they engage a prestigious consulting firm to recommend a plan. The firm audits their status through interviews with key groups within the district, interviews experts in the field, and prepares and presents to the board a 40-page blueprint for action.
District B recognizes that the status quo will not allow them to sustain success so they select a task team of eight skilled principals plus four leaders from other levels of the district to form a task team. Their mandate is to provide a plan for moving the district forward. They are given time to engage in deep dialogue with each other and groups in the district; resources to connect with external experts and researchers; and the opportunity to visit external sites that have successful plans in action. They present a concise strategy for action.
Lets consider the impact of each strategy on three dimensions: quality of the plan, commitment to implement the plan, and capacity of the organization. District As strategy sends messages to the organization that we dont think our people have the expertise to find solutions, we think the best ideas are outside our organization, and we need experts to translate them for us. As a result, their external strategy affects the organization in three important ways:
The quality of the plan may be valued by the public and elected officials because of the firms reputation but would likely not be as contextualized for internal audiences.
Commitment to implementation would not be high since the shared meaning, ownership, and knowledge building reside with the external experts who did all the thinking and work.
The capacity of the organization for solution finding for future issues would not be increased.
District Bs approach sends clear messages to the organization that we value our people and their expertise as professionals, are committed to growing solutions internally while learning from the best ideas, and foster purposeful collaboration around meaningful work. As a result, their strategy impacts the organization in three important ways:
The quality of the plan is enhanced because it is tailored to the context and culture.
Commitment to implementation is already initiated during the solution-finding process and enhanced by the credibility of the local designers.
The capacity of the organization to approach future issues is increased.
The lesson here is to seek good ideas externally, but dont rely on the external experts for solutions. Leaders at the school, district, and system levels are wise to evaluate policy and strategy decisions on the three dimensions of quality, commitment, and capacity to determine if the need for expediency is greater than the opportunity for growing the organizations capacity as well as the messages their approach will send. They should cultivate a rich dialogue both inside and outside the school, district, or state that informs the local solution finding.
Think about a major challenge you are facing in your organization and consider the following:
1. What is our current challenge?
2. What is our current capacity for solution finding?
3. Who has the greatest expertise or potential to address this either internally or externally?
4. How important is it to find a quick solution or to build the capacity of the organization to implement and find its own solutions?
5. What intended and unintended messages will our approach send to the organization?
We see a correlation between this growth mind-set culture and strong performance in student achievement in districts such as Long Beach, California; Fort Wayne Community Schools, Indiana; Garden Grove Unified School District, California; and York Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada. In each case, they have blended sustained capacity building with reliance on growing talent from within.
The old saying actions speak so loudly no one can hear my words is very apt. Consider the culture you espouse publicly and the policies and practices you have in place to determine if the intended and unintended messages are consistent. We turn next to the concept of lead learners who are essential in cultivating the growth mind-set and in building capacity across the organization.
Learning Leadership aka Lead Learners
Leaders at system, district, and school levels need to influence the culture and processes that support learning and working together in purposeful ways at every level of the organization if they are to produce greater learning in students. Creating a culture of growth is a start, but leaders need to intentionally orchestrate the work of teachers, leaders, and peers and keep it focused on collaboratively improving student learning.
In The Principal (Fullan, 2014c), I (Fullan) identified a major mis- step that policy makers at state and district levels made in positioning the role of the principal as instructional leader. They overinterpreted the research that the principal was the second (to the teacher) most important source of learning for students and proceeded to position the principal as conducting classroom visits, performing teacher appraisals, and taking corresponding action to develop or get rid of teachers who did not improve. We see at least some of these actions as valuable for the principals own professional development in pedagogy but not as a way of moving the school. There are not enough hours in the week to micromanage teachers this way, and if one tries to do it diligently, it results in alienating principals and teachers from each other. Instead, principals have to become lead learners, influencing teachers indirectly but nonetheless explicitly by helping to develop the group.
One powerful role for leaders centers on fostering professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). The professional capital framework has three components:
Human capital: Refers to the human resource or personnel dimension of the quality of teachersthe basic skills and credentials. Attracting and developing these abilities of individuals is essential but not sufficient for impressive gains.
Social capital: Encompasses the quality and quantity of interactions and relationships within the group. In schools, this affects teachers access to knowledge and information; their sense of expectation, obligation, and trust; and their commitment to work together for a common purpose.
Decisional capital: That which is required to make better decisions and results from the practical expertise across individuals and groups. When human and social capital are combined, decisional capital is enhanced.
Lead learners build professional capital across their organizations by modeling learning, shaping culture, and maximizing the impact on learning.
Modeling Learning
Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008) conducted research on the impact of school principals on student achievement and found that the most significant factortwice as powerful as any otherwas the degree to which the principal participated as a learner with staff in helping to move the school forward. Such principals model lead learning. They establish a culture where all teachers are expected to be continuous learners, and they lead the way. Lead learners who make the biggest impact dont send others to learn but actively participate with them as learning partners. In this way, principals learn what is specifically needed to stimulate ongoing organizational improvement. These principals make progress a collective endeavorwhat we are calling collaborative work. Principals who do not take the learner stance for themselves do not keep ahead of the curve; they gain years of experience but not necessarily knowledge and skill about what is required to implement deeply. Principals who visibly struggle in learning about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) or digital innovations along with teachers build credibility, trust, and knowledge of both the innovation and what is needed by the organization to move ahead. Most of all, they learn, thereby becoming more and more effective. Because they are immersed in action and tuned into learning, they recognize and mentor leadership in others. So, modeling is crucial for developing a learning culture.
