Practice among novice change agents in schools

Abstract

The aim of the article is to understand practice as negotiation of meaning among novice and internal change agents in school organisations. The research question is as follows: What themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents? The study was qualitative in design using the social learning theory of community of practice, as well as organisation development theory in the analysis. Primarily, the data source comprised 36 change agents’ journals during 3 years from 2009 to 2011. Four themes of participation and reification were identified in the agents’ negotiation of meaning in their new role: (1) daily work management, (2) emotional supervision, (3) role development and (4) community development. The change agents reified or managed the problems with various micro-processes to structure the work with the teachers. Over time, more macro-processes became visible. The article concludes that the core of practice is the following question: How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon? This is the question that nurtures the negotiation in the ongoing participation and reification process of being a change agent.

Keywords

Change agent community of practice organisation development school improvement

Introduction and aim

External or internal change agents are one of the prime change forces in the literature of organisation development (OD) (Burke, 2008; Schein, 1997) and have long since also been mentioned in school development literature (Harris, 2001; Havelock, 1973; Schmuck, 1971; Schmuck, Murray, Smith, Schwartz, & Runkel, 1975; Schmuck & Runkel, 1994; Tajik, 2008). They are generally defined as leaders who drive and improve development processes and also manage change in response to reactions induced by the work of improvement. In schools, change agents are shown to foster a school culture with a strong focus on learning in order to enable effective teaching (e.g. Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006; Stoll & Fink, 1992; Timperley, 2011).

The problem for schools is how to develop change agents. Research contributes along two broad lines: (1) providing descriptive lists of factors characterising effective change agents (Day & Harris, 2003; Lieberman, Saxl, & Miles, 2000) which could be imitated by novice change agents and (2) highlighting the need for change agents to participate in a professional learning community (PLC) and thus continuously to learn how to work (Hord, 2004; Muijs & Harris, 2003, 2007; Watson, 2014).

This article contributes to the second line of approach, highlighting the need for internal change agents to participate in a learning community in order to develop. In the PLC situation, it is possible to acquire the practice of a new role and thus to increase motivation. Accordingly, I argue that it is essential to focus on the experienced practice of the novice change agents. The aim is to understand the practice as negotiation of meaning among novice change agents in schools. Data were analysed by the social learning theory of Wenger (1998) and OD theory (Burke, 2008). The social learning theory of Wenger postulates that participation and reification are the dynamic duality of practice and the negotiation of meaning. To concretise reification, I understand it as management of micro- and macro-processes according to OD theory. Thus, the research question is as follows: What themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents?

Effective change agents in schools

In 1988, Miles, Saxl, and Lieberman (1988) identified 18 skills necessary for successful change agent leadership. Later (Lieberman et al., 2000), they boiled this down to a number of competences such as

To diagnose the school organisation;

To plan;

To manage improvement processes.

The change agent’s task, according to OD, is to design the process of OD. Schmuck and Runkel (1994) define the task as macro-processes which are built up from micro-processes. Micro-processes include models for creating effective communication in working groups, ways of handling conflicts, decision-making processes and data-gathering methods.

More recently, in the educational field, change agent leadership occurs under several different descriptions, for example, teacher leadership (Anderson, 2004; Fairman & Mackenzie, 2014; Muijs & Harris, 2003, 2007; York-Barr & Duke, 2004), middle managers (Hannay & Ross, 1999) and change facilitators (Hall & Hord, 1987, 2011; Hall, Zigarmi, & Hord, 1978). Day and Harris (2003) define teacher leaders by identifying four functions of their leadership:

To concretise the principles of school improvement and thereby influence teaching practice;

To promote leadership participation among teachers and thus develop their sense of ownership;

To act as experts who provide information and advice;

To support trusting relationships between teachers to promote the formation of a learning community.

A guiding principle for teacher leaders is that their work should promote the transformation of schools into PLCs (Ash & Persall, 2000; Edwards Groves & Rönnerman, 2012; Katzenmayer & Moller, 2001; Lieberman et al., 2000; Little, 2000).

Change agents and PLC

The qualities describing effective change agents (Day and Harris, 2003; Lieberman et al., 2000) make clear the goals for which novice change agents should strive. These lists could serve as objectives in programmes for developing change agents in schools, which could result in novices imitating the qualities in an instrumental way – without reflecting about what the qualities mean in practice and how to build a development process in reaching them.

