The Change that Matters
By Antonia Lewandowski and Gayle Moller
Journal of Staff Development, Summer 1997 (Vol. 18, No. 3)
Like many other states in the early 1990s, Florida wanted to move decision making closer to student needs by holding schools accountable for learning outcomes. Pressure to prepare students with critical workplace skills, changing demographics, the influence of national goals, and an interest in high standards contributed to this climate.
When the Florida legislature mandated school-site decision making and accountability in 1992, these aims were expressed in Blueprint 2000: Florida’s System of School Improvement and Accountability. This document called for changes that would improve instruction for all students through the systematic use of school improvement plans. These plans depended on successful collaboration within the school community.
Recognizing the significant changes being asked of schools, the state’s regional leadership networks developed the Florida Assisting Change in Education Program (ACE), which provides training for school improvement facilitators. This program was designed to help facilitators lead groups, encourage discussion, mediate differences, and create the esprit needed to craft and implement local, yearly documents known as school improvement plans.
Generally speaking, Florida’s past staff development efforts concentrated on packaging information in short training sessions where participants could walk away with new strategies or skills. Referred jokingly in one district as "spray and tell," this approach no longer served school improvement goals. Instead, people needed to know how school teams could work together and how learning could change understanding and behavior.
The Florida ACE program, newly developed to meet these needs, based its agenda on a nationally published model (Saxl, Miles, & Lieberman, 1989) but customized topics in an extended training design. The goal was to help participants develop new understandings, not only about site-based management needs but also about their own ability to nurture these efforts through the normal difficulties of any change process.
During a four-year period (1991-95), more than 1,200 participants completed the ACE program to become facilitators of change in schools where site-based decision making was evolving. A three-year evaluation study (1992-1995) measured the ongoing progress and early results of this staff development effort. The study’s conclusions show that the Florida ACE Program has proven effective and sustainable. Even more interesting, the study accumulated evidence that suggested how complex and problematic it is to translate a state mandate into personal and organizational change.
The Florida ACE Program Concept
Florida ACE offers nine days of staff development over six months. Participants include school-based administrators, teachers, guidance counselors, district central office personnel, school board members, parents, and school superintendents.
The program begins with an initial four-day retreat, continues with a two-day return visit, and concludes with a final three-day retreat. A cohort of 30 to 50 participants promotes a sense of identity and camaraderie through the program sequence. Afterwards, it extends into a network of like-minded individuals.
Within the cohort, work groups are organized heterogeneously purposely to help people consider and adapt to many points of view. The cohort process creates an atmosphere conducive to mutual sharing and group trust. The Florida ACE experience models the way a school team can learn to work together.
As a staff development experience, Florida ACE allows for a period of "suspended animation." Participants meet in a setting detached from their work so they can probe the deeper implications of school renewal. Trainers give careful attention to the learning environment, making it inviting to participants. ACE trainers find toys on the tables, snacks, colorful wall decorations, music, flowers, and other amenities. These details create an atmosphere where people find it easier to relax and engage in risk-free learning.
In such a context, it is possible to examine problems that really matter. Shielded from work interruptions, Florida ACE participants take advantage of the extended time to understand others’ work roles and responsibilities. Interactions like these allow people to shift perspective temporarily. Participants build critical-thinking skills in the mixed work group as they gain broader views of the issues.
Many participants said later that Florida ACE gave them their first meaningful experience of mutual discussion. For example, a key administrator observed how she "learned how to move the task from ‘mine’ to ‘ours.’" Other participants noted how they learned "to listen with understanding" while others defined growth in improving the "ability to relate to others with different personalities."
Program Format and Activities
The Florida ACE program is designed to help participants assess their facilitation skills. Workshop exercises enhance these skills and develop new ones that can be transferred to work with schools. Activities followed by practice and reflection help trainees gain both knowledge and skills.
