Search

The theoretical framework for this study draws on conceptual advances from two bodies of scholarship: (1) complexity thinking in education, which has recently focused on school system change; and (2) school leadership research, which has recently attended to the effects of leadership interventions to school improvement. Using a complexity-thinking framework, the purpose of this study was to understand how leadership practices contribute to shaping change in school systems and how change occurred across the system. Our study was conducted in an urban centre in Alberta within a public-school jurisdiction and in an area of the city that had a high population of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds from low-income households compared to other areas across the school jurisdiction. Students in this area typically scored in the lowest quartile on provincial standardized examinations. Our findings are significant because complexity thinking in the context of school leadership has not received sufficient empirical attention. In our study we identified and described pedagogical leadership practices that play a central role in redressing disparities currently found in schools.

Researchers examined seven schools in Alberta undergoing high school redesign, including the removal of the Carnegie Unit, a time-based metric for awarding course credits. A mixed methods convergent parallel design was used to gather data from leadership teams in the schools and to examine evidence of the impact on student learning. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed concurrently and then merged for the analysis. Findings illustrate that the removal of the Carnegie Unit was a catalyst for redesign and learning improvements. Five constitutive factors enable high school redesign, including: (1) a collective disposition as a learning community; (2) a focus on relationship building; (3) student input; (4) collaboration; and (5) changes to learning tasks and assessment practices. The findings provide insight into the ways in which leadership teams formed complex adaptive systems to enable change and may serve to inform practitioners and school leaders, schools and systems, and those who study policy changes in schools.

Exploring science as a collective undertaking embedded in sociocultural contexts is a critical aspect of science education. This article concerns questions of curriculum design for science education for young learners, and it reports findings of a study on a conservation and environmental education initiative in Mexico's Sierra de Huautla Biosphere Reserve. Using situational analysis to study this case, I discovered that conservation projects and the science behind them are seldom framed as situated within complex social factors; yet these factors often drive decisions about the environment and can drastically affect what is taught in science curriculums. Presenting science in all its complexity can make science curriculums 'live' and can help students understand science as instrumental in addressing challenges that society confronts today.