building a learning community through restitution · building a: learning community through...

Brown, W. (2004). Building a: Learning Community Through Restitution 1

BUILDING A LEARNING COMMUNITY THROUGH RESTITUTION

Chapters IV, V, and VI of a Doctoral Dissertation

by Willow Brown

University of Saskatchewan Department of Educational Administration

2004

ABSTRACT

This case study focused on understanding forces of cultural change among the staff members of one inner-city elementary school. Participants and a university researcher set out to learn Restitution (Gossen, 1996), a counselling-based approach to student self-management, and implement it reflectively through collaborative action research. We were interested in exploring relationships between individual learning and the growth of adaptive capacity in the professional community. Reflections confirmed that participants observed personal and community development, with positive effects on social conditions for student learning. Contributing factors were: (1) enhanced meta-cognition, and (2) development of common language to support new beliefs and practices. Four cultural patterns, or “tools” were also identified as enhancing capacity and hope: identity formation, empowerment, awareness, and connectedness. With its emphasis on personal autonomy, meta-cognition, and self-regulation according to community beliefs, Restitution was found to be an effective tool for establishing the cultural patterns that contributed to learning community development.

CHAPTER IV THE CONTEXT: ETHNOGRAPHIC

DESCRIPTION IN A LEARNING COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK

To answer questions of human development…, Vygotsky saw that “it would be necessary to

look not only at individuals but also at the social and material environment with which they

interacted in the course of their development” (Wells, 2000, p. 53)

Given that contextual circumstances shape

the unique developmental path of each learning community (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 10), description of context is a significant aspect of this study. Further, a Vygotskian perspective of learning recognizes that social activities are not merely a background for development, but a context that is internalized, with the active participation of the individual, to contribute to the formation of personal identity. In the tradition of Wertsch (1985), who pursued Vygotksy’s interest in the influence of culture on the development of individual self-regulation and of identity, this research attempted to uncover “those forms of social life that have the most profound consequences for mental life“ (p. 32). Thus, “thick description” of the school community, including its cultural nuances, was gathered and reported with an ethnographic influence (Wolcott, 1997).

This chapter describes Tansi Community school, the physical building, its surrounding neighbourhood, and provides an overview of school characteristics. Focusing on the significance of the human environment for group learning, the learning community (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) framework is used as a “pre-existing category scheme” (Merriam, 1998) to describe the culture of the school’s professional community. That is, observations related to Tansi’s “learning architecture” are categorized as aspects of three dynamic, interactive capacities: personal, interpersonal and organizational, and then situated within the larger societal context.

Though I was, for a time, an “insider” in this community and a participant in its cultural


characteristics, I limit this chapter to observing and reporting what appeared to exist apart from my interventions. My role as a learning agent, including the chronicle of my contributions and the degree of influence they were perceived to have on the community, are presented in Chapter V. Also presented in more detail, in Chapter VI, are the patterns of interaction that I grouped and identified as four cultural tools that were significant for the development of the Tansi learning community. The cultural patterns of “identity-construction”, “empowerment”, “awareness” and “connectedness”, may be mentioned here but will be revisited.

The Tansi Neighbourhood

My first visit to Tansi Community School was also my introduction to the neighbourhood. Arriving early and finding the front door still locked, I walked to the corner gas station to use the washroom. The attendant gave me a key and directions but the lock was not what I expected. A large plate of three-quarter inch steel was welded crudely across the metal door and secured with a padlock. As I crossed the street, the sun shone on the stained glass windows of a stately church and there was little traffic; except for the bingo hall, this neighbourhood appeared safe and familiar. However, broken bottles were strewn around a mailbox on the corner and at the front of the church was a billboard with large block letters and a startling message: “It’s not prostitution – It’s child abuse!”. Attached to the chain link fence by the school’s front door were more signs. I assumed these were painted by students. They used flowing lines and Aboriginal imagery to feature the words “Education” and “Harmony”. I was apprehensive, yet intrigued. I did not yet know that this site would be the focus of my doctoral research but I hoped it could be.

As the research took shape, I learned that ninety-eight percent of the nearly 270 pre-Kindergarten to Grade 8 students attending Tansi Community School in June, 2000, were of Aboriginal ancestry, predominantly Plains Cree. Interestingly, the principal reported that this non-diverse population is classified as “high” on the city’s ethnic diversity scale. For comparison, the provincial Aboriginal population is near 15%

and growing. Evidence of changing neighbour-hood composition over the past several decades was found in a framed piece of calligraphic art, listing World War II servicemen, neighbourhood sons whose family names may still be familiar to the city’s prominent business people. Yet the pace of demographic change appears to have accelerated in this neighbourhood recently. Information from an international study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on services for children and youth at risk (OECD, 1998) supplements statistics provided by the Tansi principal. This study, which included specific reference to Tansi, reported that the community schools criteria were met in the early nineties with a 64% Aboriginal population and a significant number of Asian and Caucasian students. By 1995 the proportion of First Nations and Metis students had reached 80% and was still growing.

On a typical school day with classes in session, a visitor to Tansi might notice students wandering and playing in the hallways and under the stairs. Some would be outside the office or the “community room” waiting for assistance, while others would be engaged in conversation about their needs with a concerned but understanding staff member. One might see, as I did, students who were crying, angry or sullen, and others who were curious about visitors. Sometimes adult conversations would be interrupted by students, even older ones, who stopped to hug a special teacher.

Some classroom doors would be locked even while classes were in session, but through the windows one would usually see the orderly activity of an ordinary school day. Occasionally, a frustrated child would explode into the hall and find a place to cool down. A few other students might be walking around, avoiding class until an adult found them and encouraged them to return. When the bell went, students would burst out of classrooms and the hallway would become a danger zone of hurtling bodies, some wrestling, many poking and punching, and most ignoring reminders to keep hands and feet to themselves or not to run. There would be some good-natured teasing, some profanity, and lots of body contact, with unprovoked attacks accompanied by loud protests. Inevitably,


someone would be hurt and someone else would be angry and defiant. Teachers, sometimes looking patient and relaxed and other times appearing tired, might be seen nurturing students and supporting the needs of both victims and offenders. Other staff members could be found taking refuge in the staff room.

At the time of the research, staffing at Tansi Community School consisted of twelve classroom teachers as well as a Cree language teacher, a part-time teacher working on cultural programs, and two resource teachers. (Adult high school equivalency programs were offered intermittently as funding permitted.) Of ten teacher associates, five were assigned to special needs students and the others had either “Community School” duties or “Literacy and Numeracy” designation. Tansi shared an itinerant counselor with two other schools. The principal was a full-time administrator and the teaching vice-principal had .3 release time for administrative duties. A Community School Coordinator also worked closely with administrators, the “Community” teacher associates, and with the Nutrition staff who supplied students with breakfast and lunch. The official staff roster was complete with a full-time secretary, a “head” custodian who worked days, and an evening custodian. However, consultants, social workers, students from various programs, and frequent parent and community volunteers were often present and involved in school activities. About one-fifth of the adult staff members were of First Nations heritage and a few of them lived in or near the attendance area.

The Tansi school building is a simple two-story rectangular design, built in 1961, with a gymnasium of later construction on the back and an addition of three portable classrooms at one end. Tidy grounds, fresh paint and shiny floors give the building a well-kept appearance, while bright, well-planned bulletin boards and displays of student work make the front foyer and hallways attractive. A series of professional-quality posters honouring local people and their values are prominent, giving the impression that every effort is made here to respect community members and help them to feel welcome. An Aboriginal-style branch and leaf design is a permanent part of hallway decor throughout the

main building, culminating in a symbolic tree and book mural that brightens one stairwell. It appeared that someone had invested great effort to make this school visually appealing and culturally affirming.

In terms of location, the Tansi neighbourhood lies only three blocks from the city’s central business district and less than one block off a major throughway and commercial zone. The school building is adjacent to an industrial shop and railroad tracks that some students cross on their way to school. At the front of the school, large evergreens tower over strips of lawn protected by a chain link fence. The playground area at the back is treeless and covered with asphalt or sparse grass, but does have the usual array of equipment and in winter, a small ice rink. Across the alley is a large empty lot which, in other city neighbourhoods, might have been an ideal location for a park. Here, however, it is posted as commercial property for sale.

In 2000, the Tansi neighbourhood’s average monthly rent of $402 per month was among the lowest in the city. An estimated 75% of students came from single-parent families, compared to 12% provincially and 10% in the city (OECD, 1998, p. 104). More than 75% of Tansi families were assumed to live below the poverty line. Student turnover was very high, with over one-third of the fall, 2000, registration comprised of “new” students. Based on past records, the principal expected that student turnover throughout the school year would approach 100%. However, the itinerant counselor noted considerable improvement from an estimated turnover of near 250% when he began working in the city’s core six years before. He explained that he would see the same students rotating through several inner-city schools, transferring out when pressure on themselves or their families increased.

Achievement at two to four grades below suburban levels for the majority of students was attributed to a combination of high transience and other risk factors such as “hunger, poor care during pregnancy, teen pregnancy, low level of education and troubles with the law” (OECD, pp. 98-104). Related to low elementary school


achievement was a high school drop out rate of up to 90% for First Nations and Metis students, as compared to a provincial rate of 16%. Thus, in 2000, the Tansi principal was unable to find evidence of even one student who was completing Grade 12 four years after leaving Tansi at the end of Grade 8.

Since 1980, Saskatchewan Education’s Community Schools Policy has provided a “comprehensive, preventive, culturally affirming and community-based approach to meeting the learning needs of at risk and Indian and Metis students” (Saskatchewan Education, 1996, p.2). Assignment of “Community School” status is based on criteria, including a high percentage of Indian or Metis students and a high rate of poverty. With this designation comes an annual grant for “staff to work with the community, nutrition programs and teacher associates (to have Indian or Metis background where possible) to increase the staff ratio and to bring people of Aboriginal ancestry into the school” (OECD, 1998). All parents and community members are invited to participate on a Community School Council that also has staff representatives. “The aim is to create a shared sense of responsibility for the education and well-being of children and to develop opportunities for Indian and Metis peoples to have greater participation in decision-making in public education” (Saskatchewan Education, 1996, p. 5).

