By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction
This article springs from an exchange of opinions on what is needed to effect change, and I was challenged to start a new discussion on the most important factors in making change work. In that original exchange, I argued that the most important factor is leadership, and I will start this new discussion with that premise. I believe skilled leadership is the most important factor in making change happen.
A couple of decades ago I spent some very painful years when the opposite was believed to be true. There was a belief, spurred in large part by the Annenberg Institute’s Re:Learning project, that the change leaders in education had to come from within the faculty. Change had to at least appear to be a grassroots effort, and school administrators sought to develop teacher leaders for reform efforts. The theory was that teacher leaders would initiate a reform, it would work, and the idea would slowly progress through the ranks until it had taken over. The administrators would intentionally fade into the background and let this magic work.
I was one of those teacher leaders. I was called on at first to lead change in my school, and I worked closely with the principal, a good friend, on this effort for several years. I was then called upon to work with teachers district-wide. Soon after that, Annenberg released a new study that said exactly what all of us who were in that role had been saying for years – the theory was a complete and total failure. Reforms implemented like that never slowly take over a school; in fact, just the opposite happens. Resentment grows against the reformers, and eventually you have two pitched camps at war. Those who are not participating in the reform feel threatened and attacked. They dig in their heels and they fight back, often viciously. After a few years, the effort would be abandoned, with the final result being that the change leaders had faded forever into the background, left for another school, or abandoned teaching altogether.
Years later, when I was myself a school administrator, I attended a presentation by educational theorist Bob Marzano, who spoke about the importance of transformational leadership in achieving school reform. Marzano referred to this failed theory of teacher leadership, and he said he could not think of a better way to destroy an excellent teacher. My friend and former principal was seated near me, and he turned and gave me a sheepish “I’m so sorry” grin.
Annenberg later did an analysis of its many failures and its few successes. In every single case of failure, the primary cause was determined to be a lack of appropriate leadership. In every single case of success, the primary cause was determined to lie with the effectiveness of the school leadership.
About that same time, the National Staff Development Council published research that totally contradicted another mistaken view of change processes, one that ties directly into why teacher-led reform by itself cannot work. We in staff development had been told that our approach to teaching innovative methodologies was essentially to tell teachers that they were doing a great job already, and here was a way to be even better. We argued that this approach was self-defeating, for it implied that there was no reason for anyone to listen to us if they didn’t want to. The NSDC agreed with us. Unless teachers develop a cognitive dissonance, a disquieting notion that what they are doing now is not working all that well, they will have little or no incentive to change the comfortable processes with which they are so very familiar. They invariably feel that those who are implementing the change are free to do what they want, and so they should be free to do what they want, too, without anyone pushing them to make unnecessary changes.
In his book Professional Learning Communities at Work, Rick DuFour describes the role of an effective leader in a change situation. The leader is able to work with a professional learning community to create a shared vision of what needs to be done. The leader does not impose a vision upon the group; rather the group is facilitated until a vision emerges. That vision emerges because the process has allowed the community to understand, first of all, why change is necessary and then to work toward a process with which they agree. The vision then becomes everyone’s vision, and everyone participates in its implementation. Of course, there will be dissent, and the effective leader deals with it skillfully so that the “armed camps” model does not develop.
But, as I said in the earlier article, we all know this already. We know what works in schools, for it has worked whenever it is tried (albeit rarely). We know what kind of leadership works as well. So why don’t we have such leaders? I answered that question in an earlier article as well. We don’t have it because we don’t really want it. We are generally comfortable with the way things are, and we don’t like people who want things to be different. That’s why we celebrate and build statues of those all-too-rare individuals who can rise above this and can make things happen.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Annenberg Institute, Bob Marzano, Marzano, National Staff Development Council, NSDC, Professional Learning Communities at Work, Re:Learning project, Rick DuFour |
John Mark Walker: "If educational communities can continue to push platform integration and content portability, in the future, students may be able to design their own personalized degrees from smaller, modular chunks that cross institutional barriers" (
Richard Koubek
Judith McDaniel
Tim Fraser-Bumatay: "Although the format leaves us far-removed physically, the online forum has its own sense of intimacy" (Judith McDaniel, "
Ryan Kelly: "For me to be able to work with people clear across the country for an extended period of time opened me up to new things" (Judith McDaniel, "
Daniel Herrera: "As a Mexican American, I know that words of identity are powerful; so to discuss white privilege with my professor and classmates in a face-to-face class would have been terrifying and impossible" (Judith McDaniel, "
Cathy Gunn: "Traditional methods for effecting change at my institution aren’t getting us even to a trickle yet, let alone to thinking about or planning for a wave!" (
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
Educational change. What is it? Would we really like to have it?
In better times, things were allowed to move along without too much worry about education, except for some of the poor and minority areas.
Now, with headlines screaming at us about changing education, what’s wrong? John Adsit has provided us all with a cogent analysis of what doesn’t work and a suggestion as to why we aren’t doing what does.
Is change necessary? I have personal experience with a large urban school in a poor neighborhood (60% poverty). Despite hiring the best possible science teachers, they still had a 50% failure rate on the Regents science tests. Some of these teachers had PhDs in science. They were all excellent communicators and, as far as I could tell, excellent teachers. The science department was tearing its hair out. So, yes, change is necessary. This story repeats itself too many times across our country.
John is right. We must feel the pain before we’ll change. Every person who does marketing knows about this truism.
So, I have two questions. Why don’t we feel the pain, and where do we find the leaders to create the change?
My rather glib answer to the first question is that those in power do not feel the pain, but the rest of us do. I have no good answer to solving this problem. We’d have trouble forcing the children of all powerful people to go to ghetto schools.
The second question also causes pause. I’m not certain of the answer, but am happy to start the discussion.
What is a leader? I see two important qualities aside from people skills, managerial ability, and the like. A leader must have a vision. Non-visionaries need not apply. No vision means no direction. No direction means no progress toward solution.
I also believe that leaders must be risk-takers. They must be willing to fail in their quest for their vision, while being strong enough to rally from the inevitable defeats along the way and continue forward.
How many visionary risk-takers have you met today? How many of these have the charisma and people skills (one-on-one and in front of large crowds) to make their visions reality? Probably not too many.
I hold that we cannot simply designate someone as a leader and expect great things. I also, completely without any data to support myself, suggest that our schools do not support and develop leaders.
While I certainly agree with what John says, I have to take another step and ask those questions. I am proposing these answers.
We don’t see change because those in power (I mean REAL power) are pretty much happy with the status quo and because we have trouble finding leaders and even tend to discourage real leadership in our schools.
I’d love to be proven wrong and love even more to have someone show me how to overcome these obstacles.
[…] What Is Needed for Educational Change Educational Technology and …Two Greek Students Participate in US State Department's …Ayumi Hamasaki Ayumi Hamasaki sexy little thing Bin Desktop …This is the only thing you will need for your twitter success …Beyond Mom Ok, Whew, Figured That Virus Thing OutEvery thing You Must Know in Selecting White Floating Pearl … […]