Communication Between Public School Leaders to Support Systemic Innovation of Classroom Practice
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Date
2018-07-10
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Although the instability and rapid technological advances associated with the knowledge economy of the 21st century call for changes in the institution of education (Meyer, 2006), the American K-12 public school system largely remains fixed in an industrial era bureaucracy (Soulé & Warrick, 2015; Weeres & Kerchner, 1995). Analysis of the literature as well as a needs assessment conducted in four, small, suburban districts in the Northeastern region of the U.S. determined that district administrators and school leaders lack a shared language to clearly communicate a vision for instructional innovation to prepare students with future skills such that the ideas diffuse throughout the social networks of the district's ecosystem (Rogers, 2004a). Thus, the researcher used Senge’s (1990; 2006) theoretical framework of Organizational Learning Communities to design an intervention to improve the quantity and quality of communication between central office and building leaders, develop common language to describe innovation of classroom practice to prepare students with future skills for the knowledge economy, and increase districts’ capacity for organizational learning. Frequently used to assess school innovations, the researcher employed a multi-site, explanatory case study as a variant on an embedded mixed-methods design (Martinson & O’Brien, 2010) and implemented it in three of the districts who participated in the needs assessment. The mostly qualitative process evaluation embedded within the quantitative outcome evaluation allowed the researcher to triangulate findings and build rich descriptions of the intervention in context (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011).
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Keywords
education innovation, education leadership