Shaping Culture
A second key aspect involves shaping the culture to foster deeper relationships, trust, and engagement. Lead learners orchestrate structures and processes to create an environment that anticipates and works collaboratively on challenges and innovation. These principals dont spend their time on checklists and attempts to change teachers one teacher at a time but instead put their efforts into creating mechanisms of support and processes that build teacher collaboration, inquiry, and teams of leaders.
Research by Helen Timperley, in Realizing the Power of Professional Learning (2011), noted that coherence across professional learning environments was not achieved through the completion of checklists and scripted lessons but rather through creating learning situations that pro- moted inquiry habits of mind throughout the school. Timperley offers the interesting metaphor for the principal who is my class. With this filter, principals can identify the groups and individuals who can provide leadership for change. The principals role becomes one of shaping the interactions and mechanisms while resourcing strategically those who propel collective learning. Lead learners support learning that is sustained and incorporate cycles of learning and application so that groups are learning from the work and engaging in solving authentic problems of implementation together.
Maximizing the Impact on Learning
Third, lead learners maximize the impact on student learning by relentlessly keeping the focus and conversation on quality learning for students and adults. They build precision by concentrating on a few goals and then developing a clear plan for achieving them. They build a collective under- standing and engagement around the priorities so that every teacher and leader can answer, with equal ease and precision, the following questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing this?
The importance of lead learnersas modelers, culture shapers, and pressers for maximizing impactwas underscored in longitudinal research conducted in 477 elementary schools in Chicago (Bryk, Bender Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010). Bryk and colleagues found that 100 of the 477 schools had been able to make and sustain significant progress compared to their peers and that the key explanation was school leadership as the driver for change. They noted four interrelated forces: the professional capacity of teachers, school climate, parent and community ties, and what they called the instructional guidance system.
Lead learners are always monitoring impact but seldom rely on tools of performance appraisal, which are generally cumbersome and individualistic. Rather, they work on the instructional focus by orchestrating the work of coaches, teacher-leaders, and central office personnel to support student learning; focusing on the key elements; using data to diagnose learning needs; cultivating precision in instructional practices; and learning collectively. They facilitate processes that build collaborative inquiry into what works and what is needed to refine the approach. This cycle of learning simultaneously builds knowledge and skill, while reinforcing the culture of growth and collaborative improvement.
Capacity Building
Capacity building is a key lever for developing coherence because as knowledge and skills are being developed, the collaborative culture is deepened, shared meaning is clarified, and commitment is reinforced.
Capacity refers to the capability of the individual or organization to make the changes required and involves the development of knowledge, skills, and commitments. Collective capacity building involves the increased ability of educators at all levels of the system to make the instructional changes required to raise the bar and close the gap for all students.
Our experience was powerfully reinforced in the recent findings by John Hattie, building on Eells (2011) work on collective efficacy. Hatties first books, Visible Learning (2009) and Visible Learning for Teachers (2012), identified that the highest instructional effect size on student learning was 1.44 (high expectations for each student). These findings came from an initial database of 800 meta studies. He has since added 400 or more studies, and the new winner is collective efficacy at 1.57 (although we should say that the depth of the knowledge base is not yet as established as with the other studies). As noted earlier, Hattie (2015) has now advanced this work under (what we would say is a more powerful concept) the idea of collaborative expertise. The long and the short of all this is that the leader who helps develop focused collective capacity will make the greatest contribution to student learning.
Professional development does neither a great job on individual efficacy (learning wanes during implementation) nor collective efficacy. A huge gap exists between the promises of professional learning and results in student achievement. While professional learning materials, workshops, presenters, and programs abound, we often see a fragmented approach, focused on fixing individuals. Current programs solicit participation from individual schools and educators and often do not include systematic and sustained follow-up. The result is an overwhelming range of solutions without coherence or sustainability.
The key to a capacity building approach lies in developing a common knowledge and skill base across all leaders and educators in the system, focusing on a few goals, and sustaining an intense effort over multiple years. A capacity building approach creates a foundation for sustainable improvement as it does the following:
Mobilizes a growth mind-set at all levels of the system
Sustains and cultivates improved student learning
Builds a common knowledge base and set of skills at all levels of the system
Focuses on collaborative learning
Emphasizes collective capacity, which engages everyone in the system with clear goals
and commitment to the strategy for achievement
Fosters cross-role learning or lateral capacity
Incorporates a learning cycle of new learning, application on the job, reflection, and
dialogue with colleagues
Capacity building is effective because it combines knowledge building, collective action, and
consistent focus. When done well, it produces the following effects:
Results in changed practices for leaders and in classrooms
Provides a vehicle for learning from the work while doing the work
Increases motivation and commitment because people have new skills and knowledge and
see results sooner
Engages more people in working on the new solutions
Increases momentum and buy-in because people are part of a greater purpose
Fosters leadership at all levels
Capacity building impacts the organization because it develops the culture; accelerates the speed of change; fosters sustainability; and reinforces the strategy as people become involved in deeper learning, reflection, and problem solving across the organization.
