It's a situation all supervisors face: A teacher describes a problem, then asks for guidance. Recently, I attempted to provide such guidance to a teacher. But after she left, I realized that I did not promote her ability to solve problems. Once again, I gave direction.
Though I aim to empower teachers, my tendency to advise perpetuates an unspoken hierarchical power structure and school culture. When I realized this, I returned to the teacher and asked for her thoughts about the problem she had presented. After some reflection, she generated an effective solution.
Beyond the Surface
Given that administrators typically spend more than three-quarters of their time communicating (Johnson 1994), a critical step in transforming school culture is to address how they talk to their staff members. When I began to implement site-based management in my school, I found that teachers often resisted the necessary processes of collaboration and shared leadership. Instead, they continued to look to me for direction and leadership. I discovered that I needed to go beyond altering the surface leadership structure to modify the underlying structure of how I communicated with teachers. This enabled me to empower teachers and to implement a successful approach to site-based management.
- Becoming aware of the subtle, yet powerful, role of communication in school leadership.
- Discovering how unconscious scripts interfered with my attempts to empower teachers.
- Reflectively formulating new scripts and testing them.
- Honing and entrenching new scripts until they became reflexive and natural.
Awareness of Communication
For administrators trying to implement site-based management, it is essential to change the school culture into one that supports and empowers teachers. Efforts to share leadership can succeed only when teachers feel empowered.
Johnson (1994), one of the few researchers to address the role communication plays in empowering teachers, urges administrators to reflect deeply and deliberately on the content and style of their communication. Even well-intended communication, she says, can leave teachers feeling complimented but at the same time relegated to a "subadult" level. Through many examples, Johnson reveals the futility of supervisory attempts to change teacher behaviors primarily through advising them. Such methods disempower teachers and neither recognize nor capitalize on their expertise. Administrators often fail to see this, and they continue to communicate based on what Johnson calls their "scripted communication patterns," unaware that this blocks the process of transforming a school culture into one where teachers collaborate and take on more leadership and responsibility.
Conditioned Scripts
Based on what I learned in administration courses about the importance of teacher buy-in and participation in the decision-making process, I believed that site-based management would best facilitate a staff's professional development. When I implemented site-based management, I noted the teachers' lack of initiative and their reluctance to collaborate. At first, I blamed the teachers. "They are not ready or willing to be empowered," I lamented. On deeper reflection, however, I saw the role I played in the problem. Although I often asked for teacher input, I spent a greater amount of time giving advice and directives. For example, when I asked teachers to individualize math instructions, they did so only for a few days, then quickly returned to whole-group instruction.
The futility of this approach soon became clear when I noticed that teachers simply did not heed such directives, and the school culture did not move toward embracing collaboration and sharing leadership responsibilities. When I realized that my communication scripts did not serve my goals, I began to examine their origins and to discern their effects.
In retrospect, it appears that my own background experiences of how I was supervised exerted greater influence on my daily supervisory practices than did my beliefs about how one should supervise teachers. Having worked only in hierarchical organizations, I supervised as I had been supervised. For example, my evaluations from my supervisors consisted of typed letters following infrequent lesson observations. The letters described what went well and what did not during the observation. Though I did not find this model useful when I was a teacher, it was the model I fell back on as a supervisor. I wasn't surprised when I received an equally uninspired response from the teachers I supervised.
In a similarly hierarchical vein, I once viewed my supervisor as a source of greater knowledge and expertise whom I could approach for guidance when difficulties arose. Once I became a supervisor, I also assumed the role of advisor. Though one could justifiably argue that it is sometimes appropriate for a supervisor to give advice, advising cannot be the dominant mode of communication if teachers are to learn to tap into their own expertise. Supervisors must give greater priority to encouraging teachers to reflect more deeply and to trust their own knowledge base.
In addition, I often inadvertently communicated a reluctance to relinquish control and to trust that greater autonomy would enable teachers to teach more effectively. For example, when a teacher asked if she could lead a discussion at a faculty meeting on a specific topic, I immediately asked her to clarify exactly what she wanted to explore and to tell me the details of what she might say. Then I began to share my knowledge on the topic with her. The tone of my response conveyed, though unintentionally, that I was more expert on the topic. As in the opening example, I quickly realized the potential effect of my response and changed my tone to one that was more supportive. In these small ways, I began to create new communication scripts.
