A systems perspective on exploring the sustainability of leadership initiatives in a secondary school setting

The growing interest in enhancing school effectiveness has meant that understanding change processes and how change can be effected have become critical requirements for education managers in general, and for school leaders in particular. Indeed, the importance of school leadership and the contribution of school leaders to overall school effectiveness is acknowledged by several international studies (Tajasom & Ahmad, 2011; Robinson, Lloyd & Rowe, 2008; Hallinger, 2011). In addition, an increasing emphasis on improving student achievement has drawn attention to the role of school leadership (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003; Sergiovanni, 2009).

Among the many roles that leaders undertake in schools, understanding and initiating change is seen as an important factor in attempts to seek continuous improvement, particularly in teaching and learning. As schools make attempts to stay relevant or competitive in a technologically driven society, managing change is, itself, getting more complex (Fullan, 2001). As a consequence, some researchers caution that a more “sophisticated” leadership is required to operate in a society where increasing attention is given to school leadership (Dimmock & Tan, 2013; Fullan, 2006; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000).

It is suggested by some researchers (Fullan, 2006; Dimmock & Tan, 2013) that such sophistication requires leaders to adequately equip themselves with a spectrum of various change management and other leadership skills, including those described as knowledge building and relationship building, bridging the analytical and the behavioural spectrums in order to implement and manage change in educational institutions.

However, the prescriptive nature of such advice about developing leadership skills belies a lack of consensus about what constitutes leadership, as is evident in the plethora of definitions of leadership that have been advanced over time (DeRue, Nahrgand, Wellman & Humphrey, 2011). Nevertheless, common threads run through these definitions, and include, for example, notions of “influence” and “power”. In addition, given that leadership is regarded as a social process, it is not surprising that several actors may be involved in mutually influencing the leadership process, wittingly or unwittingly engaging in interactions that support or impede the achievement of organisational goals. However, Burns (1978) has long stated that, amongst other findings, the main change agent for achieving desired outcomes could be regarded as the leader.

A consistent theme emerging from the literature on leadership is that “leadership matters” in orchestrating and implementing change (Bass & Bass, 2008, p. 11), especially in dynamic environments (e.g. Peterson, Walumbwa, Bryon & Myrowitz, 2009). For the purpose of this paper, then, leadership can be viewed as a form of influence to facilitate individual and collective efforts to learn and change, but also to effect organisational and pedagogical change.

The notions, conceptual frameworks and philosophies underpinning design thinking (DT) (Liedtka, 2011; Estrada & Goldman, 2017 ), and its relevance to business and educational contexts, were developed and advocated by the Stanford University Institute of Design/Design School (SU-DS) through its various professional and educational programmes and workshops (McCullagh, 2010). Since its conception, DT has increasingly been seen as a powerful means of reshaping management thinking and practices in the business context (Lee, 2011) and its practice has long extended across other sectors (Rowe, 1987).

Within education, DT has been described as one of several approaches to pedagogy that seek not only to engage students in a general sense, and in a manner that facilitates and enhances individual creativity, but that also provides a platform to signal the importance of, and to facilitate the process of innovation within organisations (Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009). Indeed, there is recognition that engagement in DT not only facilitates skills that enhance creative thinking, but also helps create mind-sets that are open to innovation and creativity (Goldman, 2018). This paper relates to an educational reform and change initiative where DT has been central to the development of a DT-infused approach to pedagogy with a view to generating similar outcomes.

In general, DT can be described as an exploratory, iterative, collaborative five phase human-centred and empathy-driven process for dealing with problematic situations (Liedtka, 2011; Goldman, 2018) in a manner that considers the insights and needs of problem owners and stakeholders: in this case, teachers, students, school managers, families etc.

DT involves a spectrum of emotional, behavioural, cognitive and practical skills, traits and mind-sets. DT processes emphasise the value of: (i) being able to display empathy in sensing that a problem or issue exists and needs addressing; (ii) an ability to identify and clearly define the issue for, and with problem owners; (iii) an ability and willingness to ideate or brainstorm with others for possible ways of addressing, solving or resolving the problem; a sense of pragmatism or action-orientation with respect to implementation that meets problem owners, end-user or stakeholder needs; (iv) demonstrating an ability to prototype solutions or interventions to meet those needs; and then (v) a willingness to seek feedback from those stakeholders by involving them in a test programme to refine (Brown, 2008).

For those engaged in the DT process, per se, core benefits are also considered to be behavioural and attitudinal, in that experience in using DT can help to build student confidence and trust, especially in relation to a student’s preparedness, aptitude and belief in their ability to tackle and address unfamiliar issues and unstructured problems in uncertain and complex environments. This notion, of believing in, and extending one’s ability to tackle problems has been termed as “creative confidence” by Kelley and Kelley (2013), a construct that aligns with Bandura’s (1977) notion of self-efficacy and Tierney and Farmer’s (2002) notion of creative self-efficacy.

