Cultures Built to Last - Systempic PLCs at Work
DuFour, Fullan
Need to provide clarity across the system regarding what it means to be a PLC and what is involved in the process of becoming and sustaining a PLC.
6 characteristics of high-performing PLCs:
3 big ideas that serve as "core of the PLC process" - help make the transition from traditional schools to PLCs:
4 critical questions that help educators focus relentlessly on learning for all students:
The PLC process calls for learning together
Together teachers examine effective ways of assessing student learning in the classroom each day as well as through team-develped common formative and summative assessments. They analyze evidence of student leaning and search for way to improve their practice. They explore strategies to enrich and extend the learning for students who have demonstrated they are highly proficient.
The school develops a coordinated plan of support when students experience difficulty to avoid subjecting them to the traditional educational lottery in which the response to a struggling student has been solely dependent on the individual teacher to whom he or shed had been assigned -- this reminds me of the WIN2BE
Specifics of this work are grounded in a solid foundation of common purpose, shared vision, collective commitments and goals (Why before how, how before what). There must be a general agreement that the purpose of the school district is to ensure all students learn at high levels.
Systemness
The degree to which people identify and are committed to an entity larger than themselves --- Everyone doing their partin two aspects: begin as good as one can be during individual and collaborative work, and being aware that everyone needs to make a contribution to improving the larger system.
In a systemic PLC, there should be no clear distinction between the system and the individual -- members of a PLC are the system individual seek to create.
Administrators, stakeholders, teachers - must address some challenges and issues that are vital to changing the culture:
Establish coherence and clarity regarding purpose and priorities throughout the organization
Building shard knowledge about the rationale for change
engaging in meaningful two-way dialogue throughout the change process
Identifying the specific steps that must be taken immediately make process toward long-term aspirational goals
creating a culture that is simultaneously loose and tight - tightly held and well articulated mission, vision values, loosely monitored actions
Building a collective capacity around the agenda of improving student achievement
demonstrating reciprocal accountability by providing the resources and support to help people succeed at what they are being asked to do
Establishing ongoing feedback loops that help people assess the impact of their efforts and make adjustments accordingly.
Ensuring transparency of results, and using results to inform and improve practice
Creating a collaborative culture in which peole take collective responsibility for the success of the initiative
Establishing trust
Developing lots of leaders
Fostering Self-Efficacy
Maintaining focus and limiting initiatives
Managing resistance
Sustaining the improvement process - even when key leaders have left the organization
Celebrating small wins
Must prescribe to the theory that effective communication requires repetition to the point of redundancy
The wrong drivers for education reform:
Accountability
Human Capital (the talent of individuals)
Technology
Fragmented Strategies
The right Drivers for Education Reform:
Capacity building
Social Capital (the quality of the group)
Instruction
Systemness
Whole system reform requires collective coherence; in other words, leaders need to cultivate a shared minset among individuals within the system. This is where PLCs can be a solution - to create a shared mindset for success
Building blocks of coherence across the system involve leaders interacting widely in purposeful ways so that greater mutual allegiance and collective capacity are continuously fostered.
In collaborative schools teachers don't just identify with "my students" in "my classroom" but rather "our students" in "our school"
In coherent districts (like MV with their P14 Alignment) individual principals become almost as concerned with the success of other schools in the district as with their own
The Loose-Tight Dilemma
If people throughout the organization are unable to articulate goals and priorities, the organization has no goals and priorities
commitment to deep cultural change is a direct result of involving others in the change in meaningful ways.
Top down approach not only fails to engage educators, it also removes them from the decision-making process.
Too tight and too lose problems create a "gaming of the system"
Building the capacity of educators to meet the challenges they face requires a servant-leader mindset (P. 51). A sink or swim philosophy does not build capacity; too many people drown. A "we hope people will figure it out" approach does not build capacity. Hope may be a virtue, but it is not a strategy. A fundamental task of leadership at all levels in systemic reform is to create the conditions that allow people to be successful at what they are being asked to do (P. 51)
The principal's effort to include teachers must be be balanced by a commitment to provide the time, resources, and support to help them succeed at the task.
removing obstacles:
One study of factors impacting worker motivation and self-effiacy found that "on days when workers have the sense they aren akin progress in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are ore positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak (Amabile & Kramer, 2010 P. 44).
The obligation to provide others with resources and assistance they ned to meet expectations is commonly referred to as reciprocal accountability.
"When principals and teachers in effective districts in the US expressed frustration over not having sufficient time to do the work that was asked of them, the districts came up with creative ways to provide time" (Dufours & Fullan, 2013, P. 52)
Building Ongoing Adult Learning into the System:
Fundamental attribution theory - when we observe behavior we assume that's a statement of who they are.
We are mostly wrong when we look at behavior and we write people off.
ask people when their behavior is off -- "I don't mean to be intrusive, but I noticed things are going well -- what's going on?"
DuFour, Fullan
Need to provide clarity across the system regarding what it means to be a PLC and what is involved in the process of becoming and sustaining a PLC.
6 characteristics of high-performing PLCs:
- Shared mission (purpose), vision, values (collective commitments), and goals (indicators, timelines, and targets), which are all focused on student learning.