People sometimes have trouble grasping the concept of capacity building because it is more abstract than having a standard or making an assessment. Capacity building is an approach, not a program. The underlying concepts are consistent, but it can take different forms depending on the context. Here is a concrete example from our current work with districts. In partnership with the district, we form capacity building teams that learn within groups and across groups. We work with multiple levels of the system simultaneously. Typically, this includes learning strands for district leaders, district capacity teams, principals, and school leadership teams.
The approach at every level is to create communities of learners who develop common language, knowledge, skills, and commitment by building vertical and horizontal learning opportunities:
District leaders form learning partnerships across roles and departments to develop a common language, knowledge base, and skills to focus on sustained development. They explore case examples and current research applied to their context. As a team, they refine the focus to a few key goals, sharpen the strategy, and rethink the resources and practices needed to achieve the goals.
A district capacity team is composed of consultants or teacher- leaders who provide support to schools often by subject or project but often initially from a silo configuration. In a capacity building approach, all support providers form a learning community, and as they develop their common knowledge and strategy, they begin to interact in a more consistent manner so that innovations are not experienced by schools as a series of discrete initiatives but rather as an integrated, coherent strategy for change.
Principals are the key to change. They work with peers as learning partners to build the skills needed to support capacity building at the school level.
School leadership teams are composed of the principal and two to five teachers with a focus on improving learning and teaching. They are engaged as learning teams with other schools from the district to develop a common language, knowledge base, and set of skills to apply back in the school and classrooms. The cycle of learning approach has them implement the new understandings in their school and return to subsequent sessions to share their results and insights with other schools. This ensures that all participants under- stand deep learning communities by being a member of one. Teams develop short-term 60- to 100-day plans for cycles of inquiry and application to maximize moving to action and learning from it.
The formats and content vary depending on the district focus, but three features of the capacity building approach have demonstrated a strong impact in both changing practices and increasing coherence:
Learning partnerships within teams and laterally across the organization
Sustained focus over multiple sessions
Cycles of learning from the work, which are structured inquiry with intentional application in
roles and reflection on impact
The net effect is an increasing collective focus and corresponding capacities to learn together as well as make an impact on learning across the district.
Collaborative Work
Improving whole systems requires that everyone shift their practice. We saw in Chapter 2 that leaping from the current fishbowl to the new bowl of innovation requires new skills and knowledge (capacity building) but is accelerated when we combine it with deep collaborative work (finding other fish to learn and travel with on the journey). People are motivated to change through meaningful work done in collaboration with others. If we want to shift the organization, we need to pay attention to both the quality of the capacity building and the degree of collaborative learning. Figure 3.2 illustrates the relationship.
Figure 3.2 shifting Organizational Practice
Depth of Learning
Depth of Learning, on the vertical axis of Figure 3.2, measures the quality of the learning design. It uses four stages of increasing quality: awareness, understanding, practice, and sustained behavior. When the design focuses on levels of awareness and understanding only, participants are passive learners, and research indicates that only about 15 percent of participants are able to put the new skill into practice. This makes sense because they have no experience with applying the new skill. High-quality learning designs also incorporate opportunities for participants to use the new skills or knowledge in safe environments and then in their roles and to get feedback from peers or coaches (practice). Adding the levels of application and coaching increases the likelihood that the behavior will be sustained as a regular practice by 90 percent or more of the participants (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). This has tremendous implications for the allocation of resources when we can choose a 90 percentplus return on investment or just 15 percent, depending on the strength of the learning design.
Degree of Collaborative Learning
The horizontal axis measures the degree of collaborative work or learning together. It is described as a continuum from completely individual through a range of learning partnerships to integrated collaborative work. Hatties finding of a 1.57 impact for collective efficacy suggests that the horizontal axis can be a significant accelerator when done well.
Four combinations of quality of the learning design and degree of collaboration are described next:
Surface learning: Occurs when the experience is very individualized and the depth of the intervention is weakpredominantly telling, finding, or modeling. This may result from one-shot work- shops and random accessing of online resources without a linkage to broader goals or application. The result is surface learning with limited shift in sustainable behavior.
Personal growth: Occurs when the experience is individualized but the learning design is strong and includes opportunity for feedback and application over time. The quadrant does not mean that individual learning is bad and collaborative is always good, but that individual learning can be weak when it is random, fragmented, and has little opportunity for feedback or application. Individual learning, with a strong learning design, can be highly effective when it is focused, provides feedback, and has opportunities for application in the role.
Frustration: Occurs when people are putting a lot of effort into learning together, such as professional learning communities (PLCs) or networks, but the experience is not well designed or executed. There may be little or no opportunity to apply the learning in real situations with feedback or time is spent in a series of tasks or topics with little follow-up or application.
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