Such creative confidence can be associated with an empathetic mind-set that seeks, accepts and responds to constructive criticism from peers; a mind-set that has tolerance of ambiguity and is open to avoiding premature closure of solution options and then the sunk-cost fallacy; and a mind-set that accepts failure as a means of learning about and developing other creative options – a notion described by Goldman (2018) as “failing forward”.

Research has shown that DT has been used within different educational settings in different ways and that positive outcomes have been experienced from such use. For example, whilst Harvard Business School has woven DT into its curricula, by contrast, Tan and Wong (2012) have reported the successful introduction of DT in promoting spiritual ideals in a school setting. In further contrast, Boni, Weingart and Evenson (2009) report the successful use of DT in the conduct of MBA student action-research projects promoting cost effectiveness in the health sector.

The diversity of these studies indicates the opportunity and potential benefit of using DT in different settings (Todd, 1999). However, there is scant literature that examines the process of implementing DT in educational settings in general, or school settings in particular. There is a similar absence of literature about the systemic nature of factors and relationships that underpin successful implementation, or for example, the systemic role that behavioural factors such as the perceptions of teachers, and/or societal/cultural norms play in successful implementation.

In addressing these matters, the wider research project to which this paper contributes seeks to illustrate the value and utility of DT in facilitating pedagogical developments in a Singaporean school setting, and the value and utility of developing a systems perspective and approach to understanding and managing the implementation process that contributes to change. As a precursor, the following section outlines the nature of the study and relevant findings.

This paper reports on part of a wider project that takes a multi-level approach to understanding systemic issues which confront those who seek to effect beneficial change in an education setting. It addresses the issues at three levels – micro-teacher, macro-teacher hubs and mesa-school level. It does so through a case study that facilitates exploration of a change undertaken in a Singapore secondary school setting. We accept the diverse views of Stake (1995) and Yin (2014) that case study research, even though it may manifest in different approaches, is an important form of qualitative research that allows core phenomena and related behavioural and cultural matters to be studied in depth and to be adequately understood (Baxter & Jack, 2008). This view accords with Denzin and Lincoln (2011) who also emphasise the benefits of the “thick” description and interpretation facilitated by qualitative inquiry and by qualitative case research.

We suggest that a case study in a Singapore secondary school setting has wider interest and relevance in as much as Singapore is commonly regarded as an early adopter of new ideas for organisational and educational developments such as design thinking (Koh, Chai, Wong, & Hong, 2015). In addition, Singapore is recognised to be a high performing education system compared to other developed countries (Oon-Seng, 2012; Schwab, 2011). It is well known for adopting new ideas for continuous improvement in learning and teaching. However, Singapore is also distinctive in that organisational structures are predominantly hierarchical, with a culturally inherent authoritative style (Hofstede, 2001) of management. The Singapore setting has added interest therefore, because, for example, the collaborative nature of DT by its nature challenges hierarchy and authoritarianism. As such, it presents an interesting challenge for those leading change and also for those seeking to develop appropriate conceptual frameworks to understand such problematic situations.

In this research, the case organisation is a Singapore secondary school that had engaged its teachers in a school-based Teacher Development Programme (TDP) which included participation in the SU-DS teacher development workshops, and had implemented DT for two years. The students were aged between 13 and 14 – secondary one and two.

For the wider study, semi-structured interviews with teachers were deployed as the main vehicle for data collection, especially for exploring the perceptions and opinions of teachers in what could be considered a “natural language” setting where participants’ experience and understanding of what constitutes design thinking is embedded in the context of their teaching.

In total, individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with 16 teachers for about sixty minutes each. An interview guide reflecting the objectives of the research, and developed by drawing on the relevant literature, was used to direct information gathering in three main areas: teacher understanding of DT and of the DT initiative and its importance; teacher involvement in the implementation of the initiative; and the attendant benefits and challenges for teaching and learning.

All interviews were audio-recorded and then transcribed before main themes were identified through close reading of transcripts. Subsequently, the process included integrating interview notes, coding and categorising the coded data. Analysis of the data was informed by use of the Constas (1992) category approach which facilitates the interweaving of literature-informed perspectives and those perspectives surfacing from the empirical case study.

Here, we examine the adoption and implementation of the DT initiative, and briefly overview a selection of relevant findings. First, we outline and discuss teachers’ perceptions of the process of DT, and of perceived individual and school-wide benefits. We then discuss teacher experiences of “change”, the nature and extent of engagement in its various forms and the accompanying attendant challenges in adopting DT.

In the following section, we demonstrate how different features, facets and relationships implicit in the preceding case narrative and analysis can be captured and represented using notions of systems thinking, and the associated protocols and causal loops diagrams (CLDs) of qualitative systems dynamics (Senge, 1990, 1999; Maani & Cavana, 2000; Sterman, 2000).