- A collaborative culture with a focus on learning
- Collective inquiry into best practice and current reality
- Action Orientation - "Learning by Doing" -- Plan, Do, Study, Act
- A commitment to continuous improvement
- A results orientation
3 big ideas that serve as "core of the PLC process" - help make the transition from traditional schools to PLCs:
- A relentless focus on learning for all students -
- if all students are to learn at high levels, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. Staff members must engage in job-embdedded learning as part of their routine work practices
- A collaborative culture and collective effort to support student and adult learning
- Schools cannot achieve the fundamental purpose of learning for all if educators work in isolation
- educators must work together interdependently and assume collective responsibility for the learning of all students
- working in teams, teachers are empowered to make important decisions, support one another, and learn from one another
- A results orientation to improve practice and drive continuous improvement
- Need schools to establish a culture that is "hungry for evidence" of student learning
- teachers must systematically monitor student learning on an ongoing basis and use evidence of student learning to respond immediately to students who experience difficulty
4 critical questions that help educators focus relentlessly on learning for all students:
- What is it we want our students to learn? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we expect them to acquire as a result of this course, this grade level and this unit of instruction?
- How will we know if each student is learning each of the skills, concepts, and dispositions we have deemed most essential?
- How will we respond when some of our students do not learning? What process will we put in place to ensure students reeve additional time and support for learning in a way that is timely, precise, diagnostic, directive, and systematic?
- How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
The PLC process calls for learning together
Together teachers examine effective ways of assessing student learning in the classroom each day as well as through team-develped common formative and summative assessments. They analyze evidence of student leaning and search for way to improve their practice. They explore strategies to enrich and extend the learning for students who have demonstrated they are highly proficient.
The school develops a coordinated plan of support when students experience difficulty to avoid subjecting them to the traditional educational lottery in which the response to a struggling student has been solely dependent on the individual teacher to whom he or shed had been assigned -- this reminds me of the WIN2BE
Specifics of this work are grounded in a solid foundation of common purpose, shared vision, collective commitments and goals (Why before how, how before what). There must be a general agreement that the purpose of the school district is to ensure all students learn at high levels.
Systemness
The degree to which people identify and are committed to an entity larger than themselves --- Everyone doing their partin two aspects: begin as good as one can be during individual and collaborative work, and being aware that everyone needs to make a contribution to improving the larger system.
In a systemic PLC, there should be no clear distinction between the system and the individual -- members of a PLC are the system individual seek to create.
Administrators, stakeholders, teachers - must address some challenges and issues that are vital to changing the culture:
Establish coherence and clarity regarding purpose and priorities throughout the organization
Building shard knowledge about the rationale for change
engaging in meaningful two-way dialogue throughout the change process
Identifying the specific steps that must be taken immediately make process toward long-term aspirational goals
creating a culture that is simultaneously loose and tight - tightly held and well articulated mission, vision values, loosely monitored actions
Building a collective capacity around the agenda of improving student achievement
demonstrating reciprocal accountability by providing the resources and support to help people succeed at what they are being asked to do
Establishing ongoing feedback loops that help people assess the impact of their efforts and make adjustments accordingly.
Ensuring transparency of results, and using results to inform and improve practice
Creating a collaborative culture in which peole take collective responsibility for the success of the initiative
Establishing trust
Developing lots of leaders
Fostering Self-Efficacy
Maintaining focus and limiting initiatives
Managing resistance
Sustaining the improvement process - even when key leaders have left the organization
Celebrating small wins
Must prescribe to the theory that effective communication requires repetition to the point of redundancy
The wrong drivers for education reform:
Accountability
Human Capital (the talent of individuals)
Technology
Fragmented Strategies
The right Drivers for Education Reform:
Capacity building
Social Capital (the quality of the group)
Instruction
Systemness
Whole system reform requires collective coherence; in other words, leaders need to cultivate a shared minset among individuals within the system. This is where PLCs can be a solution - to create a shared mindset for success
Building blocks of coherence across the system involve leaders interacting widely in purposeful ways so that greater mutual allegiance and collective capacity are continuously fostered.
In collaborative schools teachers don't just identify with "my students" in "my classroom" but rather "our students" in "our school"
In coherent districts (like MV with their P14 Alignment) individual principals become almost as concerned with the success of other schools in the district as with their own
The Loose-Tight Dilemma
If people throughout the organization are unable to articulate goals and priorities, the organization has no goals and priorities
commitment to deep cultural change is a direct result of involving others in the change in meaningful ways.
Top down approach not only fails to engage educators, it also removes them from the decision-making process.
Too tight and too lose problems create a "gaming of the system"
Building the capacity of educators to meet the challenges they face requires a servant-leader mindset (P. 51). A sink or swim philosophy does not build capacity; too many people drown. A "we hope people will figure it out" approach does not build capacity. Hope may be a virtue, but it is not a strategy. A fundamental task of leadership at all levels in systemic reform is to create the conditions that allow people to be successful at what they are being asked to do (P. 51)
The principal's effort to include teachers must be be balanced by a commitment to provide the time, resources, and support to help them succeed at the task.
removing obstacles:
One study of factors impacting worker motivation and self-effiacy found that "on days when workers have the sense they aren akin progress in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are ore positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak (Amabile & Kramer, 2010 P. 44).
The obligation to provide others with resources and assistance they ned to meet expectations is commonly referred to as reciprocal accountability.
"When principals and teachers in effective districts in the US expressed frustration over not having sufficient time to do the work that was asked of them, the districts came up with creative ways to provide time" (Dufours & Fullan, 2013, P. 52)
Building Ongoing Adult Learning into the System:
Fundamental attribution theory - when we observe behavior we assume that's a statement of who they are.
We are mostly wrong when we look at behavior and we write people off.
ask people when their behavior is off -- "I don't mean to be intrusive, but I noticed things are going well -- what's going on?"
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Thanks so much for continuing the conversation!