In order to compensate for such a situation, Burke (2004) suggests that change agents need to be part of a school’s leadership group and to participate in communication about future school development activities. Muijs and Harris (2003) argue along very similar lines, emphasising that the development of teacher leaders is highly dependent on the presence of a collaborative culture. A school culture which signals that teachers should all have the same tasks to carry out and should remain of equal status will, according to Muijs and Harris, make it difficult for teacher leaders to develop. Furthermore, they add that an organisation with excessive top-down governance can be restrictive.

Muijs and Harris (2003) compiled data on the requirements for teacher leader development and concluded that it is important to ensure there is time for discussion, ongoing in-service training and networking with other teacher leaders. These are extensive requirements, which place change agents within supportive PLCs (Hord, 2004). The argument is that in order for change agents to develop, they need to be part of a school with the characteristics of a PLC, or more precisely, a PLC with both a technical culture and a teacher service ethic which are amenable to adapting teaching to the students’ needs (Rousseau, 2004; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1994; Timperley, 2011)

Theoretical framework

The focus in the study is the practice of the change agents and their negotiation of meaning. Two theoretical starting points are used to observe the practice of the change agents: Wenger’s (1998) theory of social learning and OD theory (Burke, 2008).

Wenger (1998) has studied work place practices. He states that practice is a process by which we experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful (p. 51). Through negotiation with each other in a community of practice, we share our experience of the world and engage in making it meaningful. Participation and reification are the dynamic of our experience and negotiation. Reification here means the projections of our experience to the outer world – everything from symbols such as language to artefacts such as documents or machinery.

To specify and concretise reification, I have used OD theory. OD theory depends on open system theory and describes organisations metaphorically as living organisms (Burke, 2008). The concepts of input, throughput, output and feedback are used to account for the flow of information within the organisation and its working processes. Schmuck and Runkel (1994) describe the flow as macro-processes built up from micro-processes. Micro-processes include models for creating effective communication in working groups, ways of handling conflicts, decision-making processes and data-gathering methods. Micro- and macro-processes are used in this study to describe reification or management in situations where novice change agents participate and negotiate meaning.

Methodology

The study relies mainly on content analysis of change agents’ journals over 3 years from 2009 to 2011. The sample consisted of 36 change agents and also 23 school leaders from three municipalities in Sweden. The change agents were situated in pre-schools, primary, secondary and upper secondary schools. The school leaders belonged to the same schools as the change agents. The sampling was positive since the schools participated in a project to develop change agents.

The wider context of the change agents should be understood within the framework of higher pressure from the state exerted on the municipalities’ responsibility to improve the quality of schooling. This pressure was experienced as concrete by the quality review of the Swedish School Inspectorate, which was implemented in 2008. The municipalities’ school directors and principals expected the change agents to work as pedagogical leaders facilitating changed teaching practices and improved student outcomes. However, these expectations were in most cases vaguely expressed – which left the change agents with the work of inventing their own practice and allotting meaning to it. The project to develop the change agents was established in this context and in response to the dilemma of how to put a pedagogical leadership into practice for the change agents.

One primary data source and two secondary data sources were used in this study. The primary source was the journals kept by the change agents. The secondary sources were interviews with the school leaders and field notes from yearly development meetings with the change agents.

The change agents contributed by writing journal entries describing the progress made during meetings with teachers, aspects of their work that induced positive or negative feelings, their thoughts on the meaning of their role and the connections between its different aspects and their thoughts concerning the planning of their work. I was given access to these notes on a monthly basis.

The interviews with the school leaders were used as a secondary data source providing information on the micro- and macro-processes involving the change agents within the development or management of the organisation. I also met the development group of change agents half a day every year in development groups where we discussed their role from a basis of their questions. These talks were also used as secondary data providing information on the validation of the analysis.

The journals kept by the change agents were analysed from the basis of Wenger’s (1998) theory of social learning and OD theory (Burke, 2008; Schmuck and Runkel, 1994). The practices were identified as themes of participation and reification in various kinds of micro- and macro-processes. To get hold of these themes, the change agents’ questions and interrogations concerning their new role were sought after in the journals.

