Change leadership when implementing innovative learning environments

Abstract

The educational architecture that has been built in New Zealand since 2011 has predominately been in the style of innovative learning environments (ILEs). While ILEs potentially offer teachers access to a wider range of teaching and learning approaches and more collaboration opportunities than traditional classrooms they also often require significant shifts in teacher practice to be successful. Leadership is often seen as an important factor in the successful implementation of such environments but there is very little research into the specific change leadership practices principals can employ to successfully transition their schools to ILEs. As part of the Australian Research Council-funded Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change project (ILETC) an analytic autoethnographic study was undertaken to identify the change leadership practices that are most likely to lead to a successful ILE implementation. A literature review was undertaken, the key findings from which were used to develop a conceptual framework. This framework was then used in a series of interactive interviews with New Zealand primary school principals to compare their personal experience (and those of the researcher) with change leadership principles in research literature. This joint sense-making was complemented by a range of other data sources including field notes, workshop artefacts, workshop transcripts, memories and recollections. Two ‘key informants’ (recognised experts in the field) were also used throughout the research process to support sense-making. The findings outline two sets of change leadership principles; a set that are important to uphold throughout the entire change process (persistent principles); and a set that are important (respectively) in the preparing, implementing and sustaining phases of a change (phase-dependent principles). These principles, when intelligently and sensitively applied by school leaders throughout the innovative learning environment implementation, will increase the likelihood a transition to ILEs will be successful, ultimately leading to improved learning and well-being outcomes for teachers and students.