In public education, there are several levels of leadership: leaders at the district level (superintendents, directors, managers, and district principals) and leaders within the schools (school administrators, teachers, support staff, and students). Leaders organize and implement successful change differently, depending on the leadership level, the type of change, and urgency of change. Nonetheless, in public education, leaders within the levels share a common strategy: they delegate team members to help lead change. This approach is consistent with what Kouzes & Posner (2017) discovered about an organization’s shared vision, values, and the importance of a collaborative effort to develop ownership for the change. An inclusive, participative leadership style—where all members matter—is beneficial while leading change (Levasseur, 2005). 

To learn more about leading change in digital learning environments, I interviewed several colleagues within my school district, one from the district level and several from my school. I uncovered a common theme in how leaders addressed the recent urgent change to using Office 365 and Zoom in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, all users had the freedom to learn and develop their expertise and model their new tools. There wasn’t much guidance in the “how-to” because several leaders at all levels were not familiar with the new digital tools. We all began to lead each other in adopting the change. We learned, shared, and modelled our successes and failures. In hindsight, including all members and modelling change is a good way to lead change. A sense of camaraderie within the organization forms and people work together to own the change.

Adapting to using Office 365 and Zoom was not easy.  Previously, district members had mainly used email and a cloud service called Own Cloud as the primary digital tool for communication. Due to remote learning during the beginning of the pandemic, using Office 365 and Zoom quickly became non-negotiable for all members within our district. Loerme Akhtar & Kotter (2019) argued accepting change requires “urgency” and an answer to “why now”(p. 2), and the situation we were in forced the change. As pointed out by one of my district-level colleagues, for the first time, school administrators needed to actually model the change and not just delegate others to lead the change.

At the time of the roll-out, administrators, teachers, students, and parents were frustrated with the lack of guidance and leadership, but due to the urgent situation, all members had no choice but to “buy-in.” Since returning to face-to-face learning, many administrators, teachers, students, and parents have reverted to the days of communicating through email, albeit through Office 365. The urgency for using Office 365 and Zoom has fizzled because the circumstances have changed.

My colleagues’ observations about change were similar to my observations within my own classroom. In my last blog post, I wrote about the benefits of involving students in modelling and mentoring classmates on how to communicate their learning using digital tools—culture matters. Biech (2007) argued that change cannot be so different from the existing culture and that successful change requires a step-by-step plan for change and involves everyone who has a stake in the change. The infographic displayed above is simple. Successful adoption and retention of change in digital learning environments are more likely by using Kotter’s eight-step model (Loerme Akhtar & Kotter, 2019) combined with leaders at all levels modelling and encouraging the change. Kotter’s eight-step model (Loerme Akhtar & Kotter, 2019) is useful when implementing change in digital learning environments; however, there is one key addition: leaders at all levels must model the change.  

References

Biech, E. (2007). Models of change. In Thriving Through Change: A Leader’s Practical Guide to Change Mastery. Alexandria, VA: ASTD

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2017). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Levasseur, R. (2005). People skills: change management tools—leading teams. Interfaces, 35(2), 179–180. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.1050.0132

Loerme Akhtar, V., & Kotter, J. (2019). Charting the course: The path to transformation in education. Kotter. https://www.kotterinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Transformation-in-Education-web-version.pdf