Specifically, the contents of the journals were analysed using the qualitative software package QSR NVivo in conjunction with the coding recommendations of Miles and Huberman (1994). The journals were analysed monthly over the 3 years. I read them through and continuously coded their contents, indicating questions and interrogations as free nodes in NVivo. This coding procedure resulted in a list of over 40 issues. During the second year, I started to group the free node issues into categories. Eventually, the number of categories was reduced considerably to four themes. These preliminary themes were reflected on in relation to the journals as a whole and the subjects that were emphasised during the yearly meetings with the change agents. The themes should be understood as ideals (Weber, 1977). This means that the change agents did not exclusively focus their participation and reification on any one of these themes but that they still can be considered as specific practices of interest based on recurring underlying questions which were asked of the agents in the journals.

The trustworthiness of the study was accomplished following Kvale’s (1997) concept of craftsmanship to describe with clarity the knowledge base established in this work and the investigation procedure. Moreover, the primary data source was triangulated with two secondary data sources, and finally, the findings were scrutinised in communication with the development group of change agents in research seminars.

One might ask whether the journals fully captured the ‘talk’ between the change agents and their principals and teachers or whether they actually captured the thoughts of the change agents. It is challenging to capture ongoing processes such as negotiations, which may occur primarily in corridors between meetings and can be difficult to observe systematically. Research questions should therefore be triangulated by use of multiple data-gathering methods and study in several school organisations/municipalities to address the decisive context factor.

Results

The participation and reification negotiated by the change agents in their journals, as they sought to establish meaning in their new roles, were analysed, resulting in the identification of four themes based on the following underlying questions:

Daily work management – How should tomorrow’s meetings be conducted?

Emotional supervision – How should the teachers’ reactions be handled?

Role development – How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon?

Community development – How should the school’s working community be organised?

The most common theme concerned management of daily work (1). The underlying question of this theme is as follows: ‘How should tomorrow’s meetings be conducted?’ In the journals, it was reflected in descriptions of the planning of routine meetings held between change agents and their colleagues. On these occasions, the agents were responsible for activities such as conducting teacher team meetings or in-service days. The excerpt below describes a planning meeting during which learning leaders were made responsible for leading weekly teacher team meetings and working on local pedagogic plans as part of a state reform initiative:

100125 Planning meeting

The learning leaders from school C planned together with our principle. During school development time, we will work with ‘Local Pedagogical Plans’ in working groups F-2, 3-5 and 6-9. It feels good to take on and jointly plan the school development time during spring because during the autumn semester of 09 and partly also during spring 09 these processes would have been distributed across different tasks. It felt a bit like the ‘good old days’ when we worked together toward common goals. Today I am feeling more enthusiastic about my role as a learning leader than I have been for some time . . . (Change agent FC, January 2010)

The journals also contained many descriptions of what the agents had done over a given month, with descriptions of routine pedagogical work with children and students mixed in with discussions of work in their teacher teams. The work within teacher teams was often initiated by the schools’ principal and passed on to the change agents to execute. The agents negotiated meaning concerning ‘daily work management’ by reifying various micro-processes such as planning schedules for new management processes, grouping teachers and selecting the contents of documentation and subjects for the teacher teams to discuss.

The theme of supervising emotions (2) stems from the underlying question of how to manage teachers’ reactions. This was clearly identifiable in some of the journals as an experience in need of meaning. The excerpt below was written by an agent who experienced mixed feelings after her colleagues reacted negatively to her actions in her new role:

Right now it feels as though we are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to action research at our school. The planning I did to convince the staff that this is important and good for us has been less successful than I would like. To start from the beginning: After positive reactions in the co-operation group and among the teachers overall, I asked the team to perform a SWOT-analysis with a focus on student influence in mathematics teaching and learning . . . This produced very mixed reactions. Some thought it was exciting and were very positive, but others were very negative when they were asked to participate despite having been quite enthusiastic when the research project was first presented . . . The principal won’t fight those teachers and force them to do something against their will. My feelings are very mixed. In other words, back to square one. (Change agent CD, June 2009)

In some cases, when the change agents acted as leaders in front of their colleagues, the teachers responded rather forcefully. The change agents reported mixed feelings and wondered whether dealing with their colleagues’ emotional outbursts was supposed to be part of their new role. They negotiated meaning by reifying the introduction of micro-processes such as various innovative communication models and learning dialogues to guide the teachers’ knowledge and understanding. Other models such as peer-guiding dialogues that are rooted in the teacher’s experience of specific teaching situations were introduced to take care of their professional needs and emotions.

