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The ten professional standards form what Francis Duffy refers to as a "National Framework of Professional Standards for Change Leadership in Education." Each standard has examples of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that the research suggests are important for effective change leadership. Duffy's hope is that this proposed national framework will result in (1) state departments of education creating a professional license for change leadership in school districts; and (2) schools of education in colleges and universities designing new graduate-level programs specializing in preparing educators to become change leaders. Following the presentation of the proposed standards, Duffy offers an innovative design for a graduate-level program to prepare teams of change leaders in education. This idealized program of study incorporates learning experiences that prepare educators at the education specialist degree level to lead the process of creating and sustaining systemic transformational change in school districts. The learning experiences, in conjunction with the proposed standards, can then be used by state departments of education to create a professional license for change leadership in education. Contents of this article include: (1) The Need for Systemic Transformational Change in School Districts; (2) Change Leadership Competencies; (3) Emotional Intelligence and Change Leadership; (4) The Need for Effective Change Leadership Standards and Preparation Programs; and (5) A Proposed Program of Study for Preparing Change Leaders in Education. An index is included.

For more than a century the American education system has been guided by the Industrial Age world view (the controlling paradigm) that delivers education services to children by teaching them in groups, by requiring them to learn a fixed amount of content in a fixed amount of time, and by having their teachers serve as center stage directors of their learning (the mental models supporting the paradigm). This paradigm and its allied mental models are stubbornly resistant to change. Yet, there is an inescapable consequence of this world view: It leaves some children behind. This world view is often called the Industrial Age Paradigm of education, and there is a growing movement in the United States to displace this world view by replacing it with a world view of teaching and learning better suited to the demands of our 21st Century society. The new paradigm is sometimes called the Knowledge Age paradigm of teaching and learning. More commonly it is referred to as the learner-centered paradigm. This paradigm is built on the heart-felt belief that each student is one child with one mind who deserves a learning experience that is tailored to his or her personal learning needs, interests, and abilities so that he or she can achieve required standards of learning and become a successful and productive citizen in society. Creating this kind of paradigm-shift, however, is so challenging that it is quite a bit like trying to get an entire religious community to convert to a new religion. Duffy has written this article for those who have an interest in creating paradigm shattering changes in American school systems. It is divided into three parts, and contains the following: (1) Part 1: Paradigms, Mental Models, and Mindsets In-Use; (2) Part 2: Why Mental Models Are Difficult to Change; and (3) Part 3: Behavioral Strategies and Observable Behaviors.

This article challenges misperceptions about the definition of systemic change in school districts. While many contemporary change efforts are described as "systemic," in fact, they are not. The author also argues that a special instance of systemic change known as systemic transformational change is required to transform entire school systems to meet the requirements of our 21st Century Information-Age society. He then shares his personal views of what systemic transformational change means to him. A significant portion of the article focuses on the nature of systemic transformational change in school districts and what is required to create and sustain that kind of change. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the kind of leadership needed to create and sustain transformational change.

This article presents a protocol change leaders can use to navigate whole-system change in their school districts. The information describing the protocol will help change leaders in school districts and policymakers interested in whole-district change answer the question, "How do we transform our entire school system"? The protocol is called Step-Up-To-Excellence (SUTE; Duffy, 2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). Every time SUTE is presented to an audience there is at least one person who calls out some "yes, buts"--statements questioning whether the protocol is practical, do-able, or valid. Three "yes, buts" that are frequently heard and responses to them are found near the end of this article.

