The Cognitive Preparation of School Leaders for

Turnaround Schools

• Daniel Reyes-Guerra, Assistant Professor

Florida Atlantic University

• John Pisapia, Professor

Florida Atlantic University

• Anelle Alfred, Research Associate

PROPEL

Presented at the28th Annual ICSEI Congress, January 4, 2015 Cincinnati, Ohio

A Turnaround School is one in the lowest performing 5% of all schools in the nation which has consistently not met Annual Yearly

Progress (AYP)

The Challenge: Produce significant gains in achievement within 2 years; and ready the school for the longer process of transformation

into a high performing organization. (Mass Insight Education)?

The Problem - Traditionally, leadership development has evolved from a human resource perspective which led to a narrow focus on the

knowledge, skills, and abilities required for individual leader effectiveness (Mumford, Champion, & Morgeson, 2007).

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 2

The Problem

2/11/2015

Pathways to Turn Around Low Performing Schools

• Be Intent Driven -- Set the direction and focus for the school (Leithwood et al., 2004; Pisapia, 2009), Teach the Organization’s Point of View. Reframe cognitive structures and behaviors of faculty, staff and students working in the school (Crossan & Berdrow, 2003; Pisapia 2009).

• Connect with People. Create the conditions that enable staff to do their jobs effectively. First, increase teacher perception of instructional program coherence (Urdegar, 2008). Second, focus on Climate by decreasing student disruptions and increasing Teacher attitudes (Miron & Pisapia, 2015) Then, work on creating a collaborative cohesive culture focused on teaching and learning (Leithwood, Seashore-Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom (2004’Waters, Marzano & McNulty, 2003; Waters & Grubb, 2004).

• Hire for technical and Cultural Fit – For all schools this means greater cognitive and behavioral agility which is antecedent to the principals ability to develop the conditions that support a focus on teaching and learning (Leithwood, et al., 2004; Pisapia, 2009). -- For LPS this means higher younger principals and women in particular. They are more transforming and better able to reduce student disruptions, and school performance (Fazzino, 2012; Miron, 2014).

• Focus on Results

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 4

Our Aim

To determine to determine if the cognitive agility of

aspiring school leaders varies by Targeted and Traditional

preparation programs offered by Florida Atlantic

University and Broward County Public Schools.

In 2004, Fullan suggested we need leadership that represents systems thinking in action. We suggest its more complicated that. Turn around Schools need Principals and Teachers who are cognitive and behaviorally agile in order to sense and make sense of the special conditions that exist in LPS and then act on those learnings.

The Study Framework Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 5

Personal Attributes

Gender

Ethnicity

Age

Education Level

Length of Experience

Cognitive Agility

Systems Thinking

Reframing

Reflection

Organizational Attributes

School Size, level

Organizational Position

Budget authority

Preparation Program

PROPELPROPELPROPEL

LEAD

Traditional Masters

Feature PROPEL LEAD TRADITIONAL M

Focus Leaders for Turn around Schools

Prepare Principals Leaders for Schools

Outcome Masters + L1 and L2 Certification

L2 Certification Masters + Level 1 Certification

Selection Nominated by Principal

Principal nominated and District Selected

Self Select

Duration 1 Year 2 Plus Years

Admissions PROFILE XT. Timed Writing, Interview 90% admitted

Masters SL L1 CertEssay, Interview and Presentation

Mentoring support from Principal –writing sample – GRE, GPAs 98% admitted

Comparison of Leadership Preparation Programs

6

Comparison of Leadership Preparation Programs Cont’d

Feature PROPEL LEAD TRADITIONAL M

Experiential Synthesis of from Job Embedded ExperiencesP1 in school –P2 high need School

PLCs 3 Semester long internships

Delivery Sequential coursesTrained seated PhD holding principals

Weekend FTs

Principals, Central Staff

Monthly Seminars

Sequence VariableFaculty and adjuncts

Weekend FTs, Weekday Trad, OL

Exit Formative and Summative Val-Ed, STQ/SLQ/ FELE

HOGAN Personality Inventory tied into Portfolio Linked To Standards

Competence based assessments tied to FELE

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 7

ST Skills Description

Systems

Thinking

Systems thinking refers to the leader’s ability to see systems

holistically by understanding the properties, forces, patterns and

interrelationships that shape the behavior of the system, which hence

provides options for action.

Reflecting

Reflecting refers to the leader’s ability to weave logical and rational

thinking, through the use of perceptions, experience and information,

to make judgments on what has happened, and creation of intuitive

principles that guide future actions.

Reframing

Reframing refers to the leader’s ability to switch attention across

multiple perspectives, frames, mental models, and paradigms to

generate new insights and options for actions.

Cognitive

Agility

Cognitively agility is the capability to rapidly and efficiently mentally

adapt to changes in one’s environment by using multiple constructs,

schemata, and scripts to interpret, understand, and then search for

alternatives.

