Blazing New Trails - Connexions

240 CRITICAL ISSUES IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Personal motivation or agendas. As shown in the initial questions of this research
study, I anticipated that the political workings of the school district and formal leaders would
be large factors within the change process. However, I found that essentially there were more
factors in the change process than simply politics. The political undertones of the organization
were at play from the start, but they seemed to stem from personal motivations or agendas
around issues in CRISD. Regrettably, personal motivations and agendas were consistently at
play through this process as individuals or groups attempted to move the change process in a
way that most benefitted their group or them individually (Farmer, 2009). Hargreaves (2007)
contended that this type of breakdown in communication should be addressed by initially
focusing on the main goal and effort of education—learning. If all stakeholders can have that
central focus, decision making aligns with the common goal (Hargreaves, 2007). The lack of
vision and goals from the district perspective was an issue I identified early in the TLT model
and much of the challenge in defining vision and goals was due to personal agendas and even
egos disallowing true communication to occur in order to settle on a model that would be
supported by all parts of the organization. Open lines of communication breed solid
organizational visions and collaborative work to meet common goals (Danielson, 2007).
CRISD was focused more on personal agendas than organizational vision with regard to the
TLT model at this phase. The issues around personal motivations and agendas were
components that slowed the change in the teacher leader training plan (Reflective Journal,
July 3, 2009).
While a person’s motivation and personal agenda can be largely impacted by politics
in an organization, I was able to find examples where political and personal agendas were not
matched. A specific example from the beginning of my work on changing the teacher leader
model showed a conflict in a personal and political agenda. My supervisor communicated that
her personal motivation was supportive of my change efforts, but that politically, she knew
the work would not be sustained long-term at the district level. Personal motivation or
agendas often are the underlying elements in the politics of an organization that are not
acknowledged. The conglomeration of personal agendas or motivations create the politics
within the organization, and in any given instance, you may work with the politics or against
it (Drory, 1993). I found myself in the middle of a political situation that I could not have
imagined. I noted in my journal that it seemed challenging to think that all of these issues
were being discussed in relation to the TLT model without the knowledge of the TLTs or
most campus principals (Reflective Journal, September 27, 2008). Many times, it seemed that
an issue must be extremely important to a person to fight against the tide of the political force
within the organization. For this reason, personal motivation or agendas were usually
connected to the resources that one controlled and how one utilized those resources to meet
personal goals. The final of the four factors relevant to the change process in this study was
resource control.
Resource control. Drory (1993) described power in business and educational
organizations by stating, “Employees who have access to sources of organizational power and
status, are in a position to take advantage of the political game and to gain a greater share of
organizational benefits than they formally deserve” (p. 22). In CRISD, the people involved
with the change process of the TLT model that had monetary resource control were those
placed higher in the political hierarchy. However, monetary resources were not the only ones
that should be noted. The ability to mobilize funding or groups of people allowed certain
district employees to be involved in decision making without being involved at the ground
level of the change. This influence referred to personnel resources.