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Cultivating a Change Towards a Culture of Compassion and Critical Consciousness in an Elementary School
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Promoting an adoption of an educational approach that combines compassion, critical pedagogy, and problem-posing learning encourages the re-connection and re-engagement of students to learning. Shifting the power relationship in the classroom and humanizing the school culture while supporting the acquisition of 21st century skills in students promotes critical citizens who focus on creating a more socially just world. As Freire (2000) articulated, postcolonial pedagogy should be connected ethically, conceptually, and politically to a greater pedagogy of liberation. This organizational improvement plan aims to create a strong culture of learning that promotes compassion and critical consciousness in a small, urban school in Alberta. This will be accomplished through changing teachers’ beliefs, skills, and attitudes and building their capacity through collaborative professional learning that focuses on supporting the transformation of educational practices to ones that promote student-centered, critical practices. Critical theory is the theoretical framework through which this transformation will occur. Focusing on the culture and challenging the power structures while developing critical consciousness will transform reflection into action in an effort to end oppression. Transformative and compassionate leadership approaches focusing on collaboration, communication, empathy, thinking critically, and acting with a purpose are instrumental in supporting the transformation of the school culture, teacher efficacy, and student learning. A two-to-three-year implementation plan includes the change process, a credible and vigorous communication framework, and a methodological triangulation method of monitoring and evaluating the progress and its success. The organizational improvement plan concludes with the consideration of next steps and future considerations for continued sustainability.
Keywords: critical pedagogy, critical consciousness, liberation, compassion, collaboratio
Strengthening Advising Knowledge to Improve Consistency and Coordination in Academic Advising
Get PDFThis Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) aims to improve consistent and coordinated academic advising at a medium, multi-campus higher education institution (HEI). It recognizes the vital role of academic advising in supporting a student’s academic journey. The OIP delves deeper into the responsibilities of HEI leaders with regard to facilitating the capacity of academic advisors to support students in their academic and personal growth and development. The present state of affairs suggests that academic advisors are not positioned to support and facilitate a student’s growth and development. The OIP seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of the underlying factors contributing to the issue by providing a historical overview and reviewing academic advising literature, wider contextual factors, and organizational theories. The OIP proposes utilizing adaptive and systems thinking leadership as the primary leadership approaches to lead the proposed change. Integrating various approaches can strengthen one another and address gaps, enabling change leaders to identify the issue and comprehend its interconnectedness more precisely. The problem is framed using the political and systems perspectives. Understanding resistance plays a vital role in this OIP. Therefore, Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model is utilized to lead the change process, and the Krüger Model of Change Management is utilized to ensure that the human element of the change process is not overlooked. The change recommended in this OIP is multifaceted and complex. The goal is to transform advising practices and develop institutional accountability and responsibility to students and advisors through the implementation of a training program
The Amplification of “At-Promise” Middle School Student Voice to Foster School Success
Get PDFTransformative actions towards the collective vision of the educated citizen have been central to the change efforts of educational leaders in British Columbia. Through a challenge to the status quo, utilizing a critical and post-structuralist lens, this paper charts a path towards revisioning middle school student success nested in listening stances and reflective practices. At the heart of this Problem of Practice is the disengagement and lack of voice that middle school students are experiencing, viewed through the context of a large and diverse suburban school district in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Theories of social learning, adult learning, and systems thinking are foundational to the equity, diversity, and inclusion actions undertaken in the plan for change. These are central in the approach to transform adult perspectives and school cultures that invite student voice and reconsider hierarchal relationships through epistemologies that are critically oriented and culturally responsive. A theory of change, rooted in the principles of deeper learning is utilized to chart a course that grows the capacity of leaders, teachers, and students to engage in dialogical approaches that consider and transform perspectives on positionality, identity, and change. Utilizing culturally responsive and transformative leadership approaches, an aligned vision for change, and student-centered solutions, the voices of middle school students are lifted and held as important. This stance confronts historical and colonial education structures and promotes system change that builds new funds of knowledge that lead to more inclusive and equitable school environments. This paper outlines a vision for change and liberatory action that holds students as co-contributors in school improvement efforts
How to Drink from a Firehose: Systemic Supports for Polytechnic Chairs
Get PDFThis Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is centred on the Problem of Practice of the inadequate institutional supports for academic Chairs at Prairie Polytechnic (a pseudonym), a large public higher education institution in Western Canada. Chairs are pivotal for higher education institutions because they impact student, departmental, and institutional outcomes; however, the leadership development needs of Chairs are overlooked, and the limited training available for Chairs is primarily ad hoc, episodic, short-term, and self-guided. The objective of this OIP is to determine how Prairie Polytechnic can provide more effective systemic supports for Chairs. Postmodernism is used to explore the relationships between knowledge and positional power, and Critical Theory highlights the inequities Chairs face. Four potential solutions are explored and compared: increased release time from teaching, increased role clarity, Chair learning communities, and a Chair life cycle strategy. The Chair life cycle strategy is selected as the most feasible, efficacious, and ethical solution, and a change plan is detailed for how the strategy will be implemented at Prairie Polytechnic. The change plan is mapped to the stages of change from the ADKAR change model (awareness; desire; knowledge; ability; reinforcement) and guided by Adaptive Leadership behaviours. A communication plan identifies how collaborators will be engaged in the change process, and a monitoring and evaluation plan identifies how the change plan will be assessed. Successful implementation of the change plan will provide the systemic infrastructure needed to support academic leadership development at Prairie Polytechnic
