Week Three - Tony

Develop and articulate ideas for describing learning change in an organisation.

This week I'll look at Fullan's 5 Leading in times of change and complexity attributes.

Again, I'm forming the opinion that there is no one model for change, rather that to effect change successfully you need to combine models and adapt them to meet you organisation's needs. In the end the models would form a sort of Gant chart that would allow you to dip into and out of models and, indeed, many pf the models have overlapping areas. Fullan's model reinforces this idea for me, the idea of there being no one true model for change. An amalgamation model is required. I joked that I should do this and call it the Rodgers' model, write a paper on it and then charge fortune 500 companies big bucks for me to come and tel them how to use it ... but maybe not. I like teaching.

Here's a great video that sums up the issues in just a few minutes:




image source: http://silare140.pbworks.com/w/page/31881038/Educational%20Leadership

1. Moral Purpose
I think that this has a few facets to it. As educators it would seem that we have an accepted and inherent moral purpose to our positions. Change should be beneficial and it is our responsibilty to do so if it is. But as Bob explained last lesson the 'Laggards' as Rogers call them are no, by default, lazy. They are often simply, rightfully, skeptical of new ideas until the can see the educational benefits of them.

The other facet of moral purpose I think must include a moral contract between management and staff. Unlike the educator/student contract, this work-related one must take into account working lives and expectations of the staff. Too much change, too many calls on teacher time can erode the moral right that teachers see management have to dictate change and direct productivity. So without this moral standing, teachers - and students/parents - will be less likely to buy into change.

Things that can effect this are:

• previous mistakes
• poor timing of change initiatives
• current changes being enacted
• lack of clear articulation of the need for change by management
• The feeling that it is change for change sake - or that the change is simply there to benefit someone's resume

So while schools have a accepted moral purpose, we will only keep it if we make the right decisions and think long term in our application of change. Plomp's (1996) notion of care for the old and courage for the new needs to be carefully thought out and tempered here. Often leaders think that because shcool have this moral right - as leaders in school they have it as well. Not the case. Fullan's second point in this video clarifies this:


2. Understanding Change
Fullan argues that leaders need to understand the organisation, the staff, their needs and what realistic expectation you can have is central to effective change.

This video by Fullan outlines how understanding the organisation and expectation can impact leadership bring about powerful change in an organisation:


One of the great failings of change leadership at my work is management's failure to "appreciate the implementation dip" (Fullan, p. 40). as a result, teachers are not given any time to absorb and modify their work practices. Scant time exists for teachers to adapt their practices and, as Fullan notes, when combined with a lack of moral purpose, this can be "deeply disturbing" to staff (Fullan, p.40). For example, just this week we had some PD on referencing. A new system 0 MLA 7 - is now to be used across the school. In less than an hour we heard a talk about MLA and were given some time to explore the new system, but then, just as many we actually starting to see the commonalities in the referencing style, we broke up and went to another meeting. It would have been better for management to say, have the second hour to really get to know this system. try referencing webpages, books, articles etc so you can understand how it differs from other systems. But we didn't. A lack oif time that really just means for many staff the first hour is now wasted as well. Misunderstanding of the change process.

3. Relationships

One things that I like about Fullan's ideas is how they are interrelated. And number 3 is no different, Moral Purpose and Understanding Change both affect relationships and relationships certainly impact how the first two are seen by staff. This is a huge area and I really only want to pick up on a small part of Fullan's arguments here: the emotional impact of change. Fullan states that resistance to change is a good things and good change leaders are able to utilise these resistant forces as a "potential source of new ideas and breakthroughs" (p. 74). At my workplace resistance is not welcomed. Certainly statements say it is, but I've seen too many examples of people questioning ideas only to be silenced to feel it is embraced as fully Fullan argues it should be.

4. Knowledge Building

Source: http://think-learn-grow.blogspot.com/2008/05/knowledge-sharing-paradigm.html

Once again the links to other areas are strong as relationships are central to knowledge building. In my school this is evident. Fullan's distinction between knowledge nad information is am important one and I am not sure my school gets this at a macro level. We are very good at sharing and dissecting and exploiting knowledge at department and faculty level - it is at the whole school level that we falter. Why? Well I think knowledge is cultural, it is interpreted differently by different people, it means more to some groups than others - as you begin to move further away from where the knowledge is needed and useful it becomes less relevant and hard to understand, in short it simply becomes 'information'. So two year 7 teachers of mathematics will be more able to build knowledge through peer work and conversations than year 7 English and a year 7 Mathematics teacher will. That's not to say that it can't happen - or good things may not develop from those interactions, but in a busy environment shared understanding is important.

I also think that most of the effective knowledge construction in my school happens informally. Casual conversations and links to outside knowledge tend to be far more worthwhile and meaningful than most of the formal systems. Why? Because it is knowledge pulled into the environment, not pushed.

5. Coherence Making Here Fullan makes a lot of sense to me. When he writes, "the main problem is not the absense of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected, episodic, piecemeal, superficially adorned projects" (p. 109) I completely agree. It is one of the reasons staff are so hostile and apathetic to change. It is not that we don't want change, but we want it to be meaningful. Tokenistic change wastes our time and insults our professionalism. As a result some good ideas are not given time and fail. We aren't able to achieve coherence for the two reasons Fullan states - Self -organizing and Strange Attractors (p. 114-5). Our ability to 'self-organise' is retarded by constant change - new patterns never settle and the sheer volume of change means we are often not sure what is the cause of good or bad outcomes. Strange Attractors that 'attract' the energy of staff are also put under strain as there is only so much energy and commitment a person can give. Fracturing their time means they are forces to prioritise.

References:
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. San Fracisco: Jossey-Bass.