Literature Review

 

After exploring literature in the fields of special education, adult learning and leadership, surveying my colleagues, and speaking with a “living resource,” I synthesized several important themes that guided my work.

 

“Full Inclusion” and “Inclusive Practice”

First and foremost, the term “inclusion” should be defined in order to provide important context for my action research.  The idea of inclusion has its roots in the “Least Restrictive Environment” clause (“LRE”) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  The notion of LRE has been included in IDEA since 1975.  The “LRE” mandate reads:

 

"...to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and that special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily" (34 CFR §§300.550-300.556).

 

The charge to educate students with special needs in the “least restrictive” setting is what gave way to the notion of “inclusion.”  Inclusion means different things to different educators.  For some, it describes a practice wherein students with special needs spend some or all of their time in the “general education” setting with “non disabled” peers.  For others, it is a call for the elimination of “special education” all together.  Under this interpretation, special education students would no longer be labeled or distinguished from any other student, and all students would simply be educated together in the same environment (Stainback and Stainback, 1992). 

 

At High Tech High, all students are educated in the same classroom environment.  The design principles of “personalization” and “common intellectual mission” create a culture where all educators strive to meet the needs of their students without separating them in tracked groups or pulling them out of the classroom.  Classroom teachers, Inclusion Specialists, Academic Coaches, and other related service providers (such as Occupational Therapists and Speech Therapists) collaborate to ensure that students with exceptionalities are fully included in all learning experiences.  The services outlined on a student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) are delivered inside of the classroom setting, instead of in a separate environment.  Often, it’s impossible to discern when a student is receiving a “service” within the classroom setting because Inclusion Specialists and Academic Coaches provide instruction and support to all students, regardless of whether they have an IEP.

 

“Full Inclusion” has been criticized for placing students within a general education setting without providing adequate teacher training and education to ensure that the needs of all students are met (Baker and Zigmond, 1995; Ross and Wax, 1993).  Others argue that Special Education in a separate setting supports students with special needs by providing individualized and personalized instruction to meet their unique needs in a separate environment (Carlberg and Kavale, 1980; Fuchs, Fuchs, and Fernstrom, 1992 ).  Yet proponents of Inclusion (myself included) would counter that alienating and secluding students with exceptionalities is damaging to their identities as learners and community members.  I would argue that the most important benefit of inclusive practice is the mindset that it fosters in students who, by participating meaningfully with their peers, develop a powerful narrative about their worth and capacity as learners.

 

Teacher Driven, Teacher-Led

In their article “The Effects of Leadership on Effective Program Implementation,” Dove and Freely (2011) identify several important factors involved in “successful implementation” of a new program in schools.  They contend that teachers must have “relevant opportunities for decision making” if they are to be engaged in the work (p. 27).  In my context, our new “program” was the attendance of professional development meetings (where before, we’d never come together as a group from across the twelve schools).  Though I had a clear sense of the topics that I felt our group would benefit from exploring, ultimately the decision about what we pursued through our newly established adult learning community needed to be shared.  I aspired to be a facilitator who supports and empowers Inclusion Specialists to identify the areas where they most passionately want to guide change. 

 

I also felt compelled to explore my own role within a teacher-driven, teacher-led community. Fullan concludes that the leader’s role is to  "enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner” (Fullan, 2010).  Indeed, I hoped to facilitate focused interactions between the Inclusion Specialists to explore the topics that they identified as most relevant.  The challenge, of course, surfaced in how to best structure these interactions.  My inclination would have been to try to facilitate and plan each meeting to ensure that they were focused, yet this had the potential to undermine the spirit of a teacher-led culture.  In “A Framework for Shared Leadership,” Lambert (2002) asserts that,

“A principal who goes it alone or who dominates will find that the school becomes overly dependent on his or her leadership... it is much easier to tell or to manage than it is to perform as a collaborative instructional leader” (p. 40). 

I knew that I would play an important role in supporting the members of our group to develop strong facilitation and leadership skills.  I envisioned a community where any given member would possess the skills to artfully facilitate a discussion or lead a professional learning experience.  Part of my own personal journey was to trust others and their ability to skillfully lead and facilitate professional development and professional learning with their peers.

 

Distributed Leadership: A Shared Venture

There is expansive literature about “distributed leadership” as a best practice for school leaders.  Indeed, there is a strong culture of distributed leadership at the High Tech High schools, characterized by an ethos of shared decision making, teacher autonomy, and collaboration.  “Distributed” leadership marks a departure from previous thinking about school leadership, where, as Kennedy, Deuel, Nelson, and Slavid (2011) put it, “...a singular figure with charismatic and heroic qualities at the top of a hierarchy oversees the allocation of resources, builds and implements a vision, and makes decisions on behalf of the faculty and staff” (p. 22).  The research team go on to explain that “this notion of a leader has proven unsustainable because schools are too complex for one person to lead independently” (p. 22).