Pre-Training Activities
Two months before the first retreat, participants receive three assessment activities to complete before the first session. On the first day of training, each person’s results from the pre-assessments are prepared for distribution.
The prework package contains: (a) telephone interviews scheduled with trained assessors who identify competencies in working with other adults; (b) an instrument that describes workstyle; and (c) a facilitator skill assessment, completed by the participant and independently by five colleagues.
Trainers use information from the prework assessments–along with identification of participants’ school level, professional role, school district, and gender–to assign work groups. These groups remain intact during the training program. To add stability to the group design, all ACE trainees sign a letter of commitment stating they will actively participate in the entire program and also identify schools where they can practice their newly acquired skills.
Initial Four-Day Retreat
The initial retreat focuses on understanding the facilitation process. Trainees learn how to develop school teams and gain their trust. Along with analyzing their own personal assessment data, ACE participants study elements of the change process, basic concepts in school-based management, central issues in the SCANS Report (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills), and other policy documents.
By doing so, participants recognize how they can diagnose, organize, and provide relevant service. Although trainers take responsibility for the overall program design, participants help build knowledge by preparing short presentations on topics assigned in work groups.
1. Communication. The program emphasizes open communication among participants and trainers. There are mechanisms for direct feedback through journal writing and discussion. Just before dinner, for example, participants summarize the day’s activities in their journals and react to ideas they have heard. Each evening, trainers read the journals and respond in writing. The next morning, trainers, while maintaining anonymity of the journal writers, share common themes during a large group reflection period.
This activity, known as the Circle on Inquiry, offers participants a time to comment, ask and answer questions, and propose theories about discussion topics. Journal writing gives both trainers and ACE participants insight into the dilemmas that people must consider as they connect workshop information to the actual school or district contexts that they know.
Evenings present another opportunity to exchange opinions and insights. Participants, who represent many different school districts and work roles, socialize and discuss their ideas and reactions to training. It is not unusual for participants to express strong views and invite others to challenge their opinions. Planned activities and celebrations encourage congeniality and allow humor to bring some of these complex problems into perspective. Participants are encouraged to let down their guard and have fun.
2. Reflective Practice. From its inception, the Florida ACE program has promoted the smooth transfer of newly learned skills to practice. During this first retreat, everyone receives many opportunities for feedback.
As people try new techniques, such as active listening or conflict resolution, observers record the success of new behaviors and suggest ways to improve skills. When they return to their schools and work sites for a field-experience period, they document their efforts to assist school improvement by maintaining a portfolio.
The portfolio serves as a clinical component, making program expectations clear by providing exercises, simulations, checklists, and forms for anecdotal recordkeeping of facilitator activities. The portfolio allows individuals to review the progress and preserve their sense of direction. Also during this time, fledgling school improvement facilitators are encouraged to maintain contact with others in their cohort through phone calls, e-mail, and other means.
Two-Day Debriefing Session
After several weeks of practicing their new skills, cohort members return for a two-day debriefing session. They discuss successes, frustrations, and questions about how better to influence the work of school improvement. With recent field experience, they are eager to discuss how to work with groups and build a repertoire of new knowledge and skills.
They now receive the Florida ACE Tool Kit, a collection of over 150 group facilitation activities and handouts. Activities include ice breakers, diagnostic charts, information handouts, transparency masters, and other group process aids. Directions link these strategies specifically to the school improvement context. The activities reference the topics in the Assisting Change in Education Manual:
• Building trust and rapport;
• Diagnosing the organization;
• Dealing with collaboration/conflict;
• Using resources;
• Managing the work; and
• Building capacity.
During this debriefing, participants become familiar with the Tool Kit and its possibilities for enhancing their work. Meanwhile, training reinforces process skills by continuing the Circle of Inquiry, journal writing, portfolio responses, and other reflection and communication techniques.
