How to Reduce Change to Increase Improvement

Communicating feedback to teachers is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. How do we influence instruction in a positive way while maintaining trust and respecting teachers as professionals? Dr. Viviane Robinson, author of Reduce Change to Increase Improvement (Corwin, 2017), offers readers sound research and rich examples for supporting teaching and learning in all classrooms. In this episode, we discussed: * The difference between “change” and “improvement”, * Why feedback needs to be anchored first in student outcomes, and * How to engage in conversations with teachers that builds trust. Educational leadership is difficult work. The ideas and strategies described here can help make this work a little easier and a lot more effective for instructional improvement. Related Resources * Audio + Transcript * Dr. Robinson’s university webpage * Purchase Dr. Robinson’s book * Preview her previous book, Student-Centered Leadership * Check out all episodes on Apple Podcasts (and give a rating!) Full Transcript Matt Renwick (00:05) I'd like to welcome Dr. Viviane Robinson. She is the distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Auckland-New Zealand. She's also the director of Viviane Robinson Consulting Limited, and the author of the book that we're talking about today, Reduce Change to Increase Improvement and is part of the Core Impact Leadership Series. Welcome Dr. Robinson. Viviane Robinson (00:30): Thank you, Matt. It's lovely to be speaking with you. Matt Renwick (00:33): And I picked up your book at a conference and I was really interested in your title. It's Reduce Change to Increase Improvement. It's an interesting frame, and I was just curious, change and improvement can be sometimes synonymous. Could you just explain the distinction and why it became the topic of your book? Viviane Robinson (00:54): Well, it became the topic of my book, Matt, because in my work with school leaders it seemed, in school improvement, I've seen too much change that has not led to improvement, and you'll be familiar with the cycles of reform that happened in our schools. One set of reforms after another that have patchy results at best. So, I think that that's very debilitating, for the effort, energy and motivation of teachers and leaders, but it's also not serving our students well, because the problems that these reforms were designed to solve persist. And the one I'm thinking of in particular is the equity problem. Change is simply the process of doing something different. That's all. Change means that we're doing something different. The thing we're doing different could be the same or worse or better than what happened before improve. Viviane Robinson (01:55): If we shoot for improvement rather than change, it means right from the outset, we have to say, "What's wrong with the status quo?" Okay. And many leaders bring in changes without saying why teachers need to be going through all the hassle of that. So we need to, if we're talking about improving, we need to be upfront right from the beginning about the fact that we want things to be better. Doesn't mean they're terrible now, but they have to be better. That's usually driven by student results, social outcomes, academic outcomes. And then if we're talking about improvement, we'd better have a jolly good idea about why, what we're proposing is going to be better because it takes a lot of time, money, and effort. So I want to encourage leaders to be more forthright in their intention, more honest and more ambitious. They're not interested in change, or they shouldn't be, they should be interested in improvement. Matt Renwick (03:10): That sounds great. And I think the way you frame it and I read it, but just hearing it again, just helps me remind myself of the distinction as they prepare for a new school year too. So thank you for explaining that. In your book you cited a previous meta-analysis that you were involved in, thinking about change, you noted that the one leadership practice, "leading teacher learning and development", had the largest impact on student outcomes. What about this practice is so powerful for student learning? Viviane Robinson (03:42): Well, I think there's a number of reasons. When I ask leaders why they think it and teachers why they think it's so powerful, they tend to say because of the symbolic importance that the leader can spend time being involved with the professional learning, then that sends a very powerful symbolic message to teachers about how it must be important. And that's true. But I actually think that there are other reasons as well. One of the most powerful ways a leader can gain influence with teachers is through helping them solve their problems of teaching and learning. The more leaders know, the more they themselves learn, the more able they are to help teachers solve their classroom problems. And that increases the sphere and intensity of influence that leaders have over teachers. So teachers come to them and seek help and they learn from the leader or with the leader - together - with the leader. Viviane Robinson (04:57): So that's a second reason. The third reason is that if we're going to succeed and solving the equity problems that bedevil all of us, then that's hard work. Lots of very smart and dedicated people have failed to solve those problems before us. And the reason why we are not very good at solving them is because we don't have sufficient specialist knowledge. If you want to improve maths problem solving or literacy, secondary level science literacy, for example, that's a very specialist area. And I think we underestimate how much we need to learn in order to solve those problems. Most of the difficulty is not about teacher will. It's about teacher capability, teacher and leader capability. So school culture, which has a culture of dedication to professional learning, not as a menu of opportunities - that's hopeless - but as professional learning to solve problems that are anchored in student outcomes, that is a powerful school culture. And it's a powerful way of leading. Matt Renwick (06:31): Yeah. When I speak with my teachers, when I visit classrooms, it would be hard for me to have a conversation with them without having that same set of knowledge and skill development that, you know, we're both trying to go through. Viviane Robinson (06:45): Yes, yes. And you said both trying to go through Matt and I think that's the point, especially at secondary level, even at primary. I'm not asking leaders to know everything; that would be ridiculous. We're not going back to heroic leadership, that I am asking them to lead a very focused, intense, collaborative learning process, where people stick at it until the student outcome problem is solved. Matt Renwick (07:19): That is part of it too, is committing to it long-term. And having that patience to follow through. I highlighted one quote from your book that kind of relates to engaging teachers. In those conversations, you said "Careful inquiry into teachers' theory of action gives leaders insight into teacher's concerns and enhances access to the levels of change." And could you just say more about that and what this inquiry might look like? Viviane Robinson (07:46): Yes. In the book I've got transcripts of the actual conversations to illustrate what you actually say. I think in order to have these conversations, the starting point for leaders, all the relations with teachers should be the experience or outcomes of students. That's your starting point. So for example these particular teachers, students are very good at maths fluency, but they're very limited in their math problem solving, right? So to know that, that's your starting point and this connects to your question about feedback as well. Then your next step is to investigate, inquire into what might the teachers of those students be doing and not doing. So that directs your inquiry, your observations with the collaboration, of course, into their practices. How are they … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe