January-May 2016 The comprehensive journey: the iteration of problem statements, theories, models and prototypes I explore while trying to answer the question, "how can we transform the high school education system on a district-level?"

1. Transforming High School
Education
Studying and Designing Change Models
Naima Raza

2. A four-month inquiry project asking:
How can we transform the high school
education system on a district-level?

3. Our education system is one that was imported
from Soviet Russia.
It was designed to teach conformity, discipline,
and respect to a centralized authority -
the teacher.

4. Our current education system is obsolete.
Our goal for public education has changed.

5. Numerous changes, including the nature of
work, expectations for citizenship and in our
understanding of what must be taught and
how, have identified the need for change in the
education system (Senge, 2000).

6. We try to “reform”, “improve”, or “modernize” it.
It doesn’t usually work.

7. What is the goal of our system?

8. Success - growth, learning, self-actualization,
and more - for every student.

9. Where does success come from?

10. Success requires engagement.

11. Moving From Institutional to Intellectual
Engagement
(Wilms, Friesen and Milton 2009)

12. Students must be given genuine authority and
autonomy in order to engage in their education
(Cook-Sathers, 2002; Freire 1990; Kohl 1994; Oldfather et. al, 1999).
Our current system is not designed to promote
deep, meaningful engagement.

13. Students show a general lack of enthusiasm for empowering teaching
strategies, wanting “more structure, more teacher direction, and clear
measures of right and wrong” (Zelman, 1985; Doyle, 1983)
Technology seems to be valued most for efficiency and enrichment (Saye,
1997)
This lack of enthusiasm can be explained by preconceived beliefs of teachers
and students around teaching, learning and schooling (Cuban, 1984; Lortie,
1975; Saye, 1997)
Technology will not be the driving force of change in education.

14. Here is the journey: the iteration of problem
statements, theories, models and prototypes I
explored while trying to fulfill my inquiry.

15. How might youth and adults
transform their mental models
around education?

16. Change Requires Dialogue
● Change in education “cannot happen until people move beyond superficial conceptions of
education systems and recognize the unseen values and attitudes about power [...] and
knowledge that keep existing structures, regulations and authority relationships in place” (Senge
2000).
● Change requires a dialogue around current assumptions and values surrounding education,
teaching and learning. The success of the dialogue process is based upon the ability to listen
deeply to students (Cook-Sather, 2002; Mitra, 2004).
● This can be done on a most basic level by providing a space where staff and students meet one
another as equals in order to transcend existing mindsets and assumptions about education
(Fielding, 2001). If adults started to genuinely trust students, it would be possible to change the
paradigm of how staff and students work together and practice education in school.

18. Design #1: Open Dialogue
1. Single stakeholder, open discussion
around educational experiences
2. Multi-stakeholder, facilitated
discussion to deconstruct
assumptions around education
3. Evaluation of these assumptions and
re-imagination around educational
values

19. Change Model: Organizational Learning
Dialogue:
Understand current mindsets
Critical Reflection:
Transcend current mindsets
Creating an ideal vision
Developing a strategy for
implementing this vision

21. Insights
● Open, safe space for discussion is valued but lacks an acknowledgement
around the complexity & interconnectedness of issues in education and
change in the education system
● Student/teacher discussion was most valued to both stakeholders
● Too tough to deeply uncover mental models and assumptions around very
specific “events” in education; it is haphazard and not necessarily the most
“productive” activity
● Cannot transition to a methodology for sustainable change

22. How might youth/adults create a vision for the
education system in a manner that builds trust
and respect amongst both?

