S6 E8 - From Compliance to Commitment: Transforming School Improvement

Subscribe to the Podcast

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm Jocelyn and I am so pleased that you've joined me for this episode recorded here in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people. Today we're diving into something that absolutely makes or breaks any improvement efforts in schools: how to make sure change happens with people, not to them.

Compliance VS Commitment

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately because I keep hearing stories from leaders who are genuinely trying to do the right thing by their teams, but somehow their well-intentioned, professional learning initiatives fall flat. Teachers go through the motions, tick boxes, but nothing really changes, they look up and in six months, what they thought was going to happen just hasn't, and I'm wondering if that sounds familiar to you. Here's what I've learned; there's a world of difference between compliance and commitment, and I don't mean that in the sense that people aren't committed to their jobs or committed to the students. I mean that change is really hard and the reason behind us adjusting our practices has to be something that is connected to us, not something we do so that we don't get into trouble.

When change is done to people, you might get compliance. People show up, they nod in the right places, they complete the required tasks and then go back to their classrooms and it's business as usual. Even if they've genuinely tried to give the practice a go to start with, it can soon drop off. When change is done with people, however, you can get commitment, and commitment is what transforms practice.

And so what's the difference? What are the mechanisms that move us from compliance and into commitment?

When change is done to people, decisions are made in the office and then handed down. The what and the how are predetermined. People are told what to do differently and the expectation is that they'll just implement it. This approach treats teachers like technicians who simply need new instructions. But when change is done with people, it starts with acknowledging that teachers are professionals who bring expertise, experience and insight to the table. Doesn't mean that there's no more learning to do, though. It does recognise that sustainable change requires people to understand not just what they're doing, but why they're doing it and how it connects to their existing strengths and challenges. And when I'm talking about the why, I'm talking about, yes, the big picture why in terms of our moral obligation, but I'm also talking about the why around the instruction itself, what makes practices effective.

We Want Strategic Practitioners

And here's something that's been weighing on my mind lately well, not just lately, for a long time actually, so much professional learning centres on the delivery of programs and the use of resources. Schools invest in new curriculum, attend training sessions on how to implement them and then focus all their energy on following the steps with fidelity. But beyond that initial introductory phase, they don't spend time on building real capacity within their teams. We're relying on the program or the resource to do the heavy lifting, when we all know that it's the capacity and the knowledge and experience of the individual teacher that makes the biggest difference. When we focus solely on the what, when we're ticking boxes on the program steps, we miss a huge opportunity to support people to develop as strategic practitioners. Strategic practitioners don't just tick boxes for compliance, they make decisions for practice in response to the needs of the students in front of them.

Now don't get me wrong, when we are first learning, following the steps of the program, exactly how it's written is precisely what we should be doing. This is a necessary part of learning. You mimic, you copy, you follow the steps. The problem arises when that's where the developmental journey ends. Until we move from doing instruction to understanding what makes instruction successful, we simply won't see the outcomes we know are possible. Our teams will continue to work harder than they've ever worked without the reward of the strong student outcomes they hope are possible.

I want the results, too...

There are a growing number of schools who have been doing the programs as written with fidelity for years who are now looking up and realising that their data is no better than it was when they started, and this is simply not ok. As a Principal in my Leading Learning Success program said during our initial goal setting for her school, she said, "I want our outcomes to equal our effort. We are working so hard, I want the results, too." That statement hit me right in the heart because it captures exactly what's wrong with so much professional learning. We're asking people to work incredibly hard, but we're not giving them the deep understanding they need to make that hard work pay off. This is where collaborative professional learning comes in.

Collaborate Professional Learning

In truly collaborative professional learning, you don't start with predetermined solutions such as a program. You start with defining your current context and building clarity on where your strengths and challenges lie. You begin by asking your team, "What's happening in our classrooms that we know is moving the needle on outcomes? Where are we not seeing this? Where are our students thriving and where do we want to see growth?" When teams start here, something magical can happen. Instead of feeling like they're being told their current practice isn't good enough, teachers feel heard and valued. They become active participants in identifying where they want to grow, rather than passive recipients of someone else's improvement agenda.

When teachers understand the why behind the instructional design, when they understand how children learn to read and write and understand maths, they make fundamentally different choices about their practice. And this understanding can't be imposed from the outside. It has to be built from within through reflection, discussion and collaborative inquiry.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is that we're treating teachers as if they're broken. We're starting from a point of deficit. We focus on what's not working, what's missing, what needs to be fixed. But collaborative professional learning starts with strengths, because, I can promise you, nobody in this work is starting from zero. In this collaborative work, we ask what we're already doing that's working well and we need to learn to understand why they work. When we know why our existing successful techniques and strategies work, then we can build on them. But you can't build on them before you know why they're successful in the first place. You can't leverage them to help you tackle new challenges that are always on the horizon.

And this isn't just the feel-good stuff. If you have listened to this podcast for any length of time or you've done any work with me, you'll know that I'm not the light and fluffy sort. This stuff is grounded in how adults actually learn and develop their professional knowledge. When people feel competent and valued, they're much more willing to take risks and try new approaches. When they feel criticised or inadequate, they become really defensive and resistant to change, and I see this playing out in schools all the time.

I love working with leaders who take the time to really understand their team's current practice before introducing new approaches. One of the big mistakes that new leaders make, whether that's a new instructional leader in a space or a new Principal, is presuming they have all the answers for the new context before they understand the new context. So they walk in with a plan that they've developed for some other school and plonk it on the table and say, right, this is what we're doing here. What they could do instead is spend time in classrooms, not to evaluate or judge, but genuinely understand what's working and where the challenges lie. They have to learn about the context. They have conversations with teachers about their thinking, decision making. They build relationships, and they observe students. This groundwork is essential because it helps leaders understand not just what teachers are doing but why they're doing it. And when you get the why behind current practice, you can build on that and evolve and grow so much easier. 

It Isn't Boundaryless or Structureless

Now here's where some people get a little nervous around collaborative approaches, and I completely understand it. We worry that being collaborative means anything goes, that there's no standards or expectations. We worry that collaborative approaches mean trusting, "I feel it in my heart" as a data set, but that's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is collaborative professional learning needs clear boundaries and structure. In fact, I think it needs more thoughtful structure than those top-down approaches. Think about it this way, when you're doing change to people, the structure is simple, you tell people what to do and you expect them to go off and do it. But when you're enacting change with people, you need to create structures that allow for reflection, discussion, questioning and gradual implementation. You need to balance giving people ownership with maintaining clear expectations about what great practice looks like. We're not saying hand the decision-making over to novices in the space, but we are saying that we can work with people. This might look like providing a framework for instructional decision-making while allowing teams to determine how they'll apply that framework in their specific context, with the guidance of an instructional leader and the school's existing instructional framework to align to. Or it might mean setting clear goals for students while giving teachers some decision-making involvement in how they'll work towards those goals.

Making Change Happen

One of the most important things that we can do to make change happen with people is to create genuine space for reflection and ownership. This means slowing down enough to allow people to process new information, connect it to their existing knowledge and think through how it applies to their specific classroom context. I can't tell you how many professional learning sessions I've been at, and I know that it's been the same for you, when new information is presented and then immediately followed up with this expectation that you'll just go off and do it, here you go. So we have an I do and a you do, and there we are. But that's not how anyone learns. We need time to ruminate and discuss, to try small experiments. We need time to be able to make small mistakes that help us understand the impact of our actions. We have to reflect on that and build confidence.

When we create space for that kind of reflective practice, something beautiful can happen. Teachers start to own their professional learning. The deer in the headlights look on their faces begins to disappear and they begin to be excited by the changes that are coming, because they feel that they're building success and they are. They begin to see themselves as professionals in their own classrooms who are responsible for being responsive to student ideas. They test things out, they gather evidence, they make informed decisions about their practice. And this is when real, sustainable change happens. And I want to be really honest with you here, collaborative professional learning takes longer than the command and control approach. It's messier, it requires more patience and skill from leaders. But here's what I'm seeing working with schools all across the country: the results are worth it. When change happens with people, it sticks. Teachers don't just implement new practices, they understand them, adapt them within appropriate boundaries and continue to refine them over time as they grow their skill and knowledge. They become advocates for change rather than reluctant participants. They start to see professional learning as something that is central to their professional life, not a box to be ticked once or twice a year.

