Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems

by Michael Fullan

we need leaders who create a culture of growth; know how to engage the hearts and minds of everyone; and focus their collective intelligence, talent, and commitment to shaping a new path. They recognize that what pulls people in is meaningful work in collaboration with others. They use the group to change the group by building deep collaborative work horizontally and vertically across their organizations. They develop many leaders who, in turn, develop others, thereby contributing to the sustainability of the organization. It is this consistent, collective shaping and reshaping of ideas and solutions that forges deep coherence across the system.

Is our organizational culture more like Survivor or The Voice? If you answered Survivor, the district likely selects leaders from a pool of volunteers; puts them through rigorous competition processes; places them in unfamiliar, hostile environments where competition and a win-at-all-costs mentality is fostered; and limits resources and trusting relationships. A negative culture of winners and losers emerges. Potential is overlooked, while individualistic and negative behaviors are reinforced. Those who choose The Voice likely begin with volunteers but also cultivate those they feel have potential; use the selection process to enhance the natural talents of candidates by providing expert mentors, coaching, and resources (backup singers, lighting, etc.); and incorporate authentic performance tasks. The result is that skills are enhanced, confidence is increased, and a culture of collaboration emerges.

Instead, principals have to become “lead learners,” influencing teachers indirectly but nonetheless explicitly by helping to develop the group.

One powerful role for leaders centers on fostering professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). The professional capital framework has three components: Human capital: Refers to the human resource or personnel dimension of the quality of teachers—the basic skills and credentials. Attracting and developing these abilities of individuals is essential but not sufficient for impressive gains. Social capital: Encompasses the quality and quantity of interactions and relationships within the group. In schools, this affects teachers’ access to knowledge and information; their sense of expectation, obligation, and trust; and their commitment to work together for a common purpose. Decisional capital: That which is required to make better decisions and results from the practical expertise across individuals and groups. When human and social capital are combined, decisional capital is enhanced.

Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008) conducted research on the impact of school principals on student achievement and found that the most significant factor—twice as powerful as any other—was the degree to which the principal participated as a learner with staff in helping to move the school forward. Such principals model lead learning. They establish a culture where all teachers are expected to be continuous learners, and they lead the way.

A second key aspect involves shaping the culture to foster deeper relationships, trust, and engagement. Lead learners orchestrate structures and processes to create an environment that anticipates and works collaboratively on challenges and innovation. These principals don’t spend their time on checklists and attempts to change teachers one teacher at a time but instead put their efforts into creating mechanisms of support and processes that build teacher collaboration, inquiry, and teams of leaders.

Research by Helen Timperley, in Realizing the Power of Professional Learning (2011), noted that “coherence across professional learning environments was not achieved through the completion of checklists and scripted lessons but rather through creating learning situations that promoted inquiry habits of mind throughout the school.”

them. They build a collective understanding and engagement around the priorities so that every teacher and leader can answer, with equal ease and precision, the following questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing this?

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.

People sometimes have trouble grasping the concept of capacity building because it is more abstract than having a standard or making an assessment. Capacity building is an approach, not a program.

If one wants to shift school, district, or system practices, one needs to have a strong learning design and deeper collaborative work.

We see blocks of dedicated PLC time established across schools and districts that is often no more than time in search of a purpose or spent on a multitude of tasks that do not directly result in improved learning for students. We see teams spending countless hours analyzing data but seldom spending the same amount of time in designing more precise pedagogy to meet the identified needs.

The concept of learning communities is not wrong, but the implementation has lacked depth. If we embrace the idea that our students should be critical thinkers grounded in metacognition, then we need to design learning experiences for adults that foster the same competencies because we cannot give to others what we do not possess ourselves. If we want our systems to be authentic—energizing environments for students—then we must create them for the adults as well. Deep collaborative experiences that are tied to daily work, spent designing and assessing learning, and built on teacher choice and input can dramatically energize teachers and increase results.

