special education

Collective capacity building involves the increased ability of educators at all levels of the system to make the instructional changes required to raise the bar and close the gap for all students

The key to a capacity building approach lies in developing a common knowledge and skill base across all leaders and educators in the system, focusing on a few goals, and sustaining an intense effort over multiple years. A capacity building approach creates a foundation for sustainable improvement as it does the following.

Mobilizes a growth mind-set at all levels of the system • Sustains and cultivates improved student learning • Builds a common knowledge base and set of skills at all levels of the system.

• Focuses on collaborative learning •

Emphasizes collective capacity, which engages everyone in the system with clear goals and commitment to the strategy for achievement •

Fosters cross-role learning or lateral capacity

• Incorporates a learning cycle of new learning, application on the job, reflection, and dialogue with colleagues

Capacity building is effective because it combines knowledge building, collective action, and consistent focus. When done well, it produces the following effects:

Districtleadersformlearningpartnershipsacrossrolesanddepart- ments to develop a common language, knowledge base, and skills to focus on sustained development. They explore case examples and current research applied to their context. As a team, they refine the focus to a few key goals, sharpen the strategy, and rethink the resources and practices needed to achieve the goals.

• A district capacity team is composed of consultants or teacher- leaders who provide support to schools often by subject or project but often initially from a silo configuration. In a capacity building approach, all support providers form a learning community, and as they develop their common knowledge and strategy, they begin to interact in a more consistent manner so that innovations are not experienced by schools as a series of discrete initiatives but rather as an integrated, coherent strategy for change.

• Principals are the key to change. They work with peers as learning partners to build the skills needed to support capacity building at the school level.

• School leadership teams are composed of the principal and two to five teachers with a focus on improving learning and teaching. They are engaged as learning teams with other schools from the district to develop a common language, knowledge base, and set of skills to apply back in the school and classrooms. The cycle of learning approach has them implement the new understandings in their school and return to subsequent sessions to share their results and insights with other schools. This ensures that all participants understand deep learning communities by being a member of one.

The formats and content vary depending on the district focus, but three features of the capacity building approach have demonstrated a strong impact in both changing practices and increasing coherence:

• Learning partnerships within teams and laterally across the organization

• Sustained focus over multiple sessions

Collaborative Work

Improving whole systems requires that everyone shift their practice. We saw in Chapter 2 that leaping from the current fishbowl to the new bowl of innovation requires new skills and knowledge (capacity building) but is accelerated when we combine it with deep collaborative work (finding other fish to learn and travel with on the journey). People are motivated to change through meaningful work done in collaboration with others. If we want to shift the organization, we need to pay attention to both the quality of the capacity building and the degree of collaborative learning. Figure 3.2 illustrates the relationship.

Depth of learning

Depth of Learning, on the vertical axis of Figure 3.2, measures the quality of the learning design. It uses four stages of increasing qual- ity: awareness, understanding, practice, and sustained behavior. When the design focuses on levels of awareness and understanding only, par- ticipants are passive learners, and research indicates that only about 15 percent of participants are able to put the new skill into practice. This makes sense because they have no experience with applying the new skill. High-quality learning designs also incorporate opportunities for participants to use the new skills or knowledge in safe environments and then in their roles and to get feedback from peers or coaches (practice). Adding the levels of application and coaching increases the likelihood that the behavior will be sustained as a regular practice by 90 percent or more of the participants (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010).

High-quality learning designs also incorporate opportunities for participants to use the new skills or knowledge in safe environments and then in their roles and to get feedback from peers or coaches (practice). Adding the levels of application and coaching increases the likelihood that the behavior will be sustained as a regular practice by 90 percent or more of the participants (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). This has tremendous implications for the allocation of resources when we can choose a 90 percent–plus return on investment or just 15 percent, depending on the strength of the learning design.

Degree of Collaborative learning

The horizontal axis measures the degree of collaborative work or learn- ing together. It is described as a continuum from completely individual through a range of learning partnerships to integrated collaborative work. Hattie’s finding of a 1.57 impact for collective efficacy suggests that the horizontal axis can be a significant accelerator when done well.

Four combinations of quality of the learning design and degree of collaboration are described next:

• Surface learning: Occurs when the experience is very individu- alized and the depth of the intervention is weak—predominantly telling, finding, or modeling. This may result from one-shot work- shops and random accessing of online resources without a linkage to broader goals or application.