Analysis and Change
Becoming aware of how conditioned scripts drive communication is the first step toward altering them. The two major factors that influenced how I analyzed my scripts were the reactions they evoked from teachers and a conscious effort to predict what the larger effects of an interaction were on the goal of creating an empowering school culture. This process requires that a supervisor be absolutely clear concerning the purpose of administration. Then he or she can examine whether the communication contributes to making the vision a reality.
During this process, I often found it helpful to write down what I planned to say to a teacher, then note the possible effects of the different options. I also kept a log in which I recorded interactions, analyzed them, then planned alternative ways to communicate if they did not seem to empower teachers.
For example, when a parent recently approached me with what I believed was a valid concern about how a teacher worked with her child, my conditioned reaction prompted me to suggest that the teacher make certain changes. When I considered the outcomes of this option, however, it became clear that asking the teacher to change how she taught the child would accomplish little. She probably would react defensively and might comply only on a surface level. This approach would not serve to empower her.
In a later meeting, I asked this teacher how she felt she worked with the child. She expressed concern that she was not teaching the child effectively, the same concern that the parent had mentioned. I then helped her think through possible actions she could take to solve the problem. Rather than falling back on my tendency to direct, I encouraged her to generate her own solutions, then supported her in implementing them. Instead of becoming defensive, she opened up and took responsibility for changing how she would teach the child. Knowing the child and the situation more intimately than I did, she generated solutions that were superior to those I might have suggested.
Another teacher had difficulties teaching subtraction to a child. Rather than relying on my old supervisory scripts, I encouraged her to use her own knowledge and expertise. I asked her to recall different ways to teach subtraction and to suggest what she felt would work with this child. Again, knowing the child as well as she did, she chose an approach that I would not have suggested. It worked well with the child. I was glad I resisted my conditioned tendency to direct and had chosen to listen, elicit, and support, instead.
Habitual Reflection
Despite the changes I have made in how I communicate with teachers, at times I reflexively operate from my older scripts. Recently, I walked into a classroom and gave a directive that I immediately realized addressed an insignificant problem and had a discouraging effect on the teacher. At such times, I recall Johnson's (1994) advice concerning the importance of making mistakes in a nonthreatening environment. An administrator can better strengthen risk-taking and create an empowered school culture by avoiding small criticisms, especially in the initial trust-building phases. A vital part of empowering teachers includes providing supportive assistance, even when mistakes occur. Similarly, administrators need to be gentle and accepting with themselves when they make mistakes. I would gain little by berating myself for my slip-ups.
Change is slow and awkward at first. When I began to use my new scripts, I sometimes felt I was being artificial and contrived. In time, however, the new scripts have become as comfortable as the old ones and far more effective. Supervision has become immensely more fulfilling. As with any new habit, constant practice and reflection is necessary. Continuing to refine and hone my communication style is an ongoing journey. Success did not come as soon as I decided to change. It came almost imperceptibly.
Supervisory resistance to change communication patterns may play a more substantial role in the lackluster results of schools that have explored site-based management than is currently recognized. Though the literature on school reform recognizes that teacher change poses tremendous challenges (Fullan 1991), it gives far less attention to the challenges change poses for administrators.
While studying the obstacles to effective school change in administration courses, I never once considered the role an administrator's unconscious resistance to change could play. When trying to implement site-based management, I discovered that I unconsciously resisted change and continued to foster a hierarchical school culture. Altering school structures without simultaneously addressing my own influence on the more elusive, or hidden, school culture proved unsuccessful.
Even administrators committed to change do not always undertake the process automatically. The process of transforming schools from hierarchical organizations, which treat administrators as sources of superior knowledge, into site-based managed organizations that implicitly place greater trust in teacher judgment, requires not only administrative buy-in, but multilevel administrative change.
How and what administrators communicate is critical to forming the nurturing and empowering relationships necessary for teachers to risk change and teach most effectively. Leading through example, administrators who personally experience and model the change process have greater credibility when they ask teachers to change. Communication is an ideal place to start.