The Community School initiative aims to build “communities of hope” (Saskatchewan Education, 1996). Casual visitors to Tansi may recognize the spirit of this policy enacted in artistic displays with cultural motifs, the Cree language program, an elder program (intermittent, due to funding), and the feasts and drumming that are a feature of school celebrations. Though “Tansi” is a pseudonym, a significant Cree greeting chosen for the purposes of confidentiality in this study, there has been some discussion about petitioning to have the actual name changed to increase its cultural relevance.

Tansi’s Learning Architecture

A postmodern approach to organizations portrays them as “cultural systems creating and generating symbolic realities” (Gergen, 1992, p. 216). Therefore, while a backdrop of demographic data may be necessary, this study focuses on the cultural reality of Tansi School for its participants. As one staff member confided, “this area has been studied to death”. Assuming that statistics alone are an inadequate basis for understanding this school and its people, this study portrays the professional community in the words of its members wherever possible. Further, excerpts from transcripts demonstrate the significance of language for cultural change at this school. Direct quotes illustrate how the commonly-understood phrases and personal “mantras” of Restitution and Control Theory were used by participants for both communication and self-regulation.

The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a cultural portrait of Tansi Community School, with the interactive capacities (personal, interpersonal and organizational) of the Learning Community framework (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) as an organizing schema. The interactive element of the three spheres cannot be overemphasized: Though this ethnography begins with a description of “personal” capacity, I do not assume that cultivation of a Learning Community must begin with individual change. In fact, a Tansi watchword, “creating the conditions”, suggested that there was a general acknowledgement of the degree to which social context influences individual development.

Personal Capacity for Learning

Building personal capacity means developing awareness of values, beliefs, and assumptions; moving toward a more caring attitude; and applying creative energy to learning. The source of personal capacity is an interaction of individual identity and expertise with opportunities for new learning (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). There is an adaptive element to capacity, with learning viewed as proactive and conscious action in response to one’s surroundings.


“Professional narrative” is constructed

when educators ask questions about capacity and commitment (Little, 1993) in the form of the question, “Who am I as a professional and what can I do in a school setting?”. The answer lies at the junction of identity and learning opportunities, and is the basis for agency. Constructivism lends logic to the assumption that a strong professional narrative may facilitate personal learning or impede it, depending on whether the innovation can be seen as coherent with existing core beliefs. That is, new learning is more likely to be embraced if it is within one’s zone of proximal development, or somehow related to the existing schema of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Further, once new beliefs are internalized as part of transformed identity, they are more likely to be displayed consistently in practice.

Personal Connections: Situating New Learning

Early in the study I provided participants with a simple “perception check” form, inviting them to disclose an approximate measure of their belief in Control Theory and Restitution ideas and estimate the frequency of their use of corresponding practices. Eight participants identified themselves as having a “very strong” belief in Control Theory and Restitution (10 on a scale of 1 to 10) and seven people gauged their frequency of use of Restitution strategies with students at 7 or above. Six others indicated “strong” commitment (7 or 8 on a scale from 1 to 10) and a similar or slightly lower frequency of use. The staff interpreted this data as showing that about half of their group thought of themselves as competent practitioners of Restitution, with others looking forward to gaining skill and confidence when training opportunities, time, and energy permitted.

Subsequent conversations confirmed that only a very few staff members were uninterested in Restitution or opposed to it. I have attributed some lack of interest to professional narratives that emphasized academic learning over social development. There was evidence that one or more uninvolved teachers may have been dedicated to school traditions perceived to be neglected as a result of the new, school-wide emphasis on Restitution. The few who left Tansi

at the end of the 1999-2000 school year may have experienced the innovation as incoherent with their existing beliefs and incompatible with their current professional identities. In any case, as the study began, the majority of Tansi staff members seemed to believe that implementation of Restitution would strengthen rather than threaten their self-image as professionals (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 21).

At a weekend Restitution training in March of 2000, there were twenty-eight staff and community members. Such a commitment of personal time to professional learning may have been an indication of the new principal’s ability to influence and inspire, or alternatively, a sign of staff readiness for “double-loop learning” (Argyris & Schon, 1978). This mass quest for “restructured school discipline” (Gossen, 1996) suggested to me that staff members had come to view existing systems and practices as inadequate to meet the needs of the community. Thus, by January of 2001, when I became actively engaged in data collection, a majority of the staff could be described as open or committed to the potentially transforming initiative of Restitution. Development of personal capacity had already begun as individuals confronted values, assumptions, belief systems and practices they had formerly embraced (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 13). Interview and informal dialogue as well as classroom observations indicated that a number of recently-revised professional narratives could safely be summarized as follows: “I am a teacher who is learning to treat students with more respect and to teach them to develop the skills needed to show respect for others”.

Individual Tansi educators were able to integrate the beliefs of Restitution with their existing personal identities in a variety of ways. Sally emphasized the celebratory aspect of Restitution and likened it to her East European heritage as well as to her deep personal belief that children are “precious gifts to be treasured”. Daisy and Lance related the strategies of Restitution to the value and freedom of each human being inherent in their Christian faiths, while Mark’s confidence and dedication implied a strong integration of his religious and professional beliefs. Mohtew found the language


familiar and comfortable because it was reminiscent of her experiences with counseling for partners of alcoholics. (This is not surprising because Gossen has been an addictions counselor.)

The resonance of Restitution perspectives with a First Nations worldview was expressed frequently. Pat struggled to articulate the comfortable “fit” of Restitution perspectives with a traditional Aboriginal worldview, and was able to do so more with his body language than with words. At the end of the project, Shelley commented about gains made in cultural diversity: “It’s fitting, the way we operate as a school now, is more fitting and serves the people that we work with and the community a lot better than the typical… [norm]” (p. 3). Illustrating the local “fit” of Restitution ideas, Fawn and her students chose symbols with cultural and personal meaning to illustrate the basic needs of Control Theory: Horses and eagles represented the human need for freedom, while tipis and buffalo stood for survival. An elder’s response to a presentation by Dr. Brokenleg became an oft-repeated anecdote, communicating the common feelings of relief and affirmation experienced when innovations were perceived to be compatible with Aboriginal ways of thinking. With her hands clasped and her head nodding, the elder had said, “It was just so good because I’m just so tired of trying to be white”.

In March, 2001, a school-based professional development day showcased the sensemaking efforts of two teachers. They demonstrated their integration of a variety of teachings into their own professional narratives. One woman used wedges of a circle to show how she integrated three sets of ideas in her beliefs about teaching, including (a) the ideas of Restitution, (b) the local community values on posters in the school foyer, and (c) “Circle of Courage” teachings (Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 1992). With the ever present circle as a significant symbol of inclusion for Tansi staff members, the group came together to form a gestalt-like community outlook comprised of multiple ideas and perspectives. Thus, the concepts of interdependence and wholeness were not unfamiliar at Tansi, and a foundation for

acceptance and integration of learning community ideas existed at the school site before I attempted to contribute a formal, academic version. Personal Motivation: Moving Toward the Ideal

Participant comments in Personal History and Belief Statements and subsequent Interview/Dialogues contributed to an under-standing of individual orientations to learning, to students, and to other staff members. The cadre of staff members most interested in developing their practice of Restitution were generally the ones who completed Personal History and Belief Statements first, who found time to participate in a follow-up Interview/Dialogue with me, or who joined a learning team and participated actively. Thus, I was able to collect a greater volume of specific information about the capacities of those who would emerge as leaders in the practice of Restitution at this school.

Participants revealed a variety of personal motivations for learning Restitution, but a salient theme was the inspiration to move toward an ideal version of oneself. When asked about a positive role model, Sally offered: “I guess it’s just my quality world perception of me” (p. 3). It was not surprising that several staff members, including Tim, Sarah, Karen, and Debra Kaye identified their own teachers or parents as positive role models. Flowers, Lorraine, and Grace remembered having affection for all their teachers and wanting to please them but also described painful memories of a teacher who seemed to dislike them and who treated them unfairly. Surprisingly, several participants, including Grace and Lance, articulated the source of their quality pictures of themselves by recalling authority figures who acted in ways that they vowed never to repeat. Reminiscent of one of the Restitution workshop exercises, people began to set goals for their desired identity with qualities and behaviours they did not want to imitate.

In response to my request to share memories of personal experiences that may have motivated their learning to improve school relationships, participants contributed powerful stories of verbal humiliation (Daisy, Sarah, Karen), guilt


(Sally), fear of physical harm or punishment (Tim, Grace), and actual physical abuse (Flowers). Response to the discipline teachers had experienced as children and as students revealed sources of motivation to learn and to practice alternative methods. Pat noted the ineffectiveness of attempts to control: “Discipline was swift and harsh. It was meant to correct you but it never did. You just did things when parents were not around”. Daisy “seethed in silent contempt”, while Amber recalled feeling no remorse but intense anger at herself for having been stupid enough to be caught and punished. Many, including Sally, Debra Kaye, Sarah, and Karen, became defiant and more determined to be “themselves” and choose their own paths, as a result of discipline. Some of these choices, such as the decision to leave school, brought painful results and had taken years to overcome.

Many participants expressed a childhood longing for better relationships, for adults to talk to them, listen to them, and understand them. Debra Kaye disclosed that she felt unloved because her parents had very little time for her. Tim’s father, a teacher who was “innovative, student-centered and a great communicator at school”, seemed gruff and impatient at home: “I was perplexed how he had all the time in the world for his students, but when it came to me, his kid at home – not a second!”. Lance related an incident with his son, in which he was able to pull back from the punishment he had experienced with his own father in favour of an emphasis on building relationships that was more compatible with his current beliefs. He shared the words he used with his son: “That’s not the kind of person I want to be. I want to be a person who explains why that’s disrespectful….And I saw anger in your eyes back toward me and that’s not where I want you to be with me, in our relationship”. This incident was significant to Lance because it led to an honest and sincere conversation, and he realized that he had not been able to talk this openly with his own father until he was twenty-seven.