Personal growth: Occurs when the experience is individualized but the learning design is strong and includes opportunity for feedback

and application over time. The quadrant does not mean that individual learning is bad and collaborative is always good, but that individual learning can be weak when it is random, fragmented, and has little opportunity for feedback or application. Individual learning, with a strong learning design, can be highly effective when it is focused, provides feedback, and has opportunities for application in the role.

• Frustration: Occurs when people are putting a lot of effort into learning together, such as professional learning communities (PLCs) or networks, but the experience is not well designed or exe- cuted. There may be little or no opportunity to apply the learning in real situations with feedback or time is spent in a series of tasks or topics with little follow-up or application.

• Sustained and systemic shifts: Occur when there are strong col- laborative work structures combined with good learning design. Learning is sustained and explored in depth with opportunities for application within roles. Coaches, mentors, and peers stimulate learning and provide timely feedback. Examples include focused use of collaborative inquiry models, institutes, learning labs, and work-based learning teams.

In short, effective collaborative work has key attributes that must be attended to.

We use the term collaborative work to connote deeper experiences that have the power to affect student learning. Collaborative work approaches must be intentionally designed and implemented to do the following:

• Incorporate whole systems so that everyone is learning. • Focus on learning and pedagogical improvement. • Build capacity to support implementation and innovation. • Have a measurable impact with specific goals and indicators. • Be flexible and dynamic to meet emerging needs. Have a measurable impact with specific goals and indicators. • Be flexible and dynamic to meet emerging needs. • Be sustainable.

Meaningful collaborative work is more likely to flourish when the foundational conditions are in place. Essentially, these conditions are the four components of the Coherence Framework: focus and purpose, collaboration underpinned with specific capacities, deep learning, and internal accountability.

Collaborative Work in Action

The shift toward deeper forms of connected learning is emerging at every level of our organizations. Here, we explore promising approaches at the state, province, district, and school levels, including collaborative inquiry; networks and collaboratives; and personal learning networks (PLNs) lever- aging technology and social media. What is common about these strategies is that they involve the group, have focused goals, develop capacity, seek precision of pedagogical practice, link the work to measurable impacts on student learning, and are well led for these very purposes.

Collaborative inquiry

Collaborative inquiry: Four Key

Assess:

Plan:

Act:

Assess: A group of teachers, usually a grade team, gathers evidence of current student achievement to identify areas of need. They iden- tify curriculum standards related to that need and review current instructional practices. Together, they design a common assess- ment that will be administered at the conclusion of the six-week learning cycle.

The team develops a six-week learning block based on the stan- dards and selects high-yield instructional strategies. If needed, they engage in professional learning targeted to the identified needs.

The team implements the learning design in their classrooms. Teachers select students to watch as “markers” and will shar steps appropriateness of the instruction and the progress of students. They provide scaffolding and adjustments as needed over the six weeks. They administer the common assessment as a culminat- ing task and collect samples of student work.

Reflect: In the final stage, the team conducts a teacher moderation cycle using the collected samples of work. Teachers collaboratively assess student work for the “marker” students and identify next steps needed in the student learning. These strategies can usu- ally be applied to groups of students. Next, the team engages in reflection to determine the effectiveness of the learning design and the high-yield strategies chosen and the next steps needed to deepen learning. Ways to support students who were not yet successful are identified, and the data on the learning design and student learning feed into the next six-week cycle

The power of this model has been to focus transparently on a clear target in a way that motivates and builds capacity across the school. The provincial support included training in the processes and facilitation and fostered a sense of partnership to achieve a common goal of increased student achievement. Teachers, superintendents, and teacher-leaders describe the process as highly challenging but also as the best professional experience they have had. This version of collaborative inquiry merges the best features of lesson study and examination of student work. It ensures that both the learning and teaching are thoughtfully designed and assessed and moves the conversation from simply analyzing data to robust discussion of ways to shift instruction to improve student learning.

This deep collaborative work requires new ways of working together, trust, shared leadership, sustained focus, and a commitment to collabora- tive inquiry. It works because reflection and collaborative examination of practice become part of the culture of the school and district. While the intervention was first piloted with underperforming schools, word spread quickly that it was having a strong impact on student learning. Other schools began asking for the capacity building in facilitation skills, and it has now become a widespread practice across the 4,000 schools in Ontario, thus increasing coherence at both the school and district levels.