Blazing New Trails - Connexions

68 CRITICAL ISSUES IN SHARED LEADERSHIP
The establishment of district wide professional learning communities was noted by
principals and teachers as the vehicle for carrying out the vision. The superintendent
associated these socialization practices as support for the vision that he articulated:
I think what you’ll find is growing evidence of shared vision, shared purpose when
teams of teachers sit down and collaboratively determine what the essential learnings
are, and develop common assessments. While the actual instruction from class to class
will vary because each teacher controls the magic of learning, if you would, the
substance will be the same.
There was a continuous commitment and motivation by all district members to seek
opportunities to interact and share practices. The superintendent expressed that the most
powerful form of interaction that resulted in the growth of an individual occurred through
peer professional development. The superintendent described peer professional development
in the following way:
[One team] came together after an assessment, and one of the teachers realized that her
students had just bombed the lesson . . . and another teacher said, ‘You know what,
how about tomorrow I’ll give up my prep, and I’ll come cover your class, and you go
watch her teach because she just nailed this’ . . . Well you know, when you get those
levels of conversations going on and teachers beginning to support one another
because the data shows, ‘Hey, I’m struggling.’ It’s that peer professional development
that may become the strongest vehicle in the district.
There was a climate of accountability reported by the superintendent and the staff. The
superintendent provided the parameters while the principals and teachers charted the course.
Principal A explained:
. . . so I think that other piece that’s important is accountability because without that,
you can say you’re working together, but when I shut the door, I do what I want. But
there is accountability at different levels, and I think that’s pretty crucial.
This practice of sharing personal knowledge can be transformed, becoming a part of
the knowledge between two teachers. If this new knowledge is not shared beyond two
teachers, the organization as a whole does not grow. Principal B commented:
We were always getting other people to come in, and the superintendent would say,
you know, we’ve got such great employees here, let them share . . . What better way to
do that [professional development] than to use your own people? . . . [We] focused
primarily on the learning that’s already in the district.
Externalization. Externalization is the process of articulating tacit knowledge into
explicit concepts. When we try to convey an idea or an image, we often refer to symbols,
metaphors, and models (Nonaka, & Takeuchi 1995). Externalization is triggered by
successive rounds of meaningful dialogue around a shared mental model, such as a district
vision, that guides school behavior. The vision in District A served as a guide to determine
information that should be retained, used or discarded. Interactions shaped each individual’s
mental models to align with the mental model of the district. The meaning of the vision was