As a result of their experiences as students, some staff members did not expect to become teachers: Daisy revealed, “I had difficulty with that absolute power that each teacher had….I

hated teachers and I hated school. I was very passionate about that: I did not ever want to be a teacher!”. Now that they had become teachers, many at Tansi articulated an unconventional perspective of their role, using the language and teachings of Restitution: “Kids need to self-evaluate and self-discipline. I am only a guide until the process is learned”, explained Sally. Mark elaborated, “My job is to help others… understand internal motivation, controlling for basic needs, and the possibilities to satisfy these needs in other ways”. Tim revealed how he, too had confronted traditional approaches: “I don’t like the fact that ‘discipline’ sounds like it’s something one person is doing to another person…And I don’t think it’s my job to decide if somebody has done something wrong. They can think about it for themselves” (p. 4).

Thus, Restitution can be seen as an innovation that was not, for most Tansi staff members, perceived as disjunctive change (Blackler, 1992) or an unrelated “add on” to their practice. Rather, it resonated with core beliefs about human relationships in a way that traditional school discipline did not. As will be shown, Restitution provided language that became a means of cultural mediation between stimulus and response, to strengthen the adaptive process in two ways. “Signs” enabled Tansi staff members to self-regulate, or manage their inner response, and cultural “tools” helped them to act upon the external setting to effect change in the school’s social environment (Vygotsky, 1978). As mediation, the language and strategies of Restitution contributed to a greater degree of agency for individuals, for small groups, and for the staff. When confronted with difficult student behaviour, teachers familiar with Restitution strategies had a greater range of responses available to them, and so their personal capacity to choose actions and revise professional narratives was expanded.

Personal Learning: Active and Reflective Knowledge Construction

A crucial aspect of personal learning capacity is “active and reflective construction of knowledge” (Mitchell & Sackney, p. 13). For many Tansi educators, Control Theory and Restitution training provided language for


reflecting on experience and constructing personal knowledge. Scripts and phrases designed as “tools” for adults to use to guide children toward reflection were used consistently in internal speech as “signs” (Vygotsky, 1978). The language was employed by teachers as they monitored their own personal and professional behaviour and as they self-evaluated to align actions more closely with beliefs. Examples of significant mediating questions included, “Do I want to fix it?”; “What will that say about me if I do?”; and especially, as illustrated in the story of Lance and his son, “Am I being the person I want to be?”.

Amber first suggested “awareness” as an important theme at Tansi, and I later identified this characteristic or practice as one of four cultural tools that was prominent in Tansi interactions. In the following passage, Amber reveals how she, like Lance, used the “overall direction” question from Control Theory workshops to bring self-awareness, to focus on her vision for herself, and to confront her assumption that familiar patterns are correct.

I try not to come from an authoritarian position, and make it worse by yelling….I have more understanding now, why it doesn’t work and why I do that. And it’s because I feel powerless, and so it is really a power thing for me. And now that I have awareness, it’s easier for me to catch myself and try to understand, you know, the other side of the story.…I wouldn’t say that it’s harder for me to shake my finger, because that will always be easy, because that’s instilled in me, from when I was little, you know, and having people do that to me. And it’s very comfortable, because it’s all I knew, right? But now that I have awareness I can…[say to myself] that’s not the person I want to be, so I stop myself, and think about things before I really say them”.

Thus, Restitution training appeared to offer a means for Tansi staff members to better understand their own needs as the source of their behaviour. Their language revealed how they learned to analyze their actions according to personal principles as well as in terms of their effect on other people. Having “awareness” was also understood to include the realization that

there are many possible responses to choose. These teachers were not immune to the common “internalized mechanistic assumptions” that Mitchell & Sackney (2000) identify as inhibiting personal capacity. However, Restitution appeared to equip them with strategies for purposeful self-regulation toward their ideal selves. Assumptions and practices found to be incoherent with developing beliefs could then be brought to light and changed over time.

Sally’s first response to my invitation to join an action research team for group reflection showed that she considered collaborative reflection to be an existing feature of her practice. “We do that anyway. I probably do that with about six people already….We watch each other all the time. I am aware that people watch me…and we give each other feedback. We pick things to work on”.

In addition to professional growth related to Restitution, a positive orientation to learning was displayed by the majority of Tansi teachers through participation in professional development opportunities. Major events from January to April, 2001, included a Community Schools’ retreat, where many appreciated a presentation by Dr. Martin Brokenleg, and “Showcase”, a provincial conference. In addition, primary teachers invited a district consultant to present new strategies after school. There were events involving IIACT (Inter-national Institute for Applied Control Theory) consultants, with several staff members attending evening “practicums” and a weekend “Circle of Strength” workshop by Shelley Brierly. Several books had been purchased, some related to Restitution and others presenting alternative strategies, and the principal invited staff members to spend a half day on professional reading. A variety of activities was planned for a school-based professional development day, and the sharing of new curricular materials was a regular feature of staff meetings. There appeared to be a high level of interest in all events, in spite of busy schedules. In speech and actions, Tansi teachers revealed a common expectation that professional learning would be ongoing for veterans as well as newcomers.


However, the personal learning capacity of

Tansi teachers was, in my view, limited by two factors: (a) an understanding of professional development (other than the Restitution and Control Theory work) as a lecture-based transfer of information, and (b) defensive or indifferent responses to research. Most teachers approached professional development as knowledge consumers, although some expressed frustration with the lack of opportunity to implement promising innovations encountered at workshop sessions. While the staff typically looked to expert outsiders for information and training, some appeared irritated and resentful when they encountered research findings contrary to their experiential knowledge. For example, my mention of studies pertaining to grade retention provoked an exasperated response. The Community School Coordinator was frustrated with research that described the neighbourhood but did nothing to improve it, and one teacher confided her concern that universities failed to provide prospective teachers with practical knowledge. Together, these indications of dissatisfaction with the dichotomy of theory and practice and the limiting role of teachers as knowledge consumers pointed to an area of potential growth. I believed that the Tansi staff could gain the skills for integrating theoretical knowledge with their experiences, and, in fact, were beginning to do so within their Control Theory “practicums” and their Restitution role playing. Collaborative action research presented an additional opportunity for practitioners to develop openness to research and trust in their own knowledge construction, while adapting innovations to the local context.

Key individuals in the community had begun to act as more knowledgeable peers, or learning agents, in the integration of theory and practice. One teacher understood and valued traditional research processes and had previous experience with school-based action research. Tim’s ongoing professional reading informed his classroom practice and the aspiration for whole school development that he was eager to talk about. While modeling a profound respect for research and inviting researchers to participate in the community, the principal shared his habit of collecting and analyzing data to inform

decisions or to monitor school progress. Thus, a general dissatisfaction with current modes of learning was evident in the Tansi community, along with the knowledge and skill set required to begin to create alternative professional development processes.

Caring as a Sustaining Force

Mitchell and Sackney (2000) declare that “a sense of caring sustains individual and group efforts and reinforces people’s sense of commitment to the school” (p. 105). Several Tansi staff members described their gratitude for opportunities for learning provided to them at the school, particularly for generous funding for people in any position to attend Control Theory and Restitution training (Nicole, Sally, Debra Kaye). Lance showed how learning opportunities, a caring attitude among the staff, and commitment to the school were connected in his mind:

I think teachers are going to want to come here. You create the conditions. You create the conditions – you say, you know, there’s lots of money here for PD, so we want you to take PD. We want you to work as a team. We don’t want you to be out there like an island unto yourself – and I’ve been on staffs…where teachers feel like they’re left alone and hurting. So yeah. I think there’s a great future here”.

In a casual conversation, Kimmi also expressed her gratitude for support and encouragement. “In some schools you feel like an island”, she said, “but not here”.

Karen, a former parent volunteer, described how she became a teacher associate: “Thanks to all these people, this community. You know, they just kept supporting me, encouraging me…Where would I be today, if I didn’t meet all these people?….I didn’t think I was capable of doing anything, actually… [so] that’s why I want to give back so much”. Thus, it appeared that professional development opportunities were experienced as expressions of caring, and so contributed to the development of personal capacity. Grateful teachers increased their interest in contributing to the well-being of other staff and of students.


While a caring attitude toward other staff

members can be considered part of the “interpersonal” landscape of a Learning Community, teaching capacities are directly related to personal beliefs about students. When teachers blame students or families for learning problems or challenging behaviour, they seem less likely to take personal responsibility for critically analyzing and adapting their own practices to effect improvement (Mitchell & Sackney, 2001). Restitution, with its emphasis on meeting needs and repairing relationships, appeared to resonate with Tansi teachers’ pre-existing beliefs and to give them confidence in the “rightness” of their caring inclinations. Daisy, an experienced teacher who declared that her practice had “taken flight” since coming to this school, described her orientation to students as follows:

Many of my students are hurting, and because of this they are the most interesting, delightful, and frustrating challenges I face….I work very hard to invite trust, especially with the students who are in pain. The most important thing I want them to know is that I truly care about their well-being”.

Fresh from a training session (Control Theory II), Amber declared her belief that developing relationships with students, building their trust and opening communication with them was required to understand them and to discover their needs. Describing her ideal view of herself as a teacher, Amber wrote that she hoped she would be listening to children “rather than assuming that I know what the problem is and trying to fix it”. Sarah confirmed the value of careful listening in order to understand events from the students’ point of view: “You just don’t dictate. You have to hear from them, too!”. Understanding through perspective-taking was further emphasized by Karen: “take a walk in their shoes…there’s always a reason why they’re acting the way they do”.

Part of caring for children appeared to be a tendency to value each of them as human beings, with the right to make choices and the right not to be controlled, judged or looked down upon for what could be perceived as misbehaviour. Sarah explained, “We’re equal. I’m not the

teacher. I’m a human being and so are you. So…I’m open to you”. Lance articulated a fundamental respect for children as human beings.

Every person’s a human being. No one’s any higher or any lower than anyone else. We’re all valued. So when I see kids here, that’s what I see them as. I see them as a child of God. Someone who has gifts and talents. Someone who can have hope if they want it.

One teacher’s description of a student’s “melt down” is a noteworthy example of perspective-taking that gave the child’s needs precedence over other concerns, such as the teacher’s feelings of being in “control” or preserving an orderly environment.

He wasn’t calling me a f*ck*ing b*tch. He was screaming f*cking b*tch because the whole life is like that for him. It wasn’t me. He was hurting. And if they’re hurting we have to let them feel their pain. And I think what we want to do too often is make it easy for them. It’s not really easy…easy for us I guess would be the thing.

However, there was evidence of other, less tolerant attitudes toward students. On three occasions I heard different staff members complain about student behaviour with intense irritation bordering on contempt. (I found it interesting that none of these individuals remained on staff when I visited Tansi more than a year after completion of the field work.) Also, it seemed that some classroom doors were locked when classes were in session to safeguard against disruption by roving young people, either students or neighbourhood youths. At least one teacher confided her fear of people from the neighbourhood, and a visiting police officer expressed the opinion that it would be understandable for teachers to feel unsafe at this site.

Amber described an incident in which she was determined that students would not “act like animals”, but their refusal to cooperate left her feeling “frustrated, hot, and helpless”. However, she also explained how the vice principal, skilled in Control Theory, righted the situation by considering and meeting the students’ needs and talking to them with respect. Amber identified this event as significant because she


learned that her own mistaken perceptions about what the students needed contributed to the situation. She seemed relieved to find that her feelings about the students that day were not part of who she wanted to be. This incident, and Amber’s interpretation of it, shows the development of a tendency for Tansi teachers to see children in terms of their needs and their potential goodness, rather than their actual behaviour. In my view, it is indicative of the way a considerable majority of Tansi teachers cared for their students and made a caring orientation the cultural norm. In neo-Vygotskian terms, the “object”, or inherent, unexamined purpose of the social group engaged in the activity of teaching, was to care for the students’ needs.

Creative Energy for Learning

Each time I visited Tansi after a period of time away, I was struck anew with the impression of a school buzzing with activity. Snatches of conversation in the hallways and staff room featured anticipation of events and celebration of achievements. These included: several adults attending “Munch and Mingle”, a weekly read-aloud breakfast in the library; upcoming Hoop Dance troupe performances; overnight field trips to distant communities; local field trips involving two or more classes; fundraising events such as “Fun Night”; a class set of new bicycles obtained for school outings; new family pictures for the entire student population on display; as well as frequent potlucks, special breakfasts before school, and staff parties.

Further, it was an accepted practice for people to share learning and achievements at staff meetings. As each person had an opportunity to speak or to pass, there were personal triumphs, such as “six months today without a cigarette”. General invitations to join committees or attend events were interspersed with the usual items of school business. On more than one occasion, student teachers announced the results of their final evaluations with the group, which provoked spontaneous applause and cheering. The permeability of the community was a testimony to its energy; Tansi people were not only willing to welcome

newcomers (including myself), but to invite feedback and consider it seriously. “Fresh eyes” were valued. Echoing the language of a First Nations teacher describing healthy relationships, the Tansi staff was “open” to outsiders. As I was told by a nutrition worker explaining the Cree concept of “Tawow”, if you act like you belong, you belong.

According to Control Theory standards, “quality” interaction was achieved because the human need for “belonging” was met in this environment. Using a neo-Vygotskian lens to analyze learning community development, a bridge from personal to interpersonal capacity was formed when newcomers were drawn quickly toward collective purposes and a group identity. This was evident in language, when “I” and “you” was easily replaced with “we”. Frustrated over attempts to reach a new student, Shelley inadvertently revealed her perception of the customary assimilation of newcomers into the community: “He wasn’t becoming part of our whole”. For Tansi teachers, personal commitment appeared to be related to community membership.

Limitations to Personal Capacity

Limitations to personal capacity may include mental models of comparison and competition, low empowerment, reluctance to take risks, and a preference for working alone (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). None of these were significantly evident at Tansi. I did observe participants constructing identities that put feelings of personal or professional helplessness (Sarah, Karen, Awareness), or lack of efficacy in teaching (Lance, Mark) in the past. These participants portrayed themselves convincingly as having moved beyond difficult times. After sharing a perception of her classroom ineffectiveness openly at a staff meeting, one teacher was supported by offers of assistance and some changes in programming. At a staff meeting weeks later, when this teacher informed colleagues that her situation had improved, others celebrated her success. It seemed that many barriers to growth were typically overcome through support and teamwork.

However, Tansi teachers described other situations that they perceived as limiting. Grace


contributed these items to a list of barriers to achieving her goals for improvement: students who were angry or aggressive; explosive behaviours in the classroom, school or on the playground when there was no time to deal with them; insufficient staff to attend to all the children who need attention or counseling; the difficulty of dealing with children whose basic needs have not been met; high transience; a need for time to communicate with parents and cultivate their support; and a need for time to dialogue with other staff members. A favorite saying of the Grade One teacher, “Every day is September”, emphasized the impact of high transience on the classroom. When nine new students arrived in the class after spring break, classroom routines needed to be reviewed and the time-consuming first-of-the-year assess-ments had to be repeated for the newcomers.

Dorothy illustrated the interaction of personal and organizational capacity when she described the impact of an administrative change: “We now have four middle cluster classrooms, so we have less population in each classroom, and that certainly helped us. That’s a big change because we were up to 29, 30 kids each…. When the classes are so huge, by the time you get through your day, you’re just wiped. And you know, if you’re thinking about changing or doing anything new, it’s hard. So I think that’s going to help, and we might see more change because we have less drain on us personally”.

One Teacher Associate, a single parent, described both personal and professional barriers to enacting her developing beliefs to the extent she would have liked.

My barriers are all the demands on my time – striving for balance – battling fatigue, which is a major hindrance. It prevents me from doing things ‘right’ according to my standards. The barriers at school would be finding or making the time to do a thorough job. When you’re expected to be somewhere working with teachers and students it is difficult to “take” their time – some teachers are not as understanding as others – and they have valid reasons also – They plan for and expect you to be there.

Tim expressed it this way:

I think there are a lot of demands at our school that really impact your energy level, whether they’re emotional or…external …kids in crisis, or staff members in crisis. You have to draw those lines personally so you don’t end up worn out and so you don’t end up destroyed by the energy that a place like this consumes. And I think that the change [to Restitution] has been another thing that has consumed the energy of our staff.

Although Tim’s sentiments were sometimes echoed by other staff members, I believe that Daisy articulated Tansi’s hopeful spirit when she said, “I consciously choose to be positive in my thinking, and I am supported in this by my colleagues. I don’t see barriers. I see challenges. Barriers are too often self-imposed”.

Interpersonal Capacity

Mitchell and Sackney (2000) define the interpersonal component of a learning community as a capacity for collegial relations and collective practice (p. 13). Processes that contribute to joint sensemaking, such as reflection, assessment, critique, and re-construction, do not appear until there is a foundation of functional relationships in the community. Thus, ethnographic analysis of interpersonal capacity examines first the affective and then the cognitive environment.

Congeniality, the Affective Environment

A healthy affective climate has been characterized as affirming and invitational, in contrast to one that devalues or marginalizes participants and results in inhibited learning (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 47). There was a wealth of evidence to suggest that Tansi’s social climate was experienced by most staff members and visitors as affirming. In the predominant spirit of inclusion, a staff photo display featured “visiting” professionals as well as school-based employees. I was honoured to have my picture taken and posted there with my name and the title “researcher”. Symbolically and ex-perientially, I felt that I “belonged”, and I believe my experience was not unique.


Staff meetings were indicative of the

“culture of trust, respect, inclusion, caring, and support” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. xv) that was evident at Tansi. Once a month, early dismissal allowed for a longer meeting that began with a splendid array of snacks. Meetings were open to students and community members, though few came. Young visitors who ventured in were welcomed enthusiastically but they left after refreshments. A few parents attended more than one meeting and seemed to enjoy being included. As the monthly meeting approached, staff members talked eagerly about the food they were planning and the projects or initiatives they would bring to the group. Staff meetings appeared to be a welcome opportunity to coordinate projects and events planned by staff members. Shorter, weekly meetings were also held after school and sometimes ad hoc meetings were called for special occasions, such as to say farewell to practicum students or to debrief with regard to a neighbourhood tragedy.

Whether meetings took place in the staff room or library, chairs were arranged in a circle and each person attending had an opportunity to speak as attention circulated around the room from person to person. Though no “talking stick” or ceremonial feather was actually passed, a First Nations’ orientation to participative, non-hierarchical meetings and consensus-based decision-making was honoured in the circle format. Items shared included personal news, triumphs, humourous anecdotes regarding students, and requests for support from colleagues in addition to the more traditional items of school-related business.

Social events. The friendly atmosphere apparent at staff meetings appeared to be an extension of frequent staff social events, most involving food and a great deal of laughter. There was a tradition of social relationships continuing for former teachers: the “old Tansis”, including at least one person who was still at the school, met regularly. Social events during the field work period included an appreciation lunch hosted by the new vice-principal after her first few weeks at the school, one breakfast sponsored by the teacher associates and another by the men on staff, and a potluck meal at the principal’s house. These events had ceremonial

significance emphasized by school leaders; their speeches marked celebrations of success and of relationships, and the intention to forge a positive orientation to the future. Community values of generosity and service to others were expressed and affirmed.

The social contract and conflict resolution skills. Tansi staff members established “functional relationships for joint sensemaking” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 13) through social affirmation and invitation and by developing effective ways to deal with conflict. One critical incident, when someone aired a conflict at a staff meeting, appeared to affront community norms and pointed to a need for a common standard of interpersonal behaviour based on beliefs. Perhaps in response to this incident and certainly in anticipation of a rise in conflict as a result of change, school leaders initiated the development of a “Staff Members’ Social Contract”. The process began with a discussion of how people would wish to be treated if someone had a conflict with them. Before a list of commitments was derived to extend the desired treatment to others, there was some negotiation about whether a person could ethically seek comfort and advice from someone not involved in the conflict. The draft contract reflected this discussion, and was circulated for voluntary signatures (see Figure 1). Those who disagreed with the statements were invited to talk about them; invitation to dialogue appeared to be an accepted substitute for unanimous agreement.

Tansi Staff Members’ Social Contract

•

• • • •

•

•

•

I will talk to the person with whom I have a conflict. I will be respectful. I will be honest. I will use “I Statements”. I will seek to understand first, then be understood. I will take time to calm down first before approaching someone else. I may seek help before approaching the other person (while still respecting the privacy of the other person.) I am interested in being part of a solution.

Figure 1. Tansi staff members’ social contract.


Tansi’s social contract established a

minimum standard for staff interactions that appeared to be adhered to, with few exceptions, for the remainder of the field work period. The process of its development may have contributed to patterns of solution-focused dialogue that were already taking root as a result of Restitution and Control Theory training. For example, constructive patterns of commun-ication included the question, “How would you like it to be?”, in response to complaints. Thus, potentially disruptive conflict was channeled to contribute to common pictures of a preferred future.

Alternatively, general agreement on principles of interaction may have inhibited further outbursts, confining expressions of conflict to gossip with a “safe” audience, and making it unavailable as data. In any case, the damaging type of conflict that was anticipated did not occur as the community continued to negotiate and adopt changes to its structure and practice. The Tansi staff moved beyond the minimum standard of their social contract as they developed their “spirit of connectedness” that is described in Chapter VI, or the “common understandings, shared meanings, and close bonds” of a learning community” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. xii).

Mitchell and Sackney (2000) assert that effective confrontation of conflict is a crucial condition for building a learning community (p. 117). Successful teams are able to move conflict from personalized anger or resentment directed at individuals to an emphasis on open communication and creative thinking to redress differences of opinion. Restitution training exposed the Tansi staff to strategies for “collapsing conflict” (Gossen & Anderson, 1995) into win-win outcomes. The common staff value favouring this approach to conflict was underscored by two Control Theory principles: that we can not (and should not try to) control others, and that all behaviour is a purposeful attempt to meet human needs. Together, these principles led to a community orientation that minimized the tendency to dominate others, in favour of non-confrontational efforts to see things from another person’s point of view. This tendency was exhibited in the frequently-used

phrase, “Help me understand…”, and the result was enhanced interpersonal communication.

An analytical approach to conflict was observed at Tansi, most notably in a problem-solving meeting held to discuss the sensitive issue of Nutrition Room supervision. This was a new venture for the facilitator and it involved some risk-taking. Emotions were close to the surface but the group leader remained calm and persisted with a systematic process to identify whose needs were not being met and how practices could be changed to accommodate all needs. Some grumbling and sarcasm was heard after the meeting, showing that a few participants had not invested sincerely in the process and did not believe that an effective solution had been reached. However, most of those involved appeared satisfied and the situation appeared to improve. Much later, one person involved in undermining the process was reported to have admitted remorse. Apparently a healthy approach to conflict resolution developed and won support in the community over time. In this case and in others, most participants were able to maintain conflict as cognitive rather than emotional, and thus preserve and even deepen relationships while addressing issues pertinent to growth.

Further evidence of a healthy orientation to conflict was found in participant dialogue. Amber attributed one conflict to poor communication rather than to the other person’s lack of self-control, and Debra Kaye believed that people had good reasons for the expectations that sometimes made her job more difficult. Daisy’s response to a conflict was greater consideration for the needs of the other party and a sincere wish to communicate her own position to build understanding. Fawn expressed a similar approach as follows: “So I have to find – there has to be a different understanding. There needs to be a little clearer communication here”. In these examples, participants rose above the personal hurt that could have been generated by conflict, to consider and address the interaction cognitively as a symptom of conflicting needs that could be clarified with communication.


Consideration of varying needs and

perspectives was also evident in a predominantly consultative style of conversation, punctuated with questions such as, “Does that work for you?”. When the response was negative, the problem was explained and plans were adapted or abandoned accordingly. Consensus was important and people did not appear to pursue an unaltered course of action if they discovered it was not working for their colleagues. Respect for diverse needs and perspectives, a cornerstone of Control Theory and Restitution practice, appeared to support the balance of advocacy and inquiry characteristic of a learning community (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). While initiating projects and plans to advance their beliefs about what was needed, Tansi staff members were typically careful to inquire into the beliefs and needs of their colleagues. Consultative teamwork appeared to be the norm, and projects brought forward by individuals quickly became associated with or “owned” by the larger group as well as initiators.

Alternative definitions of respect and fairness. Control Theory and Restitution teaching may have contributed to, or at least had a compatibility with, the unique views of fairness and respect that were expressed by Tansi staff members. Sally described a picture of fairness that differed from the usual expectation of equal treatment, but emphasized affirmation: “Fair? It means listening to the perception of the other person. It means trying to visualize the big picture. It means trying to understand, truly understand…acceptance of people just the way they are is ‘fair’”.

Respect was a word used often, but it appeared to have meaning other than the usual school connotations of courtesy and obedience. Two First Nations teachers first helped me begin to understand this subtle but significant perspective and I found evidence of a similar viewpoint in discussion with non-Aboriginal teachers. One teacher referred to empathy for other peoples’ feelings as “respect”, describing it as a kind of friendship that reserved judgment: “you don’t look down on people”. Pat attributed growth in working with the neighbourhood to this non-judgmental attitude: “We’re doing a better job of working with our community.

Accepting them, and listening to them”. Marie elaborated, “No matter who you meet in your life, you’re going to learn something from them, and so what you do is try to look for the positive in that person, and you take it with you, from every person. And so, if you do that with…people in the community…you’re going to get the best of everything”. Thus, the version of respect that was tacitly understood and practiced by many of the staff appeared to embody an Aboriginal value of non-interference (Ross, 1996) or non-coercion, and could be construed as part of the Cree concept of “right relationships” (Jamie Fiddler, Cree elder, personal communication, Mar., 2001). If there was empathy, understanding, or perspective-taking between people, there would be no need for one to control, to “discipline”, or to criticize the other.

In fact, attempts at coercion or perhaps even persuasion were considered disrespectful. A surprising interpretation of student “mis-behaviour” illustrated this cultural difference. When students were aggressive and defiant, it was seen by at least two First Nations staff members as a natural response to disrespectful treatment by teachers. The principal also articulated this belief and his awareness that further change was needed. “This is not a school where we’re going to say, teachers will be respected but they don’t have to respect the kids. But we have some time where teachers are not being respectful”.

Ultimately, respect appeared to mean acceptance of other people and their right to choose their own behaviours. However, this respect for personal autonomy extended to the offending staff members as well. Those with the concern did not feel that it was appropriate for them to “correct” other teachers, though they hoped that improvement would occur as people built relationships, watched, and learned. The First Nations emphasis on “watching” to learn seemed to bring with it an underlying responsibility for those with knowledge to model the desired treatment of students. I believe such behaviour was modeled consistently.


The value of personal autonomy as “respect”

was evident among teachers in their acceptance of various levels of interest in Restitution. Repeatedly, I heard people struggle against an inclination to sort teachers into “good” and “bad” or “we” and “them” categories according to interest in Restitution. In learning team meetings, participants explained that it was easier to work with those who were “on the same page”, yet they confirmed the right of others to choose their own ways and gave credit for student learning that was happening in those classrooms. For example, Fawn made sure that I was aware of how she valued the contributions of Dorothy, an experienced colleague who did not choose to participate in Restitution training. Summing up, she said, “What would we do without our Dorothy?”. While belief in Restitution was prominent, the teachings of Restitution helped participants to sustain inclusive practices and emphasize common ground with those who did not value Restitution practices to the same degree. In this community, “belonging” was not contingent upon one set of beliefs, as long as it was perceived that the interests of students were being served.

Collegiality, the Cognitive Environment

The caring professional climate at Tansi, underscored by the value of non-coercion, appeared to build trust and enable learning. The relationship of the affective and cognitive domains in a learning community is emphasized by Mitchell and Sackney (2000): “Affirmation affords to individuals a sense of trust, and invitation brings them into a caring professional relationship. These provide the foundation on which the cognitive climate rests” (p. 57). Further, when trust is lacking, energy is diverted from learning to self-protection and defensive, self-imposed isolation becomes the norm (p. 49).

Teacher associates were regarded as professional peers in many Tansi classrooms. They were encouraged to use professional judgment for teaching and for discipline and they were involved in decision-making about students. However, there was tension over relationships with some teachers, revealed in irritation at continued use of the hierarchical term, “teacher assistants” instead of the current

“teacher associates”. Generally, teacher associates compared their working relationships at Tansi favourably with those in other schools.

With the exception of two staff members, I observed teachers and teacher associates habitually turning to their peers for collaboration and support. When one of the two began to take a more active role in the community, the “joining in” was noted and privately celebrated as an indicator of community success. At one staff meeting, a teacher commented that it would be “hell on wheels” to work at this school without collegial support. While her statement was challenged for its negative portrayal of the community, many seemed to accept the idea that collegial support was essential to their professional survival and growth.

Collegial relations and collective practice. “Collegial relations and collective practice are the core of interpersonal capacity” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 13). While collective practice was an established feature of the professional context, collegial learning appeared to be in an early stage of development, offering a natural juncture for intervention by learning agents. Rich as it was, learning at the school site was largely perceived as personal growth, as articulated by Shelley: “I know my personal self has grown a lot and I’m changing every day. And I’m becoming a really good person! And it’s just because of all the things that I’ve learned. Professional development seemed to be understood, in the Vygotskian sense of activity systems (Blackler, 1992), as an activity separate from personal growth, one in which teachers received information and participated in exercises provided by an “expert”. Movement toward a more integrated and empowering picture of development as knowledge creation was stimulated over the course of the research by the actions of other learning agents within the community, as well as my introduction of collaborative action research described in Chapter V.

Attesting to a healthy level of collective practice, education at Tansi was largely accomplished through the collaboration of two or more adults. As they supported one another’s work with students for whom they shared


responsibility, teachers, learning assistant teachers, administrators, and teacher associates continually modeled developing practices and perspectives for each other. Thus, change flowed from the personal to the interpersonal sphere and facilitated organizational learning, or shifts in the cultural patterns of the community. Leadership of the hoop dance troupe, which brought so much pride and dignity to Tansi students, was a noteworthy example of the way that professional learning had increased the school’s capacity to meet community needs. The skills needed to instruct this group had been passed to the current leader by a predecessor who was no longer at the school.

