Common Elements
The common elements are the values, principles, and continuous activities for the change process. We strongly encourage your team to reach consensus on the values and principles that you want to be the foundation for your change process.
Values
Here are some values we recommend for your change process:
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Putting students first in all decisions
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Improving the quality of life for the adults who work in schools
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Creating healthy relationships between a school system and its community
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Building a shared vision among all stakeholder groups and empowering them
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Exemplifying group-action values, such as collaboration, consensus-building, dialogue, team learning, systemic thinking, and social responsibility as tools for change in mental models or mindsets
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Exemplifying personal-action values, such as full disclosure of concerns, trust, respect, responsibility, commitment, self-criticality, and flexibility
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Understanding societal evolution and the need for co-evolution with educational systems
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Building readiness and capacity for change
Principles
The following principles have been proven to enhance the success of your change process:
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Change in mental models is the most important outcome of the transformation process – it must be a learning process.
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Broad stakeholder involvement and ownership are key to a successful process.
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Process is more important than product because it brings about changes in the people involved.
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The process should entail consensus-building rather than majority rule
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The process should build and utilize participatory leadership (servant leadership)
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The process should have strong leadership and political support.
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Capacity building and Readiness are crucial to a successful process.
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The culture should be characterized by empowerment, inclusion, collaboration, consensus orientation, systems thinking, trust, disclosure, and the norm of not blaming people.
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Stakeholders must think in the ideal about what their educational system should be like, and the process should be an invention process more than a decision-making process.
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High-leverage changes should be made first, then the remaining changes should emerge as the system develops
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The design of PCBE must begin with the learning experiences, and then the instructional system, followed by the administrative system, and finally the governance system.
Continuous Activities
These activities address ongoing needs that the change team should monitor throughout the change effort and address whenever they fall below a critical threshold.
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Engage in evaluation and reflection.
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Build and maintain trust.
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Evolve mental models and culture.
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Sustain motivation.
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Develop systems-thinking and design skills.
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Develop and sustain participatory leadership.
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Communicate interactively with many stakeholders.
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Periodically secure and allocate necessary resources.
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Develop group-process and team-building skills.
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Engage in self-disclosure.
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Build and evolve a sense of community.
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Foster organizational learning and memory.