23. Perhaps we aren’t at the stage where we can deeply discuss issues in the
education system; perhaps we must start ensuring that students are empowered
to join the conversation in the first place:
All students must be invited to dialogue about their perspectives on schooling.
Participants must ask where the opportunity for dialogue could exist at every
level in education (Cook-Sather, 2002).
No particular group of students can or should be given the responsibility of
representing the student voice or leading systemic change (Cook-Sather, 2002).
Moving Forward: Student Voice

24. Student Voice
Governance
Research
Consultation

25. Student Voice
● Student voice, in its most meaningful form, calls for a cultural shift that opens up spaces and minds
not only to the sound but also to the presence and power of students.
● The deepest level of student voice is governance, which would including engaging them in the
redesign of their educational system.
● “How can students take ownership over a process that has historically left them excluded, silenced
and distrusted?” (Joseph, 2006)

26. Design #2: Multi-stakeholder
Dialogue
● Focus Group: School based teams (4 students, 2 teachers, 1
administrator) engaging in critical reflection around experiences in school .
● Appreciative Inquiry-based Collaboration Day: School-based teams.
Discussion around obstacles in educational change. Visioning.
● Design Day: Designing school-specific solutions around the most pressing
issues in education.
● Implementation: Year-long school-specific solution implementation
process.

27. Invitation Meeting: Video and Letter
- Introducing the project
- Be honest and vulnerable in introducing the need for the project
- Empathizing with participant candidates
- Building project ownership

28. Candidate Selection
- Introduction video and letter
- Send specific criteria to administrators
- Secondary administrator, two teachers, four students
- Students representing all possible backgrounds
- By gender, race, and perceived engagement
- “Innovative” vs. “traditional” teachers
- Students from all program pathways
- Administrators hold an all-candidates meeting, ask for invitations, confirm
all candidates, and then meeting with Coordinator?

29. Introductory Meeting Discussion
What behaviors (adult as well as student) are of concern to you in our community?
What behaviors do you want to see more of?
What are some things we might do to encourage more of the positive behaviors?
What were your thoughts and feelings while being introduced and invited to this project? What are your hopes and fears for this
project?
What does education mean to you? What do you think the purpose of education is? Are we currently achieving that purpose?
What is learning? How does learning happen?
Reflect on your daily school experience. What are at least three things that you enjoy? What are your school's strengths? Write on
stickies
What are at least three things that you wish were different? What are your school's weaknesses? Write on stickies.

30. Part One: Appreciative Inquiry Summit

31. Part Two: Design Day Summit
Design Thinking
Action Research

32. Implementation
● School-based teams implementing the change project that they designed
over the course of the 2016-2017 school year
○ Support, resources, tools and mentoring available throughout the year

33. Insights
● Lack of recognition for the complexity of educational change
● Lack of systemic change possible
○ Lack of long-term strategy
● Importance of engaging the student voice in isolation prior to discussing
partnership

34. Is top-down change “bad”, if it might produce a
greater impact in a smaller timeframe?
What if we focus on developing learning
organizations - organizations that facilitate
learning of their employees and that
continuously transform themselves?

35. How might we facilitate organizational learning
in school districts in a way that would lead to
students drive the integration of student voice
into the system?

36. Design #3: Organizational Learning
● Developing school boards into learning
organizations: organizations where
employees learn and the organization
continuously transforms
● Long term, whole-systems change
● Creating infrastructure for community
dialogue and visioning, as well as
administrative and teacher
collaboration

37. Wagner (2006):
1) Defining the problem
2) Developing the goals of change
3) Implementing change strategies
4) Assessing results
We must decide collectively what our high school
graduates should know and be able to do and how we can
best support them in achieving these educational goals.

38. Building Systems Infrastructure
● Developing structures for participatory leadership
● Developing structures for results-oriented decision-making
● Developing structures for continuity
● Providing ongoing support, mentorship
● Fostering a culture of collaboration
● Fostering innovation and flexibility
● Developing a focus on student empowerment and on the quality of work
provided to students

39. Critiquing the Discourse
● Critical flaw: theory on distributed leadership and organizational learning neglects the place of
politics and power, and does not theorise the organizing practices by which learning to lead and
leading to learn are shared in organizations.
● Experts are expressing the need to involve students within the change process, but experts have not
recognized their role in the process of developing learning organizations.
● Similarly, “innovation” has been noted as a primary driver for educational change. Individuals
involved in this discourse must use a critical lens to think about why they are advocating for change
in the education system.
.