We note that systems thinking embraces the notion of entities, variables, relationships etc. being interconnected, inter-related, and displaying high levels of mutual dependency. That is, relationships are causal relationships. We also note that the underpinning ontological and epistemological assumptions of system dynamics as a methodology are that cause-effect relationships of an if-then sufficiency nature exist; and that mutual dependencies exist and give rise to feedback. The twin notions of relationship dynamics unfolding over-time and non-linearity, manifesting as immediate or delayed feedback and interdependency, are central to systems thinking. So is the notion of holism - that the whole is, or properties of the whole are, greater than the sum of its “parts”, its constituent events or behaviours. We suggest that the use of a systems approach has value in surfacing and portraying time-dependent dynamic and often mutually dependent causal relationships reflected in the case-based material presented here.

We claim that variables and their inter-relationships can be appropriately surfaced through observation, interview, narrative and content analysis (as mentioned in Methodology), and then displayed within a CLD. CLD protocols depict causal relationships as directed arrows (See Figure 1) – with the cause being annotated as a short phrase at the tail of the arrow, and the effect at the arrow head. Mutual dependencies between events or groups of relationships are then portrayed as feedback loops (as in Figures 2, 3 & 4).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

We demonstrate that CLDs may not only offer visual representations of variables and relationships that exhibit high levels of interaction and mutual dependency, but in doing so, facilitate an alternative perspective on the case material, and guide its re-interpretation using systems concepts. By contrast, statistical approaches using cross-sectional sample data have a more limited domain of applicability related to the development of descriptive models using static, linear relationships.

In summary, our approach seeks to understand, through the initial identification of individual cause-effect relationships between pairs of variables, how those relationships may form a complex of higher level interactions and mutual dependencies, which can be characterised as causal or feedback loops. Such causal loops, may in turn, interact with one another to generate system-wide or systemic effects which may not be attributable to any one variable or cause-effect relationship.

The representational CLD may then facilitate appropriate narration and interpretation of the wider complex or system, here, the change environment, and provide complementary insights to what might contribute to and constitute a successful change initiative. The following section illustrates the approach taken via a sequence of CLDs of increasing complexity.

First, we illustrate, via Figure 1, how the institutional commitment to DT is expressed through an investment in funding teacher participation in the SU-DS teacher development workshops, with the intent of developing individual teacher capability and building collective capacity within the school. Then, in Figure 2, building on and synthesising common variables and relationships in Figure 1, we provide an illustration of how attempts to engage both in capability development and capacity building across teachers may contribute to effective implementation of the DT initiative. In particular, we show how perceived benefits accruing to individual teachers and accruing from the collective capacity of teachers, may be perceived as “small victories” that enhance enthusiasm and commitment of individual teachers.

Figure 3 then incorporates those “victories” that emerge as new educational developments and generate school-wide benefits, as opposed to individual teacher benefits. Figures 4a and 4b provide further systemic insight about other factors that may emerge during implementation of the DT initiative and that may then create obstacles to further success or even undermine the initiative.

Figure 4a.

Figure 4b.

We begin by outlining how a systems representation may be constructed, annotated and narrated (see Figure 1). First, we identify important entities or variables, for example, institutional commitment to the design thinking initiative, quality of capability development programme and ability to build teacher capability. These variables are surfaced from the content analysis conducted (See Methodology).

In this case, we interpret Figure 1 as follows:

Similarly,

Whilst Figure 1 presents a set of cause-effect relationships as a linear sequence, purely for illustrative purposes, Figures 2 and 3 successively extend the diagrammatic representation of the causal relationships as a set of mutually dependent variables, causal relationships and causal loops to form a causal loop diagram (CLD). The intent of such a CLD is not only to reveal the overall systemic structure, as a patterned set of dynamic feedback loops, but to facilitate interpretation of how individual and systems behaviour and outcomes evolve as emergent properties of that systemic structure. We illustrate such intent below by narration and interpretation of Figures 2 and 3.

First, Figure 2 provides an illustration of how participation in the SU-DS workshops sought both to develop the capability of individual teachers, and to build a collective capacity amongst and through teachers, that would embed and advance the DT initiative.

We may then narrate the outer Loop R2a in Figure 2, which we may term the Teacher Hub loop, as follows:

Loop R2a thus comprises a set of seven positive causal relationships contributing to a positive or virtuous Reinforcing Loop, and aiming to build a strong Teacher Hub, as a guiding coalition, to promote change.

A narration of the six causal relationships in Loop R1a would relate, by contrast, to Individual Teachers, such that:

Loop R1a similarly comprises another set of causal relationships that can be described as a virtuous Reinforcing Loop.

For Figure 2, we note again that the reinforcing loops R2a & R2b relate to groups of teachers manifesting as teacher hubs or teacher collectives, whilst the various reinforcing loops R1a & R1b encompass relationships that relate to and impact on individual teachers. In Figure 3, we extend the systems representation beyond, say, teacher perceptions of individual benefits and of benefits from an enhanced collective capacity, to include the development of new design thinking-related educational practices that contribute to school-wide benefits.