This article describes a new supervision model conceived to help a school system redesign its anatomy (structures), physiology (flow of information and webs of relationships), and psychology (beliefs and values). The new paradigm (Knowledge Work Supervision) was constructed by reviewing the practices of several interrelated areas: sociotechnical systems design, knowledge work, quality improvement, business-process reengineering, and organization development. The paradigm is powered by three key players: an organizationwide steering committee providing strategic leadership, school-based redesign management teams providing tactical leadership for the redesign initiative, and knowledge-work supervisors skilled in the organizational redesign process. There are four phases: preparing, redesigning for high performance, achieving performance and diffusion, and continually improving schooling. Each phase has several supervisory activities. Knowledge Work Supervision helps a school system develop redesign proposals tailored to its environment, work system, and social architecture, not to what faddists or government bureaucrats deem appropriate. The paradigm is complex, because school systems are complex. It offers a systematic way to examine this complexity to determine which variables affect organizational performance. (Contains 26 references.) (MLH)

This article presents a simile for understanding the power of paradigms, mental models, and mind-sets as religion-like phenomena. The author clarifies the meaning of the three phenomena to help readers to see how the phenomena become significant sources of resistance to change. He concludes by outlining a paradigm-shifting process to assist educators in opening their minds to the possibilities embedded in the Knowledge-Age paradigm for educating children.

As American schools increasingly are called on to ensure students have the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century, school districts nationwide are responding with a renewed interest in systemic change. The revived attention notwithstanding, educators, policymakers and the public still misunderstand the true meaning of systemic change in general and systemic transformational change in particular. In this article, the author provides definitions of systemic change and systemic transformational change, and discusses strategies for bringing the stakeholders together and creating buy-in for transforming a school system. For systemic transformational change to be successful, all stakeholders must buy into and feel a part of the process of creating the bright future the school district leaders envision. The most important strategy for creating and communicating this vision and bringing internal and external stakeholders together is strategic communication. Strategic communication connects a school district's vision, mission and strategic goals to the needs and aspirations of a community and its children, and this kind of communication gives purpose to the work that educators do in their school districts.

This article opens by discussing what paradigm change is and why it is needed. Then it describes the new AECT initiative, "FutureMinds: Transforming America's School Systems," beginning with its purpose (to help state departments of education to facilitate paradigm change in school districts), the fundamental ideas underlying the initiative (e.g., mindset change, invention process, broad stakeholder ownership, consensus-building process, and participatory leadership), and the strategy by which the FutureMinds Initiative operates. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This is the second in a series of articles about creating and sustaining systemic transformational change in school districts. The first article described the "AECT FutureMinds: Transforming America's School Systems" initiative for helping state education agencies (SEAs) facilitate paradigm change in their school districts. This article describes a methodology for creating and sustaining paradigm change that the FutureMinds initiative will use to help those SEAs transform school systems in their states. The methodology is called the "School System Transformation (SST) Protocol." Prior to describing the methodology, the authors describe the context for the design, development, and implementation of the methodology. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 1 footnote.)

This paper presents several brief papers about the process of systemic change. These are: (1) Step-Up-To-Excellence: A Protocol for Navigating Whole-System Change in School Districts by Francis M. Duffy; (2) The Guidance System for Transforming Education by Charles M. Reigeluth; (3) The Schlechty Center For Leadership In School Reform by Monica Solomon; (4) A Professional Development Approach to Systemic Change by Geoffrey Caine; (5) User-Design for Systemic Change by Alison A. Carr-Chellman and Luis Almeida; (6) A Chaos Theory Approach to Systemic Change by Charles M. Reigeluth; (7) A Leveraged Emergent Approach to Systemic Transformation by Charles M. Reigeluth; (8) Systemic Change: Get Ready, SET, Go!--Where? by Theodore Frick, Kenneth Thompson and Joyce Koh; (9) A Corporate Reengineering Approach to Systemic Change by Christopher D. Ryan; and (10) Leaning the System: Adding Lean Thinking to Systems Thinking by Shane DeMars.

Whole-system transformation is complex, yet possible. The potential for engaging in a successful transformation effort is greatly increased if a district's school public relations (PR) specialists play a strong supportive role in generating, framing, and delivering information to external and internal stakeholders about the need for change, the transformation process, and desired and actual outcomes. To support district-wide transformation efforts, school PR specialists need to understand whole-system reform as a strategy and the basic concepts and principles of systemic change. Further, they need to play a pivotal role in encoding and decoding communication to ensure that technical jargon does not impede progress. This article contains selected information about whole-system change and examples of cogent concepts and principles. The content is intended to demonstrate that a comprehensive school PR program should be an integral part of school district reform. (Contains 2 notes.)

