Schools are complex and chaotic
I’ve become fascinated with how we can use systems-thinking to create schools that allow students to flourish. I’m still a long way off, but I’m increasingly learning the language to be able to articulate the disquiet so many people feel with the hyper-rational way schools ‘treasure what they can measure’. For me, this means seeking coherence rather than control out of the chaos. As always, these are fairly half-baked thoughts - I recognise and welcome the fact I am not yet an expert.
Teaching is a joyous profession that keeps those hooked coming back for more. The sheer variability means no day is ever the same, one lesson you are the best, the next you are the worst. No teacher has ever, or will ever, teach a perfect lesson. It is addictive, soaking the working week in optimism and challenge, exhaustion and exaltation. There’s huge parallels here with sports and the creative arts where perfection is an unobtainable infinity, even to the immortal geniuses past and present.
Of course, the variability also means stress. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Educational research has brought us a long way in the last 15 years, shining a light into the dark corners, where art meets science and order meets chaos. For example, Rosenshine’s principles have changed whole schools; Teach like a Champion gives practical steps to make quiet introverted teachers assertive over unruly classrooms. Yet, most people also accept that judging teacher effect sizes is at best problematic and at worst utterly subjective - we simply can not ‘see’ learning. This is in part because cultures, schools, classrooms, learning systems are complex systems.
Complex systems like flames, tornados, flocks of starlings and football crowds can be stable whilst in a continuous state of flux; the combination of simple behavioural rules combine to cause unexpected results not possible through the simple aggregation of the simple components. In this way, school culture emerges as a result of a huge number of human interactions.
We shouldn’t try to tightly control complex systems
We’ve seen that schools are chaotic and complex; a series of systems within systems with unpredictable outcomes. It is the unpredictability that terrifies school leaders who long for a input-output system. They search for the antidote to the chaos and in its absence they try to implement rigid order which makes data collection easier. But order is not enough. You can't just be stable, secure and unchanging, because there are is always more that can be done. Of course, chaos can be too much; you can't long tolerate being overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while simultaneously striving to do better.
In schools there will always be unintended consequences, unexpected outcomes; the skill as a leader comes in designing a system that turns them from negative-chaotic to positive-chaotic. One way to do this is through the language of the adaptive cycle model which is a general model of change which can be applied across various temporal and spatial scales. The cycle begins with a growth phase during which innovative strategies exploit opportunities. Gradually the system stabilises, shifting to the conservation phase where rules and established routines become more important. This can last for a long time but over time the system becomes more brittle and resistant to change – it becomes less resilient. Eventually the system becomes prone to collapse during the release phase when chaos and uncertainty dominate. Finally, new opportunities for creativity and leadership emerge which is the renewal phase. This has really startling parallels to many of the schools I’ve worked: my first school where a new charismatic leader took the school to ‘outstanding’ and then entered a decade long conservation phase; I joined my second during its ‘late conservation’ phase before an elongated release phase and then a ‘negative renewal’ phase resulting in the collapse of the school identity and staff community; My latest school has made rapid and maverick strides forward in tackling poor behaviour so is in its growth phase.
Perhaps even more interestingly, school systems are actually a network of systems, each one potentially at a different phase; systems within systems within systems. For every teaching and learning lead in a growth phase, there is an old-timer in their conservation phase. Developments in one system impacts those in another like cogs, potentially pushing each other into new phases: deteriorating behaviour in year 9’s late conservation phase can push a stressed head of year into their own release phase phase and quit, paving the way for an up and coming young teacher’s growth phase.
To mitigate this complexity we try to assert control and simplify our systems and try to make things more predictable. We thus unwittingly can create a system which eats itself. Gert Biesta said that simplistic school systems reaches a point where ‘complexity reduction turns into unjustifiable and uneducational suppression and where suppression becomes oppression’. According to Davis and Sumarra, ‘Strict predictability and reliability of results are unreasonable criteria when dealing with systems that learn’.
The more experienced I get, the more I see the damage that control, coercion and micro-management has on the efficacy of teachers and schools in general. We have to get the message out there that leaders need to stop trying to control what happens in classrooms and instead create the opportunities for collaboration, deliberate practise, reflection and growth.
Some steps to take
Which leads to the ultimate question: How can knowledge of systems be of practical use to school teachers and leaders?
Firstly, the knowledge and language of systems means that leaders can know that conservation and decline inevitably follow on from growth. If one wants continued growth, one must plan for it carefully; when we are at the top of our game, its time to change our game.
This creates opportunities and challenges. The challenge principally being that leaders jump focus to something new without seeing the previous intervention through. This unwittingly makes the system more brittle, sometimes contributing to the transition to a different phase.
Another challenge is that most interventions do actually have a positive impact. For example, writing up a detailed lesson plan for every lesson will almost certainly lead to better teaching. But there is a significant opportunity cost i.e. the positive impact would be more significant if they could plan excellent formative assessment rather than writing up the plan. So the skill as a leader is not in the ability to see through an intervention, it is about choosing the right intervention and facilitating sufficient cognitive and temporal space for staff to see it through purposefully.
Here are some things that work for me…
1. Understand opportunity costs – stop making teachers do things that prove that they are doing things which make a difference to students’ learning and start allowing them to do more of the things that will make a difference.
2. Stop using ‘professional development’ to control what teachers do. One of the very few things within a teachers control is their ability to practice self-improvement. This really should be the primary thing they are held accountable for.
3. Design a ‘tight but loose’ system. Start with considering 4 foundational cornerstones to the system because the initial starting conditions strongly influence the outcomes of the system. If they are not well defined then outcomes will be chaotic-unpredictable rather than positive-unpredictable. These should be non-negotiable from principal downwards. How about these:
a. Universal positive professional regard
b. Professional feedback
c. Professional metacognition
d. Professional dialogue
4. Clarify your purpose and over-communicate it: he who has a why to work for can bare any how. Never underestimate the importance of starting with why.
5. Next, clarify role, responsibilities and rewards and document them. This is your accountability measure.
6. Next, plan your intended outcomes and then the trigger points. This requires very careful consideration and will undoubtedly be an iterative process. For example, you may wish to improve formative assessment across the school. Do not make exit tickets mandatory! Instead implement a TLC (trigger point) charged with improving formative assessment in a way that is sustainable and effective within your context – your unpredictably positive intended outcome. Keep it tight but loose – follow principals of best practice but let it grow organically.
7. Follow your cornerstones without exception.
Reading all this back, it maybe sounds quite abstract. If nothing else it really highlights to me how difficult it is to run a school well. But I don’t think much of this is abstract in business management so why should it be in schools? With an increasing awareness of implementation science, I hope to see more consideration of systems in the future.
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