Shifting Values, Shifting Cultures
As work cultures evolve, the underlying values and beliefs inherent in shifting models are in transition. Table 1.1 (page 8) describes four major value shifts. Each value shift encompasses a set of related beliefs and observable behaviors that emerge from these beliefs.
From Professional Autonomy to Collaborative Practice
In cultures of high professional autonomy, the dominant values are entitlement and individualism. A strong belief in privacy translates to closed classroom doors, protection of turf, and a perspective that data reflect personal success or failure. These are cultures of my: my content—you can’t tell me what and what not to teach; my book—you can’t teach it; my unit—you can’t alter it; my materials—you can’t use them; and my students—you can’t talk about them. In these cultures, the locus of change is the individual teacher. Teachers working in schools where this value is strong operate in isolation from one another, holding on to all of their personal strengths and weaknesses inside their private domains. Professional development becomes either a private choice or an imposed remediation.
Table 1.1: Four Value Shifts
| Shifting From | Shifting To |
| Professional autonomy | Collaborative practice |
| Knowledge delivery | Knowledge construction |
| Externally mandated improvement | Internally motivated improvement |
| Quick fix | Continuous growth |
In cultures of collaborative practice, the dominant value is co-construction of a shared knowledge base. The belief that teachers learn best with others drives the use of common assessments to inform individual and collective practice. Teachers share resources and strategies, successes and failures. They engage in systematic and ongoing experimentation and analyze data to learn from and with their students and colleagues.
In these cultures, the group is the focus of change, paying attention to its interactions and the cumulative effects being produced for students. Gap analysis and ongoing data exploration drive the professional learning agendas, not individual passion, interest, or the trend du jour. Professional development is a collective resource, not a personal prerogative. Peer engagement forges powerful links between teacher learning and student growth.
From Knowledge Delivery to Knowledge Construction
In a knowledge delivery model, the classroom is the domain of the individual teacher, who controls the learning. In this authority culture, there are right and wrong answers, and students are expected to passively comply. Teachers uniformly dispense information aimed at covering the curriculum. Failure is seen as the student’s fault; an intellectual or motivational deficit. In these classrooms, isolated learners sit row by row, competing with classmates for rank and reward. Summative data are used to demonstrate success or failure. Assessment is done to students. Teachers record and report grades, and instruction moves on.
In a knowledge construction model, the purpose of education is to create self-reliant learners. In this social learning climate, knowledge is co-constructed; students are critical thinkers and collaborators in learning. Teaching choices are in response to student needs. Teaching is for understanding and application of concepts and skills. Student grouping is flexible, based on skill level and interests, within each classroom and between classes. Colleagues invest in the success of all students. In this model, teachers use formative data to determine student growth and identify gaps to address. Students are full participants in the assessment process. Assessment is a tool for learning, and instructional decisions are based on learners’ needs.
From Externally Mandated Improvement to Internally Motivated Improvement
When improvement is externally mandated, state and provincial agents develop and use data management systems to peer inside schools and publicly judge success and failure. Technical experts analyze data, identify gaps, and deliver prescriptions for groups to implement. Those in authority determine success criteria, how and when professionals should talk, and what they should talk about. This forced interaction disguises and ritualizes collegiality, as individuals sit together in the same room at the same time working on assigned tasks.
In this environment, the pressure to be accountable creates coerced responses, not thoughtful action. Teachers do not control how and when to measure learning and which data to collect and report. Assessment is something that is done to, and not by, teachers.
Assessment is something that is done to, and not by, teachers.
When improvement is internally driven, teachers are choice makers, owning both questions and answers. They are confident and skillful data users, motivated to continually increase their skillfulness, seeking multiple sources of data and methods for exploring them. Shared responsibility for student success is the organizing value.
In this environment, collegial interaction amplifies the drive to share and spread effective practice, creating new ways to work with students and one another. Collaborative teams explore data for patterns and the root causes for success and performance gaps. Teachers share ownership for taking both individual and collective responsibility for growth.
From Quick Fix to Continuous Growth
In a quick-fix culture, short-term thinking and the need for immediate success dominate the conversation. This orientation results in short-cycle planning and implementation and intervention or remedial models. Improvement is about fixing what shows, going for visible, easily measurable results that don’t require deep changes in practice. This approach to gaming the system (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009) focuses on raising scores by targeting instruction to those students who hover at the margin of success.
In a continuous-growth culture, improving the fundamental depth and quality of teaching and learning organizes the conversation. This orientation requires complex, and often controversial, changes in instructional practice, subject identity, and school structures (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009). Time horizons stretch beyond the school year for goals, plans, and measurements.
Teams use short-cycle assessments formatively to monitor progress and calibrate refinements in longer-term plans. These data focus and energize the collaborative conversation for continual improvement.
Defining, Developing, and Sustaining High-Performing Cultures
Significant and stable changes in student performance require not only changes in classroom practices but also changes in the working culture of teachers. All cultural change requires leaders to recognize patterns and determine which patterns of interaction are productive and which patterns are not. All groups, both large and small, develop norms around the distribution and uses of influence, authority, and power (Schein, 2004). How these norms play out in a given group forms the baseline from which any changes will emerge. Developing and sustaining high-performing cultures is an ongoing learning process that requires pattern breaking of unproductive patterns and conscious pattern making of robust and constructive ways of working together.
Organizational cultures reflect written and unwritten rules that are based on underlying assumptions and values. These values are expressed in actions and artifacts: in the language, symbols, ceremonies, rituals, and reward systems; in approaches to problem solving; and in the design of the work environment (Deal & Peterson, 1999; Schein, 2004).
Within an organization, various subsets including grade-level teams, departments, and data teams also embody and express unique group personalities based on collective values and assumptions. Culture