a state of panic.
The best way to respond to these differences in history, mental model, and current learning context is to acknowledge them as directly as possible. Have you ever been part of a strategic planning process where the facilitator spends a great deal of time talking about what people remember about the institution or about their values and beliefs? Even though these are important objectives in and of themselves, exploring everyone’s background and articulating everyone’s values and beliefs are really about clarifying both the history and the mental models developed in the institution. Therefore, it’s extraordinarily important that, whenever possible, leaders talk about both collective and individual recollections of history, especially in relation to school issues. By having these conversations, schools can better differentiate the personalities and perspectives of any staff and can help clarify those differences whenever possible.
Strategies for Today: Leading for Excellence and Fulfillment
Having this neurological understanding as a principal is helpful in dealing with almost everyone in the school. Keep in mind that if you’re twenty years older than the person you’re trying to communicate with, you undoubtedly have a different mental model and a different history. You may be interpreting the cultural contexts quite differently. As a result, your ability to connect and be consistent with a vision isn’t easy. That said, it isn’t impossible, and by talking those issues through, you put yourself in a much better position to reach clarity.
In addition to considering history, mental models, and current learning context, there are various strategies to help make the process of establishing a vision easier.
Clarify Recollections of Individual and Institutional History
You may have been advised in the past that knowing the school’s history would be an enormous advantage to you in helping direct its future. This is indeed sage advice, but now we know it’s important because in order for our brains to even get close to having a collective vision, we have to understand how the similarities and differences and the individual or institutional history can shape that vision process (Braine, 2009; Kouzes & Posner, 2009).
This step can be instituted both informally and formally. Unfortunately, if it isn’t done formally, I’ve found that people can work right alongside others for years and not realize the many unique attributes they bring to the institution. Taking time to talk through one another’s history is beneficial because the more background information you gather about others, the better you can guess how they may respond in certain situations. Sharing memories of institutional histories is also extremely valuable. As you listen to long-standing veterans describe past change initiatives, you can often learn an awful lot about the vision process. You’ll hear them describing not only the change or innovation effort but also their mental models regarding the innovation.
As a leader, you should be very explicit about describing mental models associated with a particular change issue. For example, if a new mathematics program is being instituted and teachers are being retrained, it is important for the staff to clarify their current mental models in relation to math issues. What do they think about the content area? Do they dread it? What do they think about the approach they’re being asked to embrace? What do they see when they imagine themselves implementing this new material? Harvesting the details of what’s currently in the hearts and minds of those who will lead an innovation is extraordinarily helpful. Keep in mind that this reflective process can potentially be very illuminating for the participants themselves, because in many cases, they’re carrying around mental models they may not have consciously thought about over the years.
In California, I once heard secondary teachers talk about block scheduling. One teacher asked the others, “Do you remember that? They had us vote on that. We were arguing about whether or not to go with the block schedule or an A/B schedule. As if it mattered. They were going to do whatever they wanted anyway, and the vote percentages were stacked in favor of administration. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like the block schedule. But that sure was a difficult time.”
Even though the teacher seemed somewhat positive about the alternative schedule, he didn’t make the connection between the use of time and either type of improvement. It’s clear there was suspicion regarding the administration and confusion over how decisions were made about these substantive instructional topics. If you were a principal overhearing that short dialogue, you could get a healthy perspective on the challenge you might face in getting that team of secondary teachers to think about change and visualize something new and different for their school.
Clarify Mental Models
In general, one weakness in education is how imprecise we are when it comes to terminology. A word like curriculum can have a very broad or very narrow mental representation for whoever is hearing the word. Even phrases such as diversity, English learners, special education, individual education plan, and new technology represent common education lingo that may wield widely different mental models depending on who you ask. If you tell digital natives they are getting new technology, their mental model may revolve around images of working at lightning speed with students gleefully breaking down learning boundaries and performing better than ever. Teachers less comfortable with new technology may hear the phrase and conceptualize long moments of frustration, confusion, and feelings of being obsolete. By establishing the practice of consistently clarifying mental models, you can get some of these ideas out in the open. Rather than allowing those mental models to fester, ask staff what they think or what they see when you mention key terms. This will help bring clarity to the process of establishing a school vision.
A principal and other members of the school improvement team could investigate the mental models that permeate the school regarding topics like school improvement planning, new curriculum, professional development, and so on. They may discover that, generally speaking, the mental models in these areas tend to cluster in one direction or another. This information could then inform the team regarding what steps are needed to begin establishing a new vision. For example, if the team found that there was a negative view of professional development and that the mental model was one of boredom and frustration, it might suddenly be clear that establishing new positive experiences around highly relevant and just-in-time professional development would go a long way in changing both that perception and the school’s vision. Knowing this mental model and referring to the history behind it would be extraordinarily beneficial.
Clarify Perceptions of the Current Learning Context
Since the learning context represents a combination of the conditions we see and feel as we interact in a learning environment, it is often difficult to quantify these variables. However, to some degree, you can rely on common sense. For example, in an environment with many community, school, and classroom-based stressors, you may need to become a bit more deliberate and explicit as a leader about addressing how those issues may be affecting how your school sees the world.
For example, I was principal of a high school that consistently suspended one hundred students a month. With five full-time police officers walking the halls and the dean’s office and community police station by the front of the building, I began to recognize that the context we were living in was challenging. To some degree, where we had elected to situate our offices and the steps we took to process our behavioral issues exacerbated an already volatile situation. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the first issues staff wanted me to address as principal were discipline, security, and dress code. Certainly each was an important component in creating a school environment good for students and learning. The physical presence and placement of these systems, however, created a vision that overrepresented what we needed to do.
It was clear to me that challenging staff to think about our problems at a deeper level required a shift of context and, in this case, focusing on support and prevention before moving to more drastic measures. The result was dramatically improved student