Anthony Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, proposes using improvement science to accelerate learning and address problems of practice because “we need smarter systems, organizations capable of learning and improving, that see learning and change as what it means to be vital, to be alive” (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & Le Mahieu, 2014). Bryk et al. (2014) set out “six principles of improvement.” The authors describe improvement science as explicitly designed to accelerate learning-by-doing, utilizing a user-centered and problem-centered approach to improving teaching and learning. The overall goal is to develop the necessary know-how for a reform idea to spread faster and more effectively. A key component of their approach is a structure called networked improvement communities (NICs).

A recent report on effective learning teams and networks with school leaders (Leskiw-Janvary, Oakes, & Waler, 2013) identified six key factors that increased the impact of these networks: Collaborative inquiry: Collective learning and understanding encourages innovation and meaning while practices are analyzed, leading to purposeful, effective action. Leadership: All members share flexible, emergent leadership by asking effective, timely questions to create the compelling disturbances that generate new ideas and questions. Relationships: All members take risks within a trusting environment and operate in interdependent ways. Instructional focus: A continuous process with evidence of new, quality thinking and intentional changes in practice is embedded. Groups are established based on explicit needs, and meaningful, relevant, appropriate data are strategically collected. Reflection: Ongoing focused reflection leads to integration of learning and deeper understanding. Theories of action are refined based on new learning that results in a change in practice. Accountability: As a result of collective learning, changes in teacher instructional practice lead to improved student outcomes. School leaders in the networks point out that they always begin with the needs of the school. Trust and relationships are key, and they note that the variety of experience levels in the network means they learn with one another and on behalf of one another. They see this as building capacity tha...

Traditional schooling is increasingly generating bored and alienated students and teachers.

Once in a while there is a convergence of independent but relatable forces that come together and create synergetic breakthroughs in societal learning. We are at the early stages of a potentially powerful confluence of factors that could transform education. —Michael Fullan (2013c)

Discipline problems disappear because students are so engaged, and learning becomes a 24/7 endeavor. Parents demonstrate their support by contributing to the learning at home and virtually. This may sound utopian, but we see glimmers of this type of innovation in classrooms, schools, and districts where they are transforming learning for both students and adults alike.

There are three elements that deepen learning by doing the following (see Figure 4.1): Establish clarity of deep learning goals. Build precision in pedagogies accelerated by digital. Shift practices through capacity building.

The Internet has transformed itself from simple information transmission into an endlessly multifaceted outlet for human energy and expression. Never before in history have so many people, from so many places, had so much power at their fingertips.

New pedagogical practices linked to 21st century learning outcomes (what we call the 6Cs—communication, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, character, and citizenship)

The mark of an educated person is that of a doer (a doing-thinker; a thinker-doer)—they learn to do and do to learn. They are impatient with lack of action. Doing is not something they decide to do—daily life is doing, as natural as breathing the air.

It is clear that educators, businesses, and parents recognize that the traditional basics are not sufficient and that future generations need also the 6Cs if they are to thrive. What is critical for schools, districts, and education systems is not just defining the deep learning competencies but identifying their interrelationships, practices that foster progression in their development, and ways to cultivate and share those practices with consistency for all learners.

Teachers need “a deep multidimensional knowledge that allows them both to assess situations quickly and to draw upon a variety of repertoires for intervention. Individual teachers possess such knowledge but it is largely invisible to the field as a whole. There are few ways for it to be gathered, codified and shared” (Mehta, Schwartz, & Hess, 2012).

face. Schools, districts, and countries must find ways to sustain continuous improvement on the basics, while building innovative practices to develop what we call the deep learning competencies

learning. Deeper learning is the ability to understand concepts, think critically, solve problems, and apply learning in authentic ways.

If we want students to develop the 6Cs of communication, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, character, and citizenship, we need to be able to define and measure those competencies.

learning? A recent video by the inventor of the Rubik’s cube, Erno Rubik, sheds light on the dilemma when he asks, “How do we get teachers to stop teaching answers but instead to help students generate questions that are waiting for answers?”

Alan November (2012), a pioneer in the meaningful use of technology for over three decades, describes this new view of the digital world as “transforming learning beyond the $1000 pencil.”