Working together, Tansi staff members typically provided cognitive scaffolds for each other as they reached for new insights (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 61). As evidence, I observed relationships that appeared to fulfil a mentoring function, for example: Pat, Lorraine and Tim with Mark; Amber and Laurie with Sally; Kimmi and Flowers with Dorothy; Karen with Cathy; and Crystal with Shelley and Fawn. Collaborative relationships were also prominent among those who worked with similar age groups, e.g. the teachers and teacher associates assigned to primary, middle or senior “cluster” areas.

The Tansi staff, using the mantra “creating the conditions” (Gossen & Anderson, 1995) as a reminder to restructure the social environment rather than merely correct the individual, appeared to be developing an orientation to community building in addition to the common orientation to task. In a learning community, (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000), members “are charged with moral purpose and a clear and present responsibility for the growth and development of one another and for the school” (p. 60). Key players in the im-plementation of Restitution at Tansi articulated an awareness of the purposeful creation of cultural context through language. As Tim explained,

The language we use at this school is important, I think. And each teacher uses it with the students and each other and you start to hear it. So I really believe teachers have an impact and that adults around children have an impact on how they speak

and how they perceive the world with their internal language.

Thus, Tansi teachers seemed poised for growth and ready to be introduced to systematic collaborative inquiry as professional development at their school site.

Organizational Capacity

Although organizational capacity consists of “structures that create and maintain sustainable organizational processes” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000. p. 14), a learning community view of “structures” goes beyond managerial arrangements to include “assumptions, values, belief systems, vision, purpose, relationships, culture and process” (p. 91). Thus, several aspects of organizational capacity have been mentioned, attesting to the overlap and interaction of personal, interpersonal and organizational capacities in a learning community. However, this section explores pertinent structures further, beginning with staffing as it contributed to collective practice. I describe formal leadership by introducing administrative personnel, noting their strategies for communication and decision-making. Leadership style is summarized, to be revisited as the notion of “confluence” in Chapter VI. Permeable boundaries between school community and neighbourhood are highlighted. The section concludes by situating the Tansi experience within a larger provincial and national context.

Staffing for Collective Practice

At Tansi, several organizational features worked against the typical school culture of isolation (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992). Class composition spanned two or three grades, with groupings referred to as primary, middle or senior “clusters”. This arrangement, designed to give students more sustained opportunities to build relationships with teachers, classmates, and even siblings wherever possible, also facilitated collaboration among adults who worked with each cluster, teaching similar curriculum and students near the same age. Regular bi-weekly meetings were held by primary and middle cluster teachers. The senior cluster consisted of two teachers who


collaborated frequently and met formally on an ad hoc basis.

Also contributing to collective practice was district and Community School funding for teacher associates. With frequent reassignment among classrooms according to student needs, experienced teacher associates gained an overview of school characteristics and requirements. Opportunities to work closely with troubled individuals gave them intimate personal knowledge of student’s lives. This information became a community asset as teacher associates contributed to decision-making at cluster meetings and other staff meetings, and as they conferenced informally with teachers about how to “reach” certain students. There was evidence to suggest that the habit of consultation was strengthened by collaboration among all professionals concerned with special needs students, and through communication with numerous adult students from various teaching and recreational training programs who completed field placements at Tansi. In summary, it seemed that a combination of children’s needs and organizational features brought the Tansi staff many opportunities for collaboration and mutual influence.

Formal Leadership

The current principal arrived at Tansi in the fall of 1998, the fourth in four years. He was in his first year at Tansi when we met, and in his second year during the field work period. This was his first principalship, though he had served as vice-principal in a nearby inner-city school for several years. A large, confident man with a relaxed, friendly demeanor and a ready smile, this administrator had well-established learning networks in the district; one of his mentors had been a former Tansi principal with a reputation for innovation (OECD, 1998), and another was the current superintendent, who had once been his principal and who shared his interest in Restitution. He had strong connections with the university, with a completed Masters and a positive disposition to research strengthened by previous participation in a successful school-wide collaborative action research project (Hudson, 1997).

The principal worked closely with the vice-principal and community school co-ordinator. Surprised with an inner-city assignment for the fall of 1999, the new vice-principal mustered enthusiasm for the position and demonstrated her personal and professional commitment through consistent use of Control Theory language. Like the principal, she was well-known in the district, equipped with a Masters degree in administration and former administrative experience. With a background in business and expertise in cross-cultural understanding, the community school co-ordinator found himself in a unique position to integrate education and community development. Both the vice-principal and community school coordinator appeared to trust the principal and consult with him regularly. The coordinator appreciated the principal’s mentorship in helping to enact the spirit of the community school vision through the coordinator’s role.

Administrative strategies. Open communica-tion and democratic decision-making were supported by some effective strategies, including the “sign in” book, the inclusive staff meeting circle, and cluster meetings independent of administrative presence. The “sign in” book was on the office counter near the front door, and though many staff members did not “sign in” each morning, they posted information or checked regularly for new items. No pre-approval was needed for announcements and anyone could write them, just as any staff member could make an announcement on the intercom. However, frustration over students roaming the halls was attributed to a lack of communication, as was staff concern about why a difficult senior student was attending kindergarten. In spite of repeated invitations, the “open” culture of the school had not developed to the point where everyone was comfortable asking questions of administrators, and additional communication structures may have been helpful.

In the first staff meetings I observed, administrators appeared to have a more active role and more issues to raise, but at least one other person accepted an invitation to lead the meeting. Over two years following the field


work period, the staff meeting “circle” seemed to become entrenched to the extent that there was no apparent chair. During the field work, in spite of the frequency and length of meetings, staff members seemed more than willing to invest their time. Those who needed to miss a meeting or leave early did so, with apologies. Though the meeting format was a radical departure from the time-conscious formats used in most schools, I heard no complaints. Primary, middle, and senior cluster meetings were chaired by teachers and were not attended by administrators, though their input was sometimes requested. The vice-principal did attend cluster meeting relevant to her teaching assignment and she participated actively without assuming an administrative role.

The problem of leadership. Power relation-ships are key structural aspects of capacity. Learning communities are characterized by collaborative relationships, but “if genuine power sharing is to occur, school administrators have the first responsibility for creating the conditions under which power flows through all levels of the system” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 76). This suggests that administrators who do not share power can obstruct the development of capacity. Comments from Tansi teachers confirmed an expectation that administrators were generally instrumental to growth because of their ability to “give” freedom. However, beyond that there was a reverence for the unique contributions of their principal and vice-principal, and a developing belief in the power of their own leadership strength. The latter confirms an understanding of capacity as synergy (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) or of “confluence”, a notion I present in Chapter VI to replace discussion of “leadership” and “followership” in learning communities.

Lance believed that change could be maintained “if they don’t move the principal too soon”, because he introduced the innovation and was “pushing it through” administratively. Shelley expressed her belief that school change does not happen without administrative support.

I think the people who contributed to the change are administration, because I don’t think we can do or operate in this manner without the support and guidance that we do

get from our administration…because they have all the clout, so to speak….For some strange reason, it’s always the administration who kind of make sure that downtown is comfortable with what's happening in whatever school your in. And it shouldn’t be that way, but that’s just the way it is. (p. 1)

Similarly, Daisy credited the principal and superintendent for giving staff members the freedom to make changes, and went on,

I guess I want to correct myself, when I said ‘administration’. I didn’t mean ad-ministration in isolation. I said that they created the conditions, so that we could work together as a team and do some team building, not simply staff, but also with our mandate for the community.

To summarize, it seemed that the Tansi principal’s insistence that he was not the key to progress had taken root. Many people had come to believe that significant community development was a result of their combined efforts. It seemed that the first problem of leadership in the Tansi setting was to work against the limiting but common mental model of school leadership as the power and control typically focused in administrative roles. The Tansi principal understood a learning community truth: “When people defer to authority figures, they often fail to take ownership for the direction of the school or to take responsibility for improving school conditions” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 95). His empowering leadership style was ultimately successful in that he opened the way for many leaders to share in the strength and direction of community growth.

Leadership style. Aspects of ad-ministrative leadership can be understood in terms of overall learning community characteristics, described as emphasis on connection over separation, diversity over uniformity, empowerment over control, and inclusion over dominance. (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. xv). To highlight the administrative contribution to learning community de-velopment at Tansi, I have rearranged these into: “connections and inclusion”, “diversity” and “empowerment”. Leadership style is treated briefly here, as


cultural patterns exhibited by leaders reverberated throughout the staff and are described in Chapter VI.

Emphasis on connection and inclusion was observed in consistent patterns of affirmation, many open invitations to work and learn together, and in humour that emphasized common experience, e.g. “I felt like voting myself off the island today!”. As experienced Restitution practitioners, both principal and vice-principal had internalized the will and skill to “stabilize identity” (Gossen, 1996) and demonstrated the strategy consistently in their interactions with students and staff. The habit of affirmation was expressed through reference to needs. “You did not do that for no reason” and “All behaviour is purposeful” were key mantras underlying conversations. Over time, staff members became more comfortable bringing concerns and ideas to administrators, because they experienced acceptance rather than blame. The overall intention to “create the conditions” was enacted purposefully, with an awareness of community development through open interaction. There was a strong orientation to moral leadership, as affirmation was modeled in interactions with students.

Acceptance led to an emphasis on diversity, further enhanced through celebration of honest feedback and questioning as a mechanism for learning, and attention to the development of skills for conflict resolution. The vice-principal welcomed feedback as “fresh eyes coming to help”, revealing her self-confidence and her orientation to learning from others. When I told the principal of my fear that some of my questions might offend him, he revealed his learning orientation. He explained that an overly sensitive response on his part would mean that he either needed to help me better understand the situation, or alternatively reconsider the issue from my point of view. On many occasions, a staff member’s honest, slightly critical remark at a staff meeting was celebrated and held up as an example of growth. The community was beginning to provide the feedback needed for reflection and purposeful development toward common goals.