Final Three-Day Retreat
By this time, participants return with predictable interest in confronting problems such as conflict and resistance to the change process. These issues are real because ACE facilitators now work with groups of people who show different levels of willingness to collaborate. Although the activities from the Tool Kit prove helpful, trainees now focus on developing a deeper understanding of resisters and how to work with them.
Training content focuses on problem solving, decision making, and negotiation. By now ACE facilitators are ready to assess their conflict style and analyze how their own behaviors help or hinder conflict management in school improvement groups. This is a major step in effective leadership.
As this final retreat ends, work group members offer individual and group feedback to each person. The complexity of the school improvement process drives conversations. People talk about staying in touch and helping each other achieve meaningful change.
During graduation, each person presents a designated "secret pal" with special tokens and gag gifts. These tokens represent the understanding and appreciation that has been building in work groups through the entire training sequence. Participants leave the program having made a commitment to work with each other in the future.
Program Evaluation
Within two years of fully implementing the Florida ACE training program, the Florida Department of Education endorsed an evaluation study to have a research team collect and analyze program practices. From 1992 through 1995, the Florida ACE Research Study used qualitative and quantitative methods to assess training results (Saxl & Lewandowski, 1995): a participant survey, case studies, and school district visits.
At the outset, Florida ACE participants were experienced educators with a mean of 16 years of service in education. During this time, professional roles of participants were divided almost evenly between school and district-based personnel. However, as the Florida ACE staff development effort grew, so did the participation of school-based personnel. By the final survey conducted in 1994, 59% of trainees were school-based.
Participant Survey
A survey was distributed to a statewide sample of trained ACE facilitators. The sample included 15 cohorts, five each from the first three years of the program. More than 1,500 questionnaires were analyzed for the quality and impact of training, as well as for attitudinal, behavioral, and organizational changes at local schools.
Along with other issues, this three-year study focused on participants’ satisfaction with how well the program met their expressed needs. During the first two years, more than 50% of ACE trainees identified a need to gain information and skills in dealing with school change or restructuring. These concerns reflected schools’ need for assistance as the state’s first restructuring document, Blueprint 2000, was published and disseminated.
Since the Florida ACE program provided a sequenced, six-month training effort, researchers found ample opportunities to ask participants how well training met their needs. In 1992-93, participants gave the highest rating to training in these skill areas:
• Gaining awareness of obstacles to change;
• Understanding the facilitative role;
• Recognizing stages of school improvement; and
• Acquiring the ability to reflect and link experiences to better practice.
By the study’s third year, the training program fine-tuned its objectives. Among 1993-1994 participants, ratings for successful training reflected the current leadership needs in schools. These included:
• Team building;
• Facilitation skills;
• Communication skills; and
• Building trust and rapport.
Case Studies
Case study researchers examined schools across the five Florida regions. They collected data from nearly 200 interviews and observations at meetings, training sessions, and team planning sessions.
During the second year of program evaluation, researchers followed 10 Florida ACE facilitators through one year of leading school improvement efforts. During the third year, two studies followed two schools through their second year of school improvement efforts. In addition, during this year, researchers conducted three additional one-year investigations.
Predictably, these case studies portrayed the program graduates as skilled in team building. Facilitators developed and guided the complex school improvement process by designing and monitoring meeting agendas and keeping teams on task. Facilitators described how their new levels of professional awareness equipped them to guide others in the new tasks of writing school improvement plans. They also noted that skills training transferred naturally to family and civic life.
Other findings were more intriguing. Facilitators noted that as their work intensified, they became more accepting of school reform’s complexity. While leading meetings and work sessions, facilitators grappled with the problem of accommodating diverse views and increasing the group’s ability to collaborate.
Differences of opinion generated during school improvement work accounted for many kinds of conflict in meetings. Facilitators attributed their increased ability to manage these conflicts successfully to the training and networking available through Florida ACE training.
In addition to the problem of complexity and the need for perseverance, case study researchers identified three types of difficulties blocking the success of facilitator efforts:
• Where school-based administrators trained in Florida ACE were facilitators in their own schools, role conflicts emerged to complicate the process.