Strategic Thinking Skills

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 9

Method - Study Design Quantitative non-experimental Criterion variable – Use of Strategic Thinking Skills (Systems Thinking, Reframing, and Reflection).

Predictor variables – Leader Preparation Programs (PROPEL – LEAD – Traditional Masters)

Hypotheses 1. Cognitive Agility varies by educational

leadership training programs2. Cognitive Agility is moderated by

personal and organizational characteristics.

Sample - Self126 Participants

PROPEL 68 LEAD 22 Traditional Masters 38

Data CollectionInstruments:

STQTM measures three thinking skills:

Systems Thinking, Reflecting, and Reframing.

Administered Electronically

Reliability: All reliability alphas > .70

Validity: STQ factor models exceed 52% of the variance. Psychometrically validated in the USA (Reyes-Guerra 2009; Reyes-Guerra & Pisapia 2015), and in China (Pang & Pisapia, 2010; Pang & Pisapia, 2012).

Features: Omission rate and inconsistency index embedded to overcome self report bias

Data AnalysisCorrelation and Regression

9Pang

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 10

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 11

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 12

Conclusions

While these results are encouraging, it will be years before we can estimate that leader cognitive agility resulted in higher performance.

1. PROPEL participants were cognitively more agile than Masters participants and LEAD

participants, hypothesis 1 was not confirmed.

PROPEL cases significantly different than Masters in three instances (Systems Thinking,

Reframing; and Cognitive Agility and LEAD two instances (Systems Thinking, and

Reframing).

2. Results were moderated by years of service and budget responsibility.

Years of service is a significant moderator of the use of systems thinking and cognitive

agility. The R2 estimates suggest that 7% of variance was accounted for by the model’s

predictors.

Budget responsibility was significant moderator for systems thinking. R2 estimates

suggests that 11% of the variance was accounted for by the model’s predictors.

The Link between Strategic Thinking Turnaround Schools

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 15

The all-echelons brand of Strategic leadership supports an intent driven changeprocess based to produce constant learning. As Senge (2002, p. 363) stated “strategic leaders should be experts of learning by valuing learning in their organizations”. There is a consensus in literature that strategic leaders need to create a sustainable learning environment and an organizational culture depending on constant learning in their institutions in order to ensure the effectiveness of management (Akgemici, 2008, p. 517; Boal, 2007; Pisapia, 2009).

Organizational learning is a learning process. The process of:

• Detecting and correcting mistakes (Argyris & Schön, 1996),

• Changing cognitive structures and behaviors (Crossan & Berdrow, 2003),

• Developing actions through superior knowledge and understanding (Fiol & Lyles, 1985),

• Increasing the organization’s capacity to act effectively (Kim, 1990),

• Continuously learning and transformation (performance improvement) (Marsick &

Watkins, 2003).

Exhibit 1: School-Level Lessons Learned

Planning• Identify school leadership early so as to build in planning time to engage the community, establish the vision, and create a new school culture.

• Articulate a powerful vision for turnaround and make tough decisions.

• Prepare to meet student needs that are severe and pervasive — hire specialized staff, recruit and train teachers with specific capabilities, and engage with effective external providers.

Human Capital• Provide strong classroom and teamwork skills and additional support to teachers.

• Empower principals and leadership teams with key autonomies over staffing, program, budget, schedule, and data.

• Ensure principals and school leadership teams have the will, skill, and authority to drive change in demanding environments.

Maintaining Support and Building Sustainability• Signal change early and build momentum by delivering and communicating “quick wins.”

• Build capacity for long-term sustainable results.

Creating Conditions and Building System Capacity• Partnering with labor unions as relevant.

• Build accountability and data systems to track progress and inform decisions.

• Build systems and structures that allow for sharing lessons across schools.Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 16

Reyes-Guerra, Pisapia, & Alfred, 2015 17Pisapia

1. Leader Thinking is related to self reported, observer reported, and objective measures of leader effectiveness.

2. The use of systems thinking is the most used and explains the largest part of the variance in effectiveness

3. There is a cumulative impact - The strength of the relationship between Thinking and Effectiveness increases as leaders use the three skills in tandem.

4. The younger, less experienced, and educated you are the less you use these skills. Strategic thinking skills can be developed through training.

The results from 15 studies using the STQ suggest

17

those locations, by nature, are often challenging and unpredictable in almost every sense. From infrastructure to political structure, nothing can be counted on. This

type of venue is not one where technical rationality (Schön, 1991) works.

In real-world practice, problems do not present

themselves to the practitioner as givens. They must

be constructed from the materials of problematic

situations which are puzzling, troubling, and

uncertain. In order to convert a problematic

situation to a problem, a practitioner must do a

certain kind of work. He must make sense of an

uncertain situation that initially makes no sense.

(Schön, 1991,