Diversity and empowerment were related aspects of leadership style as choices were provided and staff members were invited to make decisions they felt were right for them. Consistent with learning community theory, leaders were “concerned with issues of autonomy and self-regulation” and it was unlikely that administrators would “dictate or regulate professional practice” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 104). In terms of Restitution, school leaders went beyond a “take it or leave it” attitude to provide alternative reading materials for those who might want to investigate other approaches to classroom management. Consistent use of Glasser’s (1965/2000) Reality Therapy questions in adult interpersonal encounters made choices a practical reality. School leaders refrained from planning solutions and even from framing problems. When problems were framed by staff members, perhaps in response to administrator’s questions, skilled dialogue led teachers to propose solutions and describe the support required from others in order to effect change. Initiative was celebrated, for example, when a first-year teacher contributed a new playground game that her father had built. Through their celebration of many small acts of initiative, leaders shared diverse pictures of individual and community success with the staff as a whole.

However, valuing diversity meant developing strategies to coordinate and prioritize projects and to deal effectively with conflict. Control Theory beliefs and Restitution practices helped to broach controversy before it erupted into conflict, by providing the language of “we”, and establishing the pattern of basing decisions on shared beliefs. Interdependence was emphasized when the principal counseled teachers eager to raise money to remove the chain link fence from the front yard. He validated their concern and encouraged their initiative, while pointing out that everyone needed to share in setting priorities for money donated to the school. This kind of thinking contributed to group achievement of large goals, bringing success and energy for more projects.

The questions, “What do we believe about…?”, and “Can you help me understand…?”, coupled with a relaxed manner


and endless patience seemed to help bring people into understanding without invoking the staff social contract. Drafting of this contract, based on how staff members would wish to be treated themselves, legitimized conflict resolution and made open hostility a rarity. At worst, Tansi staff members appeared to “live and let live”. At best, they were empowered with the cultural expectation of productive disagreement, and the skills and support to enact it.

Repeated mention of successful efforts helped paint a portrait of community success, and contributed to an empowered community identity. Recognition was common, as illustrated by the yearly presence of Tansi nominees at a local awards gala. Equally common was the habit of accepting praise graciously, giving credit to one’s colleagues. Coaching was an important part of the administrative style, from the vice-principal’s sensitive intervention in an out-of-control classroom to the principal’s patient mentorship of beginning teachers. Performance appraisals were approached from a developmental perspective rather than an evaluative one, and self-evaluation was encouraged. When there were difficulties, it was the principal’s hope that growth could be supported until the person concerned could choose whether to stay or leave the school. For him, forced transfer was a last option, just as suspending a student for disciplinary reasons was a last resort. The message was that Tansi did not give up on people; there was an empowering expectation that people could change.

In summary, non-coercion and self-evaluation, the twin pillars of Glasser’s (1998) quality school, appeared to be the foundations of administrative practice and key supports for the learning architecture at Tansi. As staff members came to trust that administrators would be accepting and empowering, their capacity to contribute to the life of the community expanded. Tansi had moved beyond several barriers to organizational learning, such as tight control mechanisms, weak or rigid leadership, and limited resources (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 134). Support structures for professional learning, including strong modeling

of a learning orientation, were in place and effective approaches, such as team learning, were developing. In combination, these aspects of community capacity seemed to reduce the limiting effect of stressful school circumstances. As teachers were strengthened, the challenges of the neighbourhood seemed less daunting. The Tansi professional community was further encouraged as they found evidence that their teamwork and hopefulness was beginning to have a positive effect on neighbourhood conditions.

The School and Neighbourhood: Permeable Community Boundaries

Mitchell and Sackney (2000) asserted that “community building engages parents and other community members directly and continuously in the life and development of the school” (p. 9). Although this can be difficult in neighbourhoods where parents have had negative experiences with school, Tansi leaders were committed to enacting the spirit of the Community Schools philosophy. At the beginning of his appointment, the principal visited homes to invite parents to come to the school, to participate in the Community Association and to apply for jobs available in the school. Feasts, soup and bannock lunches, and events such as the Remembrance Day ceremony that honoured Aboriginal veterans were all occasions to meet with parents in a relaxed and welcoming way.

After parent-teacher interviews, remaining report cards were redistributed according to family groups, and pairs of teachers delivered them to homes. Elders in the school, including nutrition workers, were honoured as special citizens in everyday speech, sending an affirmative message regarding the status and worth of First Nations people. When an elder joined them for an inner-city schools retreat, and later for a Community Schools workshop in a distant community, Tansi leaders and teachers were delighted. The community school coordinator’s “moccasin telegraph” approach for learning about the community and drawing people into the life of the school had a slow but cumulative effect. By the end of the study, participants had identified many examples of


how relationships and interaction with the neighbourhood had improved. Division, Provincial and National Context

Although few Tansi teachers appeared to be concerned with district issues or media coverage related to education in the city, most were aware of generous financial contributions to school-based professional development. Teachers credited the principal for obtaining funds and administrators credited the superintendent for her financial and moral support of the Restitution initiative. The director was mentioned when her letter of commendation for Tansi’s “learning community” status was read at a staff meeting. She also visited the school during the research period for a public meeting about a lack of funds for continuation of the elder program.

Many staff members referred to school division administrators as “downtown”, and were most aware of them when their decisions interfered with school initiatives. For example, primary teachers who planned and set-up a “readiness” classroom were frustrated with a mid-year reorganization that disbanded the class. The teachers felt the decision, based on fluctuating enrolment, was made without their input. They believed that no thought was given as to how the move would disrupt the receiving primary classrooms. Such “downtown” decisions were seen to overrule school-based ones, and to undermine the capacity for school-based groups to attempt problem solving. The cynical response to this decision was uncharacteristic of Tansi teachers, and revealed their frustration.

Systemic barriers to school capacity were also revealed concerning the school division’s teacher transfer policy and teacher appraisal form. As Tansi’s success story circulated, teachers became interested in seeking positions there, which was viewed as an unusual occurrence for an inner city school. However, the transfer policy did not seem to provide mechanisms for bringing in teachers with interest in or commitment to the neighbourhood. Nor did the principal feel he had much freedom to choose teachers whose beliefs were

compatible with those developing at Tansi. Thus, transfers could potentially undermine developing beliefs and the task of orienting new members to the community could become a drain on existing staff.

The teacher appraisal form also lacked a community-building component, in that specified criteria did not leave room to recognize and encourage the “whole child” kind of teaching that was believed to be most effective for Tansi students. While school administrators seemed to negotiate these difficulties successfully, they were a source of concern. With consultation and adjustment, both the school division transfer policy and the appraisal form could have been modified to better facilitate organizational capacity at the school level.

The Governor General’s Speech from the Throne in January (Clarkson, 2001) was indicative of a national awakening to the issues of Aboriginal participation and empowerment in society that was addressed by community schools such as Tansi. Governor General Clarkson asserted that diversity brings a responsibility to “acknowledge and engage” with less advantaged segments of society. She stated that “success in our more interdependent world will require the contribution of all Canadians” (p. 2). This address promised initiatives to increase adult literacy skills that would bring greater participation in the economy, and to build the entrepreneurial and business expertise of Aboriginal people (p. 5).

Nowhere is the creation and sharing of opportunity more important than for Aboriginal people. Too many continue to live in poverty, without the tools they need to build a better future for themselves or their communities. As a country, we must be direct about the magnitude of the challenge and ambitious in our community to tackle the most pressing problems facing Aboriginal people. (p. 6)

Issues of child poverty specifically addressed the needs of Aboriginal communities and the Government promised to “work with First Nations to improve and expand the early childhood development programs and services


available in their communities” (p. 8). Commitment to local solutions for local challenges, particularly in urban centres, was emphasized. For youth crime, the emphasis was on “rehabilitation and re-integration into society” for non-violent offenders. A goal was set for addressing Aboriginal conflict with the law, so that within one generation, it would be no more than the Canadian average.

In reference to the societal context of schools Mitchell and Sackney (2000) assert that “what happens in the school and classroom is deeply affected by what happens on the streets and in the government of the day and the homes of the students” (p. 128). While the throne speech may inspire, the goals it suggests will be difficult to attain. However, the speech conveys political concerns for neighbourhoods like Tansi. The social needs of marginalized and impoverished areas are acknowledged as problems beyond the scope of educational institutions alone. Understanding of this larger context helps to showcase the Tansi experience. Undaunted by complex and enormous social problems, Tansi educators used the resources at hand to begin to make a difference.

Chapter Summary

This portrait of the Tansi professional culture was filtered through my experiences and perceptions and through the Learning Community framework. I acknowledge that I am “attributing culture” (Wolcott, 1997) according to my educational and academic background, and that alternate interpretations are possible. However, a thoughtful and experience-based consideration of the Tansi culture, organized and analyzed in terms of learning community characteristics, has further grounded that body of theoretical knowledge in the everyday world of school practice. The usefulness of the theory was established insofar as this portrait brought greater self-awareness to participants and to learning agents who may wish to engage in a similar form of analysis to assess and enhance the learning potential of other schools.

Informed by phenomenology and the Learning Community framework, ethnographic methodology provided a format for organizing

and interpreting the varying perspectives of many participants into a comprehensive community portrait. Further, ethnographic analysis offered insights directly related to the research questions: “Did the Learning Community develop?”; “What processes contributed to or inhibited development?”; and “How was Learning Community development perceived to improve teaching practice and learning for students?” These insights are stated more explicitly in Chapter VI.

CHAPTER V THE RESEARCH PROCESS AS JOINT

ACTIVITY

“Particular occasions of situated joint activity are the crucible of change and development, as

well as the means whereby society is perpetuated”

(Wells, 2000, p. 56).