• While facilitators worked diligently to help teams develop group process skills, open discussion and problem solving sometimes revealed unexpected or hidden organizational problems that lay outside the scope of a team’s mission.
• As facilitators guided teams to develop school improvement plans, they met with widespread skepticism about site-based management’s potential for success.
Clearly, the facilitators in these case studies demonstrated some implications of complex, yet fundamental educational exchange.
Visits to Districts
In the study’s third year, a researcher visited 10 of Florida’s 67 school districts. These visits produced a report based on over 50 interviews with school board members, superintendents, colleagues of Florida ACE facilitators, and others, some of whom were trained in the program and others who were external observers.
The interviewers aimed at understanding how disinterested observers, along with some ACE-trained personnel, viewed the impact of training. District visits included single and focusgroup interviews.
District interviews provided insight into the relationship between staff development and strong district leadership. In stable districts with well defined goals, ACE training appeared to meet observable needs.
For successful cases, training enjoyed support from school board members, superintendents, and others who viewed facilitators or an equivalent staff development process as necessary for the success of school restructuring. As viewed by those interviewed, schools needed facilitators to:
• Serve as confident advocates for school improvement;
• Assume capable leadership roles as needed; and
• Create a spirit of persistence needed for complex change.
Implications for Staff Development
Florida ACE training seeks to influence organizational restructuring efforts by helping individuals understand and manage change. Traditionally, staff development has concentrated on giving teachers, staff, and administrators training in specific, discrete skills. Clear workshop goals promise that participants will learn new practices or methods of control.
Often districts poll their teachers and administrators for suggestions on new training such as violence prevention, stress management, learning style differences, or alternative assessment. While these needs remain current, Florida ACE training concentrates on meeting a different level of need.
1. School reform agendas depend on the ability of individuals to rethink the policies and practices of schooling. Restructuring initiatives in Florida and elsewhere involve many different stakeholders groups. A process that invites a sustained conversation about what school is for, what success means, and how students should be served generates conflict and needs to result in honest collaboration. The goals of school-based management requires us to design and support training that helps people develop and use the skills of complex thinking. This kind of training cannot be delivered in a day or even a weekend.
2. In a climate of change, individuals need time and encouragement to rethink their assumptions about the role of schools and the needs of students. Furthermore, when such issues are at stake, everyone–administrators, teachers, parents–need to recognize that cherished priorities or comfortable practices may need to change.
Early in the planning for the Florida ACE Program, the design team recognized that school improvement teams would need more that group process training. Earlier state pilot programs indicated that school teams need a coach, someone to get them moving from firefighting to long-range planning.
Such individuals would view issues comprehensively and practice the "complicated understanding" required of leaders who view situations from multiple perspectives (Bartunek & Gordon, 1983). Such leadership skills enable individuals to recognize and use the interplay of many forces when solving problems. These are the skills needed for true school-based management, and they are needed among the full range of school constituents.
Learning from the Florida ACE Research Study
People entered the Florida ACE program thinking that they would learn how to make school change easier. They said, "I want to learn more about change." "I’d like to learn how to influence people and get them to do what I know is right." To a degree, participants did learn more about state goals, their relationship to national school reform, and how these ideas might be realized in Florida schools.
On the other hand, participants did not expect to re-examine some of their most cherished attitudes. They did not expect to wrestle with hidden beliefs about what schools should do. Nor did they expect to confront some deeper issues that cause frustrations in managing their organizations.
Florida ACE participants learned more than facilitative and mediation skills. They learned how to tolerate the hard questions about leadership style and educational philosophy. In doing so, they became even stronger advocates for school change.
As school improvement efforts mature and schools are asked to take more responsibility for learning outcomes, we need to move beyond the traditional view of staff development. We must provide intensive, sequenced staff development so that individuals can work for the larger, systemic changes that our educational systems desire (Little, 1993).
