Boston College Leading for All: A research report of the ... - CODE

superintendents of education, acting as an influentialand well-networked province-wide community. In thisrespect, in line with other high performing educationalsystems such as Finland, Ontario’s middle level leadershave shown that with the right reform architecture,interconnected school boards or districts and theirpresent and former leaders can be dynamic forces forpowerful educational change.The impact of these middle-level leaders and ofschool boards working together points to the power ofprofessional autonomy as a force for change – but thisis not the individual autonomy of isolated schools, butthe collective autonomy of interconnected schoolsboards and their present and former leaders fromcentral bureaucratic control. Indeed, one of thedistinguishing features of ESGA that was widelyremarked upon was that it was not and never couldhave been a top-down initiative because it was moreabout actualizing a philosophy than implementing aparticular, prescribed strategy.One of the key ways in which the boards in thisstudy operated in relation to ESGA was through leadersdevolving responsibility for planning andimplementation to a core team of key staff who jointlydeveloped project goals, designed an implementationstrategy and monitored results, making necessarychanges and refinements as they amassed evidence onwhat was working and what was not. Being owners ofthe strategy, buy-in was not an issue for them. Indeedthat ownership, and the corresponding commitment tothe changes, prompted them to expend theirprofessional capital over a long period to make thiseffort a success. Such an investment is not made as amatter of course for imposed, top-down reforms.Accordingly, the provincial investment in ESGA wasrepaid many-fold by the creativity, energy andpersistence displayed by these core teams.2. Beliefs before practice.In educational change theory and practice, ithas become a commonplace assertion and assumptionthat change typically occurs when people are pressuredor pushed into changing their practices and, that withthe right support, they will come to alter their beliefs.Ironically, in some respects, this idea that practicechanges before beliefs has itself become a kind ofsystemic belief that is sometimes used to justify pushingteachers into adopting preferred reform practices ofwhich they are quite skeptical.The contrary case that people’s beliefs changebefore their practices is too easily discarded and toooften overlooked. Yet there is considerable evidenceand experience to support it. Members of and convertsto the world’s great religions enact rituals and subscribeto codes of conduct based on faith-based beliefs,including those among the Catholic school boards in thisstudy who held that every child is a unique “gift ofGod”. Data-driven improvement - increasinglywidespread among the boards in this study – embodiesthe idea that compelling evidence and collectivediscussion of its implications will shift people’s beliefsabout their students’ capacities, will raise theirexpectations for all students’ achievement (includingstudents from marginalized groups such as aboriginalpopulations), and will highlight how students withlearning disabilities can demonstrate their success onstandardized tests. Likewise, data-driven improvementassumes that, once the scales have fallen from teachers’eyes, new and better practices will then follow.Whether practice changes before beliefs or viceversa, should be determined not by opinion or ideology,but by the evidence. The results of this study of ESGAprovide support for both sides of this debate. On theone hand, some special education resource teacherspointed to the impact of EQAO testing as a way ofgetting classroom teachers to take more responsibilityfor children with learning disabilities, rather thanhanding these students across to the resource teacher.Administrators pointed to how newly introducedprotocols of professional interaction such as lookingtogether at examples of grading practices or studentwork through somewhat challenging conversationsabout performance, had pushed some teachers intorecognizing that their practices had been falling short,and that they could achieve better outcomes fromstudents who had not been achieving well. Requiringspecial education and curriculum specialists at theschool board level to co-sign board applications forESGA funding was another procedural device to inducestaff to work together more collaboratively.At the same time, when educators commentedin hindsight on the value of people being made tochange their collegial or classroom practices, thesetestimonials largely came from administrative staff and98