 

For Spillane, Halverson and Diamond (2001), leadership should be understood as distributed practice that is stretched over the social and situational context of the school.  They assert that leadership isn’t just a function of the skills and charisma of an individual, but that instead expertise should be distributed by many individuals across contexts (Spillane et al, 2001).  Similarly, Gronn (2008) uses the term “heterarchy” to describe a structure where leadership is shared laterally.  In a heterarchy, decisions are made by people who have status and expertise.  Their decisions are accepted because the community honors their status and knows that they are accountable for their decisions (Gronn, 2008).

 

I wanted to support the development of a strong culture of shared leadership among the Inclusion community at High Tech High.  I wanted to unearth the “secret” to creating a community of adults who trusted in each others’ skills and collaborated and innovated with passion and gusto!  My review of the literature helped me to understand that the creation of a strong culture of distributed leadership unfolds over time, not overnight.  It happens gradually when a school leader makes thoughtful and measured “moves” to develop structures for inquiry, reflection, and collaboration. 

 

My thinking was further influenced by Pederson, Yager and Yager’s study on distributed leadership, wherein they conducted in-depth interviews with eight teachers who were working in a context where leadership had been distributed (2010). They write, “The teachers also indicated that the principal was a co-learner along with the teachers.” The notion of being a co-learner and a leader was a grounding and important understanding for me.  I loved the idea that the Inclusion community could utilize our “collective intelligence” to create “new knowledge.”  This was an important reminder that some of the best professional learning occurs when we capitalize upon the incredible skills, knowledge and talents that already exist within our group.  Though I developed a sense of identity as a leader in our community, I developed the equally important identity of co-learner alongside my colleagues.

 

After digging into the literature on distributed leadership, I was eager to learn more about best practices from other practitioners in roles similar to my own.  I interviewed the Director of Special Education for a large charter network in California that has 24 schools in four regions, compared with High Tech High’s 12 schools in three regions.  I asked her about her network’s approach to developing leadership capacity and distributing leadership, and she shared some important understandings with me.  First, when she asks people to step into leadership roles, she provides three layers of “incentives.”  The first layer is “privileges” (for example, getting to fly to visit schools in a different region).  The second is “opportunities” (for example, getting to represent the organization at a conference).  The third is “rewards” (for example, receiving a monetary a stipend).  The rationale behind these incentives makes a lot of sense to me.  Our group of Inclusion Specialists is already incredibly busy and often overwhelmed, and I feel reticent to ask someone to take on additional responsibilities.  I also understand the culture of HTH which is often opposed to stipends for many good reasons, including the effect they can have of limiting peoples’ perception of their “role” and feeling they should be rewarded for doing something “extra.”  However, given that I perceive these additional leadership responsibilities as far beyond the “scope” of the typical Inclusion Specialist role, I believe that a monetary stipend and/or other incentives (such as travel, opportunities to present at workshops) could be important for us.

 

Trust and Relationships

My review of literature about the topic of distributed leadership and leadership capacity revealed some important understandings about culture and trust.  In her piece, “Teacher Leadership: Making Your Voice Count,” Kathryn Singh writes,  “Shared leadership requires trusting relationships.  If teachers perceive unfair and dishonest treatment, trust will not develop or will wane, and those teachers will choose not to collaborate” (Singh, 2001 p. 9).  Similarly, Daly (2009) found that “high levels of trust are associated with lower levels of a threat-rigid response, thereby representing an important first step in the expanding role that trust plays in contemporary educational settings” (Daly 2011, p. 205).  This is a particularly provocative finding in the context of Special Education.  Daly explains that “threat-rigidity” is the phenomenon that occurs when, in response to a perceived threat (ie, in Special Education, being found out of compliance or in violation of a regulation or law), the organization creates “rigid hierarchical systems, centralize top-down decision making, limit access to information, enact habituated/stereotyped responses, and stifle divergent views” (Daly 2011, p. 204).  The fact that high levels of trust are associated with lower threat-rigid response is extremely important in the context of Inclusion.  One of my worst fears is a regression toward the “norm” for Special Ed where my colleagues’ decision-making is driven by a fear of “going to Special Ed jail!” 

 

I realized how important it was to develop a strong culture of trust in our professional adult learning community.  But what exactly did that mean?  To help me better understand the notion of “trust,” I turned to Bennis (1999) who asserts that “these are the factors that generate trust -- at work or in a partnership, a marriage, or a friendship: competence, constancy, caring, candor, congruity” (Bennis 1999, p. 4).  Bennis defines ‘congruity’ as being authentic, being consistent, and “presenting the same face at work as at home” (p. 5).  He defines ‘candor’ as perhaps the most important component of trust, because leaders who create a climate of candor remove the sense of fear that keeps people from sharing bad news or being honest about challenges they are facing (p. 5).  I realized how important it was for me to model candor and congruity as a leader in order to build a culture that embodied these important qualities.  I needed to be honest and vulnerable about my own dilemmas and fears.