Florida ACE is one example of a program where school leaders can examine what they believe and build skills to help others make schools function well. This kind of training increases their personal dedication and sharpens their ability to change what matters in schools.
References
Bartunek, J.M., & Gordon, J.R. (1983). Developing "complicated" understanding in administrators. Academy of Management Review, 8(2), 273-284.
Little, J.W. (1993). Teachers’ professional development in a climate of educational reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 15(3), 129-151.
Saxl, E.R., & Lewandowski, A. (1995). Conclusions: Florida assisting change in education research/evaluation study. Davie, FL: South Florida Center for Educational Leaders.
Saxl, E.R., Miles, M.B., & Lieberman, A. (1989). Assisting change in education. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
About the Authors
Antonia Lewandowski is coordinator for Curriculum and Technology in Adult and Community Education for the Pinellas County Public Schools, 301 4th Street SW, P.O. Box 2942 Largo, Florida 33779-2942, (813) 588-6021, (e-mail: alewski@aol.com). Gayle Moller is director of the South Florida Center for Educational Leaders, 11352 State Road 84, Davie, Florida 33325, (954) 424-6920, (e-mail: gmoller@aol.com).
Reference Note
All district and county names used in this article are pseudonyms.
A short, related article follows.
Florida ACE Case Studies
Facilitators who help school teams write and then use school improvement plans need a full repertoire of leadership skills. The following two examples from among the 13 case studies illustrate the complexities typical of site-based management efforts. In one instance, a Florida ACE facilitator discovered her task involved a high level of personal flexibility and tolerance for uncertainty. In another example, a facilitator guided the process through unforeseen conflicts and frustrations involving the entire school community.
Flamingo Elementary School–Need for a Balanced Intermediary
Barbara Bordon served as a facilitator in this Red Carpet Award school in rural Florida’s Swanee County. Guided by Billie Marsh, a strong, take-charge administrator, this school maintained a reputation for excellence. With state mandates promoting restructuring, Marsh and a loosely-knit school advisory council faced problems defining their new roles and responsibilities.
As facilitator, Bordon worked hard to mediate the differences between an articulate, persuasive advisory council chairperson, a disenchanted staff, and an administrator struggling to develop a new, more collaborative leadership style.
As a sophisticated and talented "user" of ACE skills, Bordon found herself listening carefully at meetings for hidden agendas and damaging undercurrents. She met with conflicting groups and then mediated parent, administrator, and teacher interests. At the end of Flamingo Elementary’s first year developing a school improvement plan, Bordon identified the needs that caused the school team’s rocky start: clear ground rules for meetings, access to school data for group analysis, and shared responsibility for planning.
The school went on to a successful second year based not only on their own willingness to maintain the process, but also because Bordon consistently assisted the principal and advisory council members.
Fairfax High School–No Easy Solutions
As a district-level supervisor, Stephanie Williams attended one of the first Florida ACE training programs offered in the state. Her first task as facilitator for an urban high school in southern Heron County involved helping the school improvement team learn to use meeting time productively.
Fairfax High wanted to establish a comprehensive in-school health service and a new effort to integrate all students. They needed to use effective group process skills and to subdue the desire of some members who "needed to win at all costs."
Williams taught them brainstorming techniques that helped the team categorize school needs, develop subcommittees, and advance strategies. As a resource person, Williams brought clear direction to an ambitious school improvement plan, one that served many constituencies.
In her second year as a facilitator, Williams moved to River Run Middle School, a school embroiled in conflict over multi-age grouping. She met weekly from September to February with the school’s team. The long-standing conflict threatened to paralyze the school improvement effort.
Along with the principal, Williams moderated a large meeting with angry community members and helped develop a compromise on their plan. While some committee members remained unsatisfied, other conceded that the issues proved too fundamental and complicated to resolve in one year. Williams earned the distinction of mediator, interpreter, listener, and taskmaster in her ACE facilitative role.