The question of how to develop and build upon the role of the change agent (3) was another problem that was identified by reading the agents’ journals. It became particularly important when the change agents were trying to develop their roles and take action within the development organisation. Many of the agents had no concrete idea of what this might entail, as shown in the following excerpt:

We had our first guidance session with A on the 16th of March. We did a learning dialogue about ‘My role as a learning leader’. I feel that I sometimes find it difficult to know what I am supposed to do . . . and I think that the teachers find it hard to understand what they should expect from me. It is actually very frustrating to participate in something where you don’t really know what your tasks are. B sometimes says that ‘occasionally I grasp the fish, but it is so slippery that . . . whoops, there it goes again’ and that is exactly the way it feels. Sometimes it is very clear in my mind and I know how it should be or what I should do, it feels concrete and then all of a sudden, whoops! It’s gone again. I don’t know whether the first guidance session was very useful, to be honest. At any rate, it feels like we will have a practical problem to discuss as learning leaders next time. (Change agent SLE, March 2010)

In this case, reification primarily generated a series of different micro-processes, including innovative communication models that the change agents had learnt about during their university course. To a lesser degree, it also resulted in some macro-processes, such as school culture analyses or analyses of the capacity for improvement, which were also discussed during the university course. In a later phase, more change agents developed macro-processes involving long-term development plans and action learning. This was especially true where change agents had found that the much-practiced learning dialogue did not affect teaching as much as they had thought it would.

The final theme has to do with community development (4) and is based on the underlying question of how the school’s working community should be organised. Only a small number of agents expressed thoughts relating to this theme. At its core, the underlying question is about how the school’s internal organisation could be arranged in order to encourage and enable teachers to drive its development and thereby promote student learning and development. This is illustrated by the work of a change agent who questioned their school’s internal organisation and the impact of the principals’ participation in the development work:

Organisationally, we haven’t managed to organise the principals’ participation in the development work. In the autumn we had a good collaboration in meetings – the principals engaged and we did joint run-throughs. But they should participate more in the learning team meetings and follow up on the work that is done. Naturally, the directors should also be involved and participate. However, while the principals try to show enthusiasm and a will to participate, I don’t get the impression that the directors are making the same effort.

My experiences over the last year have made me more and more convinced that we need to re-organise our teaching and the way students learn. We have to rearrange their schedules so they can work in a meaningful and holistic way to build up a good understanding. I know that some of my colleagues would very much like to try a new approach (perhaps we could arrange something this spring) but I also know of colleagues who would prefer the students to study specific subjects in 30 minute periods . . . Perhaps there is also a better way to organise the education of teachers. School development workers always have to fight! (Change agent FA, February 2011)

Participation and reification in these experiences could entail focusing on changes in the school’s current management organisation such as the composition of the teacher teams. However, it may also entail the creation of new leadership positions that would require people to take responsibility for specific tasks in the teams. Participation in negotiations of meaning relating to this question could enhance the agent’s understanding of their role in development and contribute directly to the school’s development by suggesting alternative organisational structures to those used within the management organisation.

Summary of findings

The answer to the research question of what themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents is summarised in Table 1.

Table 1.

Themes of participation and reification among novice change agents.

Theme	Underlying question	Reification/management
Daily work management	How should tomorrow’s meetings be conducted?	Micro-processes such as planning schedules for new management processes, grouping of the teachers, and selecting the contents of documentation and subjects for the teacher teams to discuss.
Emotional supervision	How should the teachers’ reactions be handled?	Micro-processes such as various innovative communication models and learning dialogues to guide the teachers’ knowledge and understanding as well as their emotional needs.
Role development	How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon?	Micro-processes including innovative communication models. To a lesser degree macro-processes, such as school culture analyses or analyses of the capacity for improvement. In a later phase, more macro-processes involving long-term development plans and action learning.
Community development	How should the school’s working community be organised?	Macro-processes of organisational restructuring such as the composition of the teacher teams and creation of new leadership positions that would require people to take responsibility for specific tasks in the teams

The themes, as experienced negotiations of meaning, compose the practice of the novice change agents in the investigated school organisations. The most common theme was daily work management: how the next day’s teacher meeting – for which the change agents now had responsibility – should be conducted. What to do with the teachers was the overriding question, and specifically, what to do that would lead to development of teaching and learning processes at school? Soon, many of the change agents observed the need for emotional supervision and learnt that being an agent for change can challenge colleagues and give rise to emotional reactions which needed to be taken care of. This concern in turn awakened the question of what the role of the change agent is and how it should be cultivated. Alongside these questions, a smaller number of the change agents raised questions about community or organisational aspects.