 

Professional Development Tools: Learning Parters and Improvement Questions

I knew part of my work would be to support our group in developing a clear sense of some of the topics that we wanted to explore, but the question still remained of how to frame our learning experiences.  One approach that I wanted to utilize was the development of “improvement questions” to guide our inquiry, action, and reflection in “learning partnerships” (also known as “critical friend” pairs).  In their article “Deep Learning: Inquiring Communities of Practice,” Halbert and Kaser (2006) assert that the identification of an “improvement question” is an exercise that “creates curiosity and builds commitment in learners of all ages... a clear inquiry focus... helps create both immediate and long-term results” (p. 43). The development of “improvement questions” would be authentic because they would be generated by the learning partners who would pursue them and create a clear focus for the work.  In the future, each region might even develop an improvement question to pursue within their region.  This way, we would have a touchstone to continually return to as we reflected on and evaluated the success of our efforts. 

 

The idea of utilizing an improvement question also surfaces in the book “The Improvement Guide” (2009) by Langley, Moen, Nolan, Nolan, Norman and Provost.  Langley and Nolan et al establish (within the context of the medical field) what they call a “model for improvement” by asking three questions: What are we trying to accomplish?  How will we know that a change is an improvement?  What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?  They advise that when an organization is attempting to improve and change, practitioners should engage in a cycle they call PDSA (“plan, do, study, act”).  This framework was very helpful for my work.  I set up a google doc spreadsheet where every individual wrote their improvement question AND they answered the question “how will I know if I am successful in addressing my question?” (in other words, how will I know that the change is actually an improvement?)  This very simple question is extremely powerful because it grounds the actions people take and guide them in a reflective process very similar to the action research process (cycles of inquiry, action and reflection).

 

All, Not Some

A unique component of my action research was my exploration of how to lead rich professional development around the very broad topic of “full inclusion.”  A critical learning that surfaced in my research is that when “Special Educators” lead Professional Development with classroom teachers, they tend to focus on deficit, and on “some” but not “all.”  I have been guilty of this in the past, leading PD with a focus on particular groups (ie, students with ADHD) and with a focus on very narrow topics (ie, how to provide accommodations to students with dyslexia).  However, in their article “Professional Development and Inclusive Schools: Reflections on Effective Pra ctice,” McLeskey and Waldron (2002) contend that,

“...focusing solely (or largely) on students with disabilities increases the probability that special education teachers will continue to be perceived as responsible for

making the necessary changes and providing support for "their" students, even when they are placed in a general education classroom. General education classroom teachers are much more responsive to changes that address improving their schools and classrooms to better meet the needs of all students, including students with disabilities” (168).

This simple contention powerfully shifted my perception of “Special Education.”  It caused me to reflect about how well-intentioned but misguided my own attempts at professional development with classroom teachers have been in the past.  It’s no wonder that I created a culture where classroom teachers would often (much to my frustration) approach me with a challenge about one of “my” students, and then ask me to identify and implement a solution.  Instead, professional development around the topic of “Special Education” should be focused on all students, and the dialogue and language should be about all.  Instead of “Supporting Students with ADHD,” the topic should instead be “How to Engage all Learners in your Classroom.”  I once heard a teacher at one of the HTH schools share that when he plans a project, he plans it with the student who struggles most in mind, and then designs learning experiences that he knows will be accessible to that student.  He shared that he is always amazed by how the strategies and approaches that work well for that one student are actually great for all students! 

 

Though it was important to me to share leadership and decision-making, and to give teachers ownership over the topics they wanted to explore, I also felt compelled to push on the common use of language like “your students” versus “my students.”  Though at first I questioned whether sharing my views so explicitly would be in violation of a culture of distributed leadership, after a powerful conversation with my graduate advisor during class one night, I realized that sharing leadership does not mean burying your values and beliefs as a leader!  I chose to open our winter retreat by sharing my vision explicitly and clearly, focusing on how language like “yours” and “mine” is detrimental to inclusive practice.  I saw this as an important opportunity to “lead from the front” and I am glad that I chose to do so.

 

My review of the literature gave me an important theoretical framework for the design and implementation of the series of Professional Development experiences that I held with the Inclusion community.  I felt committed to sharing leadership and allowing the voices of the individuals in our group to drive a new journey of collaboration and innovation within the world of Inclusion at High Tech High schools.