In his book Who Owns the Learning? November challenges educators to ask themselves six questions to determine if they are getting beyond the superficial use of digital: Did the assignment build capacity for critical thinking on the web? Did the assignment develop new lines of inquiry? Are there opportunities to broaden the perspective of the conversation with authentic audiences from around the world? Is there an opportunity for students to publish—across various media with capacity for continuous feedback? Is there an opportunity for students to create a contribution (purposeful work)? Does the assignment demo “best in the world” examples of content and skill?

Staff attribute their success to their principal who brought out their potential using five key components: Use quality professional development that is research based, consistent, convenient, relevant, and differentiated. Use time wisely by flipping faculty meeting time to focus on learning, not administration. Trust your teachers to determine the professional learning they need next. Facilitate, don’t dictate by providing teachers with what they need and allowing them to make decisions. Expect the best by holding everyone to high standards. Guided by research, they identified their top 10 teaching practices and engaged weekly in professional learning to help them implement the practices more effectively. Their nonnegotiable list of strategies included the following: essential questions, activating strategy, relevant vocabulary, limited lecture, graphic organizer, student movement, higher-order thinking questions, summarize, rigorous, and student centered.

While they are committed to incorporating digital, they learned early on that pedagogy had to be the driver with digital acting as an accelerator. Visitors to the school are always impressed that every student can articulate their learning goals and success criteria, the reasons for the digital or pedagogical strategy they may be using, and how the tools are meeting their learning needs.

First, all of these examples had a clear and shared focused direction. They articulated a small number of goals directly linked to improved student learning and then persisted in working toward them. Often, the stimulus was an urgency to respond to serious issues of poverty and/or underachievement. In every case, this was not a simple solution but a concerted effort of committed leadership at all levels, over multiple years—it’s hard work and not for the faint of heart. Second, they built a collaborative culture by focusing on capacity building. They fostered strong relationships with teachers, leaders, and community. They recognize that lateral capacity (connecting and learning across schools) and vertical connection (good relationships between central office and principals and teachers) to the overall agenda forms the glue of coherence. Third, they have a deep commitment to the learning and teaching nexus. They are not looking for a quick fix but rather to create collaborative communities of inquiry that deeply examine instructional practices and student results. Some are focused on getting the foundational literacies in place while others are tackling the deeper learning agenda accelerated by the digital world. In these places of deep learning for the adults as well as the students, there is a professionalism that permeates relationships and decisions so that they propel the learning agenda.

The argument is this: If you want effective accountability, you need to develop conditions that maximize internal accountability—conditions that increase the likelihood that people will be accountable to themselves and to the group. Second, you need to frame and reinforce internal accountability with external accountability—standards, expectations, transparent data, and selective interventions.

Internal accountability occurs when individuals and groups willingly take on personal, professional, and collective responsibility for continuous improvement and success for all students (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009).

External accountability is when system leaders reassure the public through transparency, monitoring, and selective intervention that their system is performing in line with societal expectations and requirements.

It seems unlikely to us that schools operating in the default mode—where all questions of accountability related to student learning are essentially questions of individual teacher responsibility—will be capable of responding to strong obtrusive accountability systems in ways that lead to systematic deliberate improvement of instruction and student learning. The idea that a school will improve, and therefore, the overall performance of its students, implies a capacity for collective deliberation and action that schools in our sample did not exhibit. Where virtually all decisions about accountability are made by individual teachers, based on their individual conceptions of what they and their students can do, it seems unlikely that these decisions will somehow aggregate into overall improvement for the school. (p. 197)

Schools will implement the requirements of the external accountability system in pro forma ways without ever internalizing the values of responsibility and efficacy that are the nominal objectives of those systems. (p. 134)

Investments in internal accountability must logically precede [emphasis added] any expectation that schools will respond productively to external pressure for performance. (p. 134)

The most intriguing finding though was that special education resource teachers, whose role was moving increasingly to providing in-class support, welcomed the presence of transparent objective data. They saw it as a way of drawing the attention of regular classroom teachers to the fact and the finding that students with learning disabilities could, with the right support, register valid and viable gains in measurable student achievement.

In short, internal accountability is far more effective than external accountability. The bottom line is that it produces forceful accountability in a way that no hierarchy can possibly match.

saying, “It is more important to be right at the end of the meeting than the beginning” (David Cote, Honeywell, nyti.ms/1chUHqp).