1. School Systems That Learn
Improving Professional Practice, Overcoming
Limitations,
and Diffusing Innovation
January 29, 2014
Paul B. Ash
pash@sch.ci.lexington.ma.us
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2. Think About…
Why do achievement gaps exist
even in well-funded school districts?
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3. Think About…
Why do achievement gaps exist even in
well-funded school districts?
It’s not possible to close them.
The district needs to find “just the right
initiatives.”
The district has reached its maximum
capacity.
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5. Limitations to School Change
and Capacity Building
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Laws and regulations
Mindsets and limiting beliefs
Standardization (vs. differentiation)
Isolation (as opposed to collaboration)
A narrow view of professional
development
6. Viewing teaching and student learning
as separate acts
6. Strategies That WON’T Close
Achievement Gaps OR Build Capacity
• Fire all underperformers
• Hire more outstanding teachers
• Increase teacher evaluation
7. The 4 Effective Drivers of
+ Change
• The Importance of Trust
• Collaboration in All Directions
• Capacity Building for All
Educators
• Leaders at All Levels
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9. Synergy
When all four drivers are present at high
levels, the system catalyzes an increase in
educator capacity, professional practice,
and student performance.
10. Overarching Theory
When a school system learns, continuous
improvement enables educators to close
achievement gaps and ensures that all
students grow and develop as learners.
12. Systems Approach
“Every system is perfectly
designed to achieve exactly the
results it gets”.
Paul Batalden Dartmouth Medical School Director,
Based on a quote from W. Edward Deming (1990)
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15. Five Big Fears (Students)
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Fear Of Making Mistakes
Fear Of Looking Like A Fool
Fear Of Having A Weakness
Exposed
Fear Of Not Being Liked
Fear Of Failure
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16. Six Big Fears (Educators)
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•
•
•
•
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Fear Of Making Mistakes
Fear That Errors Will Erase Prior Success
Fear Of Having A Weakness Exposed
Fear That Asking For Assistance Will
Diminish Respect
Fear Of Looking Like A Novice
Fear of Conflict
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17. Psychological Safety
To gain the power of collaboration and
continuous learning, psychological safety is
needed.
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18. Signs of Psychological
Safety*
Educators can disagree with peers and
authority figures, ask naïve questions, own
up to mistakes, or present a minority view
without fear of ridicule or marginalization.
*Edmondson
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19. In Your Experience…
What percentage of the teams that you
have observed demonstrated signs of
psychological safety?
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21. Research
Professional development can have a
positive impact on student learning
• Meiers & Ingvarson (2005) – Australia study
• Supovitz (2001)
• Garet et al (2001)
22. Traditional Model of Professional
Development
After school courses – Teachers select courses
based on their individual needs, rather than
choosing courses based on district/school needs.
During school PD – Programs are usually no
more than a few hours to a few days/year, and
often not aligned with school or district goals.
23. A New Systemic Model of PD
Five Streams that Improve Educator
Capacity to Improve Student
Learning:
• Data Teams Analyze Student Work
• Frequent Quality Feedback from
Supervisors
• External Sources of Knowledge
• Internal Sources of Knowledge
• Self-Reflection
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25. 3 Qualities of Effective PD
• The district has clear learning goals for
every student and growth mindset for all
educators and students?
• The district frequently assesses student
progress toward their learning goals?
• The school district has an ongoing
system of professional learning for all
educators that is designed to increase
performance
26. Key Findings
Successful programs include:
• Avoiding narrow outcomes to easily measured
topics
• Opportunities for teacher reflection,
collaboration, and building professional
community
• Focus on subject matter learning
• 14 to 49 hours of learning time with follow-up,
active learning, feedback, and collaboration
27. A New Model
High quality professional learning is
coherent, consistent, systemic, and
sustained.
28. Poll: Which intervention has
the largest effect size?
Lowering pupil-teacher ratios
Increasing teacher salaries
Increasing teacher experience
Increasing teacher education
31. In Summary
• School systems are designed not
to change (6 limitations)
• Just adding more and more
initiatives will have limited impact
on student learning
• All systems have a maximum
capacity
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32. Four High-leverage Strategies
We increase educator and student
learning by:
• Increasing Trust
• Building individual and collective
capacity
• Building leadership at all levels
• Collaborating in all directions
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