40. Insights
● “Enforced” capacity building vs. real empowerment
● The learning organization concept does not consider power and politics
involved when distributing leadership within an organization
○ In literature, students are not included in the distributed leadership model, and any attempt
at distributing leadership amongst students seemed enforced rather than the result of a
process of empowerment and ownership.
○ How can we have a conversation with students on sharing authority?

41. Educational Reform or Revolution?
● This brought me to finally ask: What is the purpose of education? To what ends are we trying to
achieve change?
○ Our current education system was built to create workers for the neoliberal economy, not to allow
students make meaning of themselves and their world.
● Changing the purpose of this this system - which prioritizes the creation of economic workers - requires
transformation, not change.
○ Audre Lorde once said that “the Master’s Tools will never dismantle the Master’s House”.
○ Transformation cannot come from higher leadership. It must come from those whose voice has
been most marginalized: students.

42. The Problem
● But - why does reform and revolution need to exist in isolation? Chomsky advocates for the need
to implement reforms that will “expand the floor of the cage” we are in.
○ The solution: we need to examine how to distribute leadership and give decision-making
ability to students in the system, not how to “change education”.
● We need to create an education system that integrates the voices of students.
○ How do we empower students to discuss issues in the education system and advocate for
their inclusion in all aspects of education?

43. How might we empower students to understand
and transform issues they see within their
education system?

44. Design #4: Student-Centred
Dialogue
● Focus groups (5-10 students) at all high schools
○ Reflection and dialogue around the positionality and role of students
in school, as well as their sense of power and agency
○ Using art as a catalyst for dialogue
● Co-design what spaces for student dialogue would look like
○ I.e. presentation and discussion with teachers/administrations
○ Envisioning and designing what shared decision-making with students
looks like
● Using this as a platform to build a year-long strategy
● Storytelling component

45. Focus Group #1
Goal: Help students understand their positionality within the education system.
● Reflection
○ Who are you in school?
● Dialogue
○ Power mapping
● Co-design
○ How can we start increasing student voice in your school?

46. Reflection Activity
Art is our medium to connect with our emotions, explore ourselves and express ourselves. When we
talk about student voice, it’s first really important to give you all a chance to think deeply, reflectively,
and critically about this and your experience in school and what that means.
So, I’ll ask that using images, symbols, words, etc. create a visual, creative piece to answer: What is
your role in school? What is your experience like in school? How does that make you feel? These are
really open-ended prompts, but keep in mind that they are so on purpose.

47. Dialogue
● What is the purpose of school currently, based on your everyday experience? (10 mins) (LIST)
● What should the purpose of school be, ideally? Is the current purpose of school what it should be? (10 mins) (LIST)
● Who has power and decision-making ability in the school? What can they do with it or influence? (10 mins) (TABLE, as for specific
actors)
● Is it important for students to have a voice, choice and decision-making ability at school and in their education? Why? (10 mins)
● Do you want more, less, or the same opportunity to have a say and make decisions in your education? Why? (10 mins)
● What should it look like compared to adults (e.g. teachers, administrators)? What should the relationship between students and adults
look like? (10 mins)
● I’m going to ask you to do this a little differently: I will give you 2 minutes first to do some independent brainstorming so that you can
really write down your wild ideas. We’ll start the conversation after that. What would your vision of student voice, power and choice
look like ideally in education & school? What would happen in your educational journey, in your school and during the school day? (15
mins) (MAP)

48. Design
What things must happen in your school community to reach this vision? What must the role of the student voice be
in making this happen? What would this ACTUALLY look like in real life, in the school day, and school year? What would
need to be formed, changed, stopped?
(5 mins)
- Now, let’s think in chronological order. What would need to happen? (do this on chartpaper)
- Is there anything that we missed that isn’t on the flowchart?
- Our goal for the end of this co-design is to develop a series of items that would need to occur that would start a
process of developing your school into one that embodies our ideal vision of student power and choice.
- Think of HOW each of these items would need to be done themselves.
- Think about WHO would be carrying out these items. What would be the role of students, teachers,
administrators?
- WHEN would it be done?

