Abstract
This chapter describes effective ways for educational intentional learning communities to harness time, focus, and adult learning practices to ensure that they increase equity. Five key practices to develop equity-focused ILCs are described. These include (1) aiming for equity, (2) focusing efforts on the core of learning and teaching, (3) using key leadership practices and continuous improvement methodology, (4) using tools to develop community and transformational learning, and (5) walking the talk. The chapter begins with a short description of how one organization iterated these practices and ends with areas in which the organization is evolving their work. The intent of this chapter is to not be a polished recipe book, but rather an opportunity to share a learning journey of the five key practices, how they were developed, and how the organization has learned to enact them in their practice. The intention is for this chapter to be used to help ILCs reflect on their own improvement journeys to guide them into their next steps in leading for equity-focused improvements.
TopAbout The Organization Leading The Learning
The Center for Leadership and Educational Equity (CLEE) is a non-profit organization that drives student success by developing shared leadership to address the root causes of educational inequities and transform instructional practices and systems. CLEE fosters shared leadership through numerous programs and services that build the capacity of participants to engage in and lead transformative learning experiences within Intentional Learning Communities (ILCs). The programs all aim to increase equitable student learning outcomes in the schools they serve. At CLEE, we define equity as giving students what they need in order to unleash their unlimited, unknowable potential. This vision includes eliminating disproportionality in student learning outcomes between historically marginalized groups of students and their peers.
The journey to develop the methodology, practices, and programs to reach toward this vision of educational equity began over two decades ago when CLEE’s Principal Residency Network (PRN), one of the longest-running principal residency-based preparation programs in the country, was created to develop creative and innovative school leaders through intensive residencies with mentor principals (Braun et al, 2013). Over the years, each cohort of the PRN formed an ILC that set the groundwork for a broader ILC of mentors and graduates of the PRN that were serving in schools across the state of Rhode Island and beyond. To nurture this growing community’s focus on creating a more equitable and just public education system, CLEE developed a variety of services and supports to the field of education.
Over the last 13 years, CLEE expanded programming to support every stage of equity-focused educational leaders and systems. As is demonstrated in CLEE’s Equity Statement (CLEE, 2020), leadership is broadly conceived and needed:
At CLEE, we believe that leaders at every level and in every facet of education—from teachers, resource providers, and administrators to students and parents—can be leaders for increasing equity of voice and excellence for all learners. We believe that skilled leaders are not born, but developed through powerful learning. That such complex learning and leading is not a solo act. That working together we can do better than the best one of us alone on their best day. (p. 2)
The CLEE community has learned and grown with and for the field, iteratively applying theory and practice to evolve research on how to design and facilitate transformative professional learning that increases equitable outcomes for students. This chapter will describe the key practices CLEE has honed to develop equity-focused ILCs, how it was learned, and the ways CLEE is aiming to improve in the future.
TopKey Practices For Equity-Driven Ilcs
As an organization, CLEE is also an ILC dedicated to continuously learning, evolving, and amplifying the impact of key practices that overcome barriers to increasing equity in education. This section describes five of the most effective ways we have found for educational ILCs to harness time, focus, and adult learning practices to ensure that their communities increase equity: (1) aiming for equity, (2) focusing efforts on the core of learning and teaching, (3) using key leadership practices and continuous improvement methodology, (4) using tools to develop community and transformational learning, and (5) doing the work.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intentional Learning Community (ILC): A community of educators gathered for the purpose of enacting knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are focused on increasing equity for students. A community that is committed to sharing knowledge across participants and the field to improve educator practice and educational outcomes.
Focal Group: An identified group of students who are not being served in their school experience and are below standard proficiency requirements. The focal group is determined by disaggregating student academic data.
Disaggregated Data: The result of data being analyzed by subgroups to determine trends and patterns that demonstrate inequities.
Core Leadership Practices (CLPs): Derived from research ( Braun et al., 2017 ) on the shared leadership practices used across a school community that result in increased equity. The six CLPs encompass both skill sets and mindsets (i.e., dispositions): Setting Direction, Monitoring Practice, Building Capacity to Teach, Building Capacity to Collaborate, Building Capacity to Lead, and Reorganizing Systems.
Continuous Improvement: Methodology that engages practitioners in continuous cycles of improvement, supported by research in the field of improvement science (Bryk, 2015 AU12: The in-text citation "Bryk, 2015" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
Principal Residency Network (PRN): A principal preparation program run by the Center for Leadership and Educational Equity that focuses on equity-based school leadership preparation in an authentic, residency-based setting.
Peer Group: A group of students who do not share the same identifiers (e.g., do not receive special education services or are not multilingual learners) as the focal group, and who are either meeting or closer to meeting standard proficiency requirements than the focal group.
Educational Equity: Eliminating disproportionality in student learning outcomes between historically marginalized groups of students and their peers by giving students what they need in order to unleash their unlimited, unknowable potential.
Plan, Do, Study Act (PDSA): Short, rapid cycles participants in our ILCs are supported through to implement improvements in pursuit of increasing equity in their schools.
Instructional Core (IC): The IC is the interactions among what students are engaged in, teacher practices, and rigorous content ( City et al., 2009 ).