The change agents reified or managed by participating in various kinds of micro-processes such as planning models, group working processes and communication models. After 2 years, more macro-processes became visible, such as school culture analyses, development planning or action learning processes.

Conclusions

The aim of the article was to understand the practice as negotiation of meaning among novice and internal change agents in school organisations. The result of the research question informs an understanding where the practice of the change agents consists of daily work and emotional management revolving around role development. In line with the social theory of Wenger (1998), I would say that at the core of the practice of the novice change agent is their role development, and the following question: How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon? This is the question that nurtures the negotiation in the ongoing participation and reification process of being a change agent.

The lists of successful or necessary functions of change agents from, for example, Lieberman et al. (2000) and Day and Harris (2003) are sound and clear in relation to successful schools. The problem appears when change agents in schools try to develop their roles from these lists as they are not based in their own practices or role development.

In Table 2, the characteristics of the effective change agents are compared to the practice of novice change agents as found in this study. As the aims of the lists are different and they are derived with different methodology, they also differ in expression. The effective lists are oriented towards what the agents should do to achieve an effect. The practice list is oriented towards questions and situations at the centre of the negotiation of meaning.

Table 2.

Different perspectives of the characteristics of change agents.

The Effective Change Agent		The Practice of Novice Change Agents
Lieberman (2000)	Day & Harris (2003)	The Practice of Novice Change Agents
1. Diagnose the school organisation.	A. Concretise the principles of school improvement and thereby influence teaching practice.	I. Daily work management. How should tomorrow’s meetings be conducted?
2. Plan.	B. Promote leadership participation among teachers and thus develop their sense of ownership.	II. Emotional supervision. How should the teachers’ reactions be handled?
3. Manage improvement processes.	C. Act as experts who provide information and advice.	III. Role development. How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon?
	D. Support trusting relationships between teachers to promote the formation of a learning community.	IV. Community development. How should the school’s working community be organised?

In line with Muijs and Harris (2003) arguing for the need for teacher leaders to have time for discussion, ongoing in-service training and networking, points I to IV add important situations of practice for novice change agents to discuss. It is especially important to notice their need for tools to manage the daily work as a change agent, and certainly the emotional side of it. Bringing about change can be perceived as a pressure and can cause emotional reactions from colleagues which are not intended by the change agents. How to deal with emotional reactions from adults, and not just students, will certainly be a new role task for the novice change agents.

The change agents were observed to need to find a tenable position within the community or organisation of their school – including tasks to legitimise their role as it occupied a territory between principal and teachers. Supporting this need means, on the basis of this study, negotiation of this dilemma in participation and reification with other change agents and development of practice in the framework of social learning. This was partly done in the project, and during the investigation time, the municipalities organised weekly meetings for change agents in which they participated and reified pedagogical leadership.

However, we need to remember that Wenger (1998) means that every practice is bound to the specific community and its participants. The negotiations occur spontaneously due to the specific situation of the participants. Thus, the practice themes accounted for in this article cannot, without investigation, form the basis for a development programme for novice change agents. This study has been defined to investigate the change agents from the three municipalities as one group as they constituted one project group. However, variations of the themes were noticed between the three municipalities. Emotional supervision was more prominent in one municipality as was community development in another. This was due to school culture in the first case and the structure of the local development programme in the second case. This implies that the practice of a specific group of local change agents needs to be examined when evolving a development programme.

The methodology used here can be used by school leaders or change agents themselves. By inventing the practice they are experiencing, they acquire a good base for shaping and developing their own roles. In this endeavour, the themes provided in this article could be useful, not as a list to imitate, but as a framework to interpret and understand the local negotiation and meaning-making of practice.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for comments and suggestions for improvement provided by Ann-Christine Wennergren, Halmstad University, Sweden.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The study is financed by three Swedish municipalities over 3 years from 2009 to 2011.

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