Piecemeal change to improve schooling is an approach that at its worst does more harm than good, and at its best is limited to creating pockets of good within school districts. When it comes to improving schooling in a district, however, creating pockets of good isn't good enough. Whole school systems need to be improved. This article focuses on helping educators learn how to transform entire school systems to create unparalleled opportunities to improve student, faculty and staff, and system learning, and presents a set of principles to help change leaders in school systems navigate large-scale, district-wide change to create these multiple learning opportunities. (Contains 3 figures.)

Many school systems today find themselves in amazingly complex and puzzling environments. They are increasingly expected to turn direction quickly in response to changes in their environments, but they cannot change direction because they are bound by the arthritic bureaucratic designs of their systems, by old mental models of hierarchical power and control or by their inadequate knowledge of how to change direction. Combine this observation with the fact that whole-district change is never a straight shot forward to the future. Whole-district change always follows a river-like path to the future. This article contains a summary of eight key principles that the author thinks should underlie any effort to transform an entire school system into a high-performing organization of learners.

Hallie Preskill and Rosalie Torres (1999) describe mental models as a set of personal opinions, perceptions, and views of the world. Developed over time, such values, beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge guide people in their everyday lives and are thought of as "truths." Mental models are powerful because they frame and influence the way educators and school districts perceive, understand, interpret, and act upon their world. However, not all mental models are functional or correct. Change requires that people unlearn negative mental models and learn new ones, and staff developers play a critical role in designing and delivering the kind of professional learning that can help educators do so. In this article, the author discusses how educators can unlearn dysfunctional or wrong mental models and learn new ones. Characteristics of both individual and organizational mental models are presented.

Argues that courageous, passionate, visionary, ethical leaders (especially school board members and superintendents), who understand the appropriate use of power and are politically astute, are needed to achieve systemic educational improvement in their school districts. (Contains 23 references.) (PKP)

Because knowledge work occurs inside teachers' heads, it cannot be supervised directly. School improvement can become a permanent, ongoing organizational function by replacing traditional instructional supervision with a supervision-for-school-improvement function. The focus then shifts to examining a district's work processes, social architecture, and relationship with its broader environment. (19 references) (MLH)

Successful leadership calls for a skillful interplay of power, politics, and ethics, qualities commonly thought to be incompatible. For the future of higher education, colleges and universities must learn how to recruit leaders with this combination of attributes and restructure the reward system to help them maintain their leadership. (MSE)

Describes a case study of an insurance company manager with a superior track record. Successful management behaviors include helping trainees succeed, relying on loyalty, building trust, manifesting an extroverted personality and good sense of humor, applying business knowledge, creating incentives to sell, and maintaining excellent relationships with superiors. Includes seven references. (MLH)

Whenever the author talks to audiences about transforming school systems, without exception people raise objections. The half dozen most common objections often come in the form of "Yes, nice idea but..." What follows the "but" is the objection. The author learned a technique for responding to these "buts" from family members who work in sales. What they taught him is that he should anticipate key objections and address them before the objections are expressed. He has used this technique many times since he learned about it, and it works. As change leaders, or aspiring change leaders, he strongly encourages everyone to learn to anticipate and respond to objections to transformational change before someone stands up and verbalizes them in front of an audience. To help individuals anticipate key objections to transformational change, the author highlights six common objections that he has encountered and the responses to those objections that he now uses.

People in noneducation fields recognize and accept leadership behaviors linked to using rewards and punishments, relying on loyalty and trust, and yielding results. Many noneducation professionals think educators are caught up in a communitarian/participation cult that encourages mediocre job performance. However, schools are a business and must be run efficiently. (MLH)