The Human Element

Research consistently shows us that professional learning is most effective when it's sustained, collaborative and focused on specific student learning outcomes, and the next episode of the podcast will be all about that, we're going to dive right into the research about effective professional learning. But what the research doesn't always capture is that human element, the fact that teachers are more likely to engage authentically when they feel respected, valued and heard. And we can read those words and nod along, but it's not until you see the light in the eyes of your teachers that you really take it to heart.

Last week I had a leader say, "Normally, when I'm working in the inclusion space and I'm talking with teachers about their students, the onus is on the student to participate, the student needs to do this, the student needs to do that, the student needs to be more motivated. But the most recent conversation I had was, Hmm, that didn't work so well and I can see that that student was cognitively overloaded. Next time I would do it this way," and the excitement from that leader in helping that teacher to make that enormous leap from feeling like they were helpless in solving the problem of that moment to realising that the curation of the learning environment was within their control, that is just so satisfying and it just really moves me because I believe in the transformational possibilities of this work.

So what does this mean for you...

So what does this mean for you as a leader? What does it mean for you as a Principal or an instructional coach or a deputy or a middle leader who's supporting a team? What does it mean for you as an individual teacher in a classroom? It means starting with your and your team's existing strengths and challenges rather than predetermined solutions. Before you go sending people out to PL, before you go spending money on expensive programs, we need to take the time to understand our current context before introducing anything new. We also need to create structures that allow for genuine collaboration and reflection. We have to get the team dynamics working. We need to be more comfortable with some messiness and ambiguity in the short term.

When you're doing change with people, that path isn't always linear. There will be questions, pushback and varied rates of implementation. The people work is always the hardest, but if you can stay committed to the collaborative process and you have the right tools at hand to provide you with frameworks and pathways and structures and support, you'll build much stronger capacity in your team over the long term. And that doesn't mean we can't have clear expectations or that you need to wait for unanimous agreement before moving forward. You're not asking for anyone's permission to improve a dodgy data set. It means finding ways to honour people's professionalism while maintaining focus on student outcomes. Both of those things can happen. There's just something deeply satisfying about watching a team own their own professional learning journey.

When teachers start asking questions about student data, when they begin seeking out research to inform their practice, when they start having rich conversations about instruction, that's when you know you've created the conditions for sustainable change. I remember a day that I was in a school and I'd been working with this school around their phonics approach and they use flexible groupings across classrooms and have classroom assistants take groups. Now they don't just throw the children and the materials at the classroom assistant. What they did was they helped those staff become data informed. They knew how to read the data, so they were saying things like, "Well, when I look at the data, it shows me that there's a couple of gaps in these correspondences. I think that's where I'm going to start, so we're not leaving gaps in our wake."

In this kind of leadership, it's harder, but it's also more fulfilling. Instead of feeling like we're constantly pushing people towards change they don't understand, you get to support and guide a team that's actively engaged in their own growth. There's no magic wands here, but there are some structures that can help. So, as you think about the professional learning in your school, ask yourself are we doing things with our team or to them? Are we creating genuine opportunities for collaboration and reflection? Are we building on strengths while addressing challenges? Are we helping people understand not just what to do, but why it matters?

Remember, sustainable change doesn't happen because someone tells you to change. It happens because you understand why that change is needed, you feel supported in the process and you have genuine ownership over how that change unfolds in your context. Not one single one of us is self-employed, well, maybe me, and even I don't get to do exactly what I want all the time. Leaders have to lead, there's no doubt about it, but we can bring our teams along for the journey and make them active participants in it.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. Until next time, remember you won't break those children, but you also have to make sure that you don't break the grown-ups either, especially yourself. Choose professional learning that honours your professionalism and creates genuine opportunities for growth.

Until the next episode, that's all from me. Thanks so much, everyone. Happy teaching, bye.

Show Notes:

Leading Learning Success

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help you and your school enact change with people and not just do it to them, click here.