49. Evaluation
- Senior students more confident in speaking
- Repetition in answers of questions
- More student leaders present, albeit some diversity
- Design: must be mindful of what ideas I am attached to e.g. conference, involvement of
teachers
- Hard for students to answer abstract question, “what is your role in school”
- Shorter time? More hands-on activities? Less reflection? Students like decision-making.
- Students who spoke little: those who agree & are introverts vs. those who are still developing
critical thinking skills and are moreso observing, reflecting
- Students are inclined to talk about how they can solve certain issues in their school as opposed
to how they can increase student voice specifically in their school
- Not enough time to build a concrete plan with them

50. Focus Group v2.0
- Activity: Think about school currently, challenge paradigm of school,
challenge lack of student voice, create vision, create action plan for
student voice
- Additional question: What is the purpose of school? Do you enjoy coming
to school?
- Additional Activity: Showed Ken Robinson video on “Why Schools Kill
Creativity” and facilitated discussion
- Additional Activity: “Vision your ideal school”

51. Evaluation v2.0
- Repetitive
- Quiet still need prompting
- Too abstract
- Little representation of historically marginalized students

52. Focus Group v3.0
Goal: Help students think critically about school and understand their
perception on student voice.
- Introduction question
- Teaching/Learning and Student Voice
- Evaluation/Assessment
- Employment/Future
- Community
- Current Events
- Mental Health and School Issues
- Student Voice: School Level

53. Evaluation v3.0
- Meaningful awareness on state of student voice
- Meaningful discussion on school issues
- Meaningful storytelling opportunity

54. Modifying the Model
- Though students form the grassroots, power dynamics in the education
system are much more complex. Teachers have been implicated and lack
voice to an extent, as well.
- Systems change is complex. It is not necessarily “bad” to have a
pre-planned vision and process, as long as it is adaptive and can be used
as a foundation for co-design.

55. How might we allow students and adults to
change their perceptions about student voice?

56. ● Scan the system: Focus groups (5-10 students) at all thirteen
high schools
○ Discussion on engagement in the classroom, teaching
and learning, school issues, community engagement,
preparation for future, student voice (focus group v3.0)
● Survey to gauge student perceptions on student voice
● School-wide action research project: solving a school issue
● Co-design new student voice structures with
multi-stakeholder core team
Design #5: Youth-Adult Partnership

57. Developing a Theory of Change

58. Theory of Change
If school-based teams can obtain data around their needs and visions around
student voice, then a core team can design improved student voice structures.
Year One: Participation
This model would build capacity in school-based teams (inclusive and
representative of youth and adults within the school) through a participatory
action research framework. A survey will be administered for students to identify
their current perceptions and needs surrounding student voice. School
based-teams will use data to create and implement a quick-win project solving a
pressing student issue at their school. Survey data will be used as a starting point
for future design.

59. Timeline
Year One: Participation
Focus Groups
Launch & Summit
System-Wide Survey
School-Based Action Research Projects

60. Focus Groups
Purpose:
- Understanding the system conditions: the student experience
- Understand mental models around education & student voice
Guiding Beliefs:
- Safe space to think critically about school
- Empower students based on the urgency of the issue
- Building capacity for change within schools

61. Two-Day Summit
Purpose:
- Community conversation
- Present the data: the common need
- Mutual understanding of reality
amongst students & adults
- Transform inaccurate, outdated mental
models
- Launch action research workplan & training
Guiding Beliefs:
- Youth-adult partnership
- Student/teacher ownership
- Transformative dialogue
- Build capacity for change within
schools

62. System-wide Survey at Summit
Purpose:
- Understanding the system conditions: the student experience
- Understand mental models around education & student voice
Guiding Beliefs:
- Full student participation
- Safe space to think critically about school
- Data-driven process

63. Quick-Win Action Research Project
Purpose:
- Address pressing student concerns
- Demonstrate the possibility of change and the impact possible
Guiding Beliefs:
- Build trust with school-based teams
- Creating capacity within schools
- Building school-level conversation and change

64. Action Learning & Evaluation
School-based teams:
- Weekly/biweekly meetings
Core team:
- Monthly/bimonthly meetings
Senior Administrative team:
- As needed