The purpose of this chapter is not to repeat a technical overview of research procedures, but to reveal the process of emerging design with an explanation of how and why adjustments occurred. This requires attention to social dynamics and to my own self-regulating reflections, as I omitted, modified, or planned new activities to better connect participant experience with learning community ideals. The chapter is structured chronologically with reference to the “planning”, “action” and “reflecting and revising” stages of the overall research cycle (Reason, 1994). The planning stage is described as continuing into the field work period as I established relationships and moved toward “insider” status. Within the action phase is a description of activities that involved the whole staff, and the formation and accomplishments of each learning team as nested cycles of practice-based inquiry. Reflection and revision during and after the field work led to three major developments: (1) articulation of a “learning community ethic”, for self-regulation with thought to capacity; (2) a revised plan for introducing collaborative action research to practitioners, grounded in the experience gained in this study; and (3) the notion of “confluence” an alternative to the


concept of leadership in learning communities. A summary concludes the chapter.

The Planning Phase: Becoming an Insider

My first visits to Tansi in March, 2000, marked the beginning of the planning phase of the research, which continued for the rest of that year as I prepared for the defense of my research proposal in December. I toured the school, observed classrooms, and returned to invite the staff to participate in the research with me. This visit felt like a courtship, because I did not know how I would be received. I brought a gift, a framed butterfly poster with an inspirational message about change, and I used it to show the staff how their implementation of Restitution could be supported by conscious effort to develop as a learning community. Drawing on my experience as an elementary teacher, I talked about how teachers often teach the concept of symmetry with butterfly images. Using my hands to make a butterfly symbol, I talked about “learning community symmetry”, or “the butterfly idea”, the notion that teachers need to experience social conditions favorable to learning in order to provide similar conditions for students. A coloured handout emphasized the message with visual symbols and text.

Teachers responded to the visual and symbolic communication style of this presentation with interest and the staff voted unanimously to engage in the research. This success laid a foundation for an unanticipated use of visual symbols and analogies that continued throughout the study. Following the principal’s enthusiastic introduction, teachers seemed to value the attention of a researcher and were pleased that their activities and needs were considered important enough for study. After the presentation, one person told me, “I like how you write”.

Initially, I expected the planning phase to give way to the action phase when the field work began. However, that would have been equivalent to planning content delivery without knowledge of students’ needs, a non-constructivist approach. The action phase began more naturally after I had begun to learn appropriate cultural behaviour (Wolcott, 1997)

and was becoming an “insider” to participants. Thus, the planning phase went beyond reviewing the literature, designing the method, and taking Restitution training and Control Theory courses and practicums. Planning continued as I tutored Tansi students, established a presence at staff meetings and special events, and conducted individual interview/dialogues to follow the Personal History and Belief Statements that participants had given me in writing. With the understanding that developmental work needs to be done at all levels of the organization (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000), I first gained organizational access and then focused on building interpersonal capacity by developing understanding.

Early in this phase, I struggled to build and maintain my confidence. I had begun gradual entry to the research site with school board permission to volunteer in classrooms throughout the fall. When ethics approval from the university was delayed until late January, I increased my presence in the school on the strength of the board approval. I felt it was important to be visible and to create opportunities for interaction, yet I was not able to begin research procedures as planned. The action phase was delayed but there was more time to volunteer with students and to build a sense of common purpose with the teachers. My background to this point gave me more familiarity with teaching than with research activities and so I used this time to define my role in the community from a point of comfort. However, interaction with students was not always comfortable.

My research journal documents a range of cognitive and emotional responses to challenging student behaviours. One of my first experiences was a disastrous trip to the library with a group of senior students who made a game out of eating candy and wasting time, just to see what I would do. Though I maintained my outward composure, I felt helpless because I had no relationship with which to persuade them to cooperate, and no authority with which to insist on their compliance. Believing that the success of the research rested on my credibility with staff, I resolved to work inside classrooms where management was the responsibility of the


classroom teacher, or to work outside of classrooms with only one or two students. This impacted the research in that I abandoned plans to free teachers to observe each other’s work by teaching their classes for them. At this stage, the students, the classroom situations, and the research all seemed quite vulnerable. I chose to invest in strategies that carried less risk and would be seen as helpful rather than a complication in a teacher’s or an administrator’s day.

Helping activities included circulating within classrooms to give assistance with assignments or to listen to students read. I recorded brainstorming sessions and prepared handouts to summarize the contributions. I began to tutor three or four students from different classrooms on a regular basis, which gave me a window into the diversity of learning needs and the complex personal lives of Tansi students. Some teachers were able to send selected students to work on projects in the computer room because I was there to supervise internet use. Through these activities, I made connections with students and their teachers and began to feel accepted as part of the professional community.

The process of becoming an effective learning agent involved connecting, stimulating dialogue, and opening the hearts and minds of participants to working with me. I was aware of this purpose in apparently casual interactions and I probed for opportunities to emphasize common ground with different people through conversations about places we had once lived and people we had known, about parenthood, research and teaching as well as clothes, books, and dogs. I looked for chances to recommend resources and share materials or readings that would be useful, and I read and discussed books that were shared with me by Tim, Grace, and Sarah. I even dressed to maximize acceptance, at first adopting the casual style of teacher associates and later choosing business suits to reflect the style of the vice-principal.

Some adjustments, particularly dressing for acceptance, caused me to consider whether I was manipulating participants. In reflection, I determined that my efforts were sincere and

based on attempts to use all of my personal resources to further the cause of our learning together. From the beginning, I wanted the study to be invitational and inclusive, and connecting somehow with everyone was a way to say, “I’m interested in you whether or not you are doing Restitution”. With the development of trust, I was able to turn conversations toward dialogue, and invite confidences that helped me understand the learning community and therefore contribute to it more productively.

Initially, I tried different strategies to fill my days with volunteer activities. I posted my schedule and asked teachers to sign up. When this was less than effective, I approached teachers and invited them to select times. Later, I asked to spend two mornings a week with a single class in order to get to know some of the students’ names and become familiar with routines. By the end of January my schedule was busy and people were responding to my invitations for interviews to follow their written Personal History and Belief Statements.

The Evolution of Interviews

Interviews evolved away from the planned methodology in name and function, but effectively stimulated personal reflection for participants and gathered data for understanding the development of personal capacity. Scheduling was a challenge due to the limited availability of the teachers. The principal offered to cover classes while I met with teachers, but they seemed to prefer to schedule meetings outside of class time. Thus, I was still meeting participants near the end of the field work period and it was impossible to ask them to return to the questions to trace change in philosophy over the course of the study, as planned. Instead, through my questions, they seemed to come to greater awareness of shifts that had already occurred, and the reasons for them. Some of these “stories” were later shared by participants in learning team discussions to make life lessons more accessible in the interpersonal realm.

As the interviews continued, I realized that my participation in them was right for this action-oriented study and appropriate for a learning agent, but different than the scripted responses of a neutral interviewer. My questions


legitimized change and purposefully encouraged personal growth in the direction of the learning community ideal. I asked participants to respond to developing insights and emerging research themes. Sometimes I encouraged self-disclosure by revealing my experiences.

Intuitively, I used the conversations to re-circulate facilitative language I had heard recently in other conversations, thus contributing to change at the community level. Some examples included talk about “awareness” and “connectedness”, “fresh eyes”, “creating the conditions”, and phrases from many of the Restitution mantras. Like the principal, I asked participants to “help me understand” their point of view. Upon reflection, I understood that part of my function during these dialogues was to build common language by “naming” a participant’s developing concepts with terms and phrases that echoed those used by participants in previous dialogues. In many cases I was awed that my interest in people’s life histories and intense listening resulted in an experience of close personal connection in a relatively short time. Rather than conducting interviews to collect information, I came to understand that I was initiating social reconstruction and relationship-building through dialogue. To reflect this development, I began to refer to interviews as “interview/dialogues”. Attunement and Alignment forConfluence

To summarize, the planning phase went beyond building a foundation of content and methodology to include listening to and learning to speak the language of the learning community. By engaging participants in dialogue, I was constantly inviting greater participation in the learning community and also increasing my ability to participate in it myself. Dialogue appeared to contribute to an intuitive process of alignment. Through word choice, I was aligning my thinking and beliefs with those of Tansi staff members. When I experienced the pain and joy in participant stories, I attuned to their emotions and better understood their motivations. Thus, alignment and attunement, a flowing together of cognitive and emotional functioning, occurred through shared language. This confluence brought the spontaneous

expression of “we” instead of “I” that was necessary, both for my effectiveness as a learning agent and for learning community growth.

The Action Phase: Instigating Change

The action phase began in February with data gathering and reflective activities at staff meetings, and continued through March and April with learning team meetings. In this section, I describe my activities at the community level and then discuss the formation, dynamics and achievement of each learning team.

To initiate improvement at the professional learning community level, I wanted to coordinate and consult with Tansi administrators in spite of the principal’s assurance that overall “permission” had come with the invitation to conduct the research. As I began to plan activities for staff meetings, ad hoc meetings with the principal evolved into scheduled, weekly meetings that often included the vice-principal. I referred to these as “Administration Team meetings” and began to tape and transcribe them as part of the data collection. As the meetings became more reflective and more closely related to the research themes, I wondered if it would be helpful to frame them as nested cycles of practice-based inquiry, similar to those planned for teachers. I introduced the pattern of inquiry that was beginning to systematize planning, action, and reflection in each of our other learning team meetings, but this pattern did not seem to fit.

In retrospect, I saw that Administration Team meetings were part of an overall cycle of inquiry, with planning, action, and reflection distributed over a period of months. Planning for the implementation of Restitution began as administrators responded to overwhelming staff interest in Restitution training and began to follow guidelines for “creating the conditions” for successful implementation (Gossen & Anderson, 1995). Admittedly, the principal was practicing Restitution himself before this, but I do not believe he began planning for school growth in that direction until a critical mass of staff members were inspired by his modeling to


learn it for themselves. The action phase began before my arrival, with the departure of some staff and the arrival of others, including the vice-principal, who already had some background or interest in Restitution. Action continued as funds were obtained to offer “free” training to all interested staff members, and to purchase print materials to support the learning. During my time at the school, a staff social contract and school beliefs were established. Action involved anticipating possible problems of im-plementation, such as conflict that could arise when teacher behaviours were recognized as incompatible with developing beliefs, and establishing supportive structures. Reflection and revision appeared to spiral through the planning and action phases, as administrators tried to sense staff readiness for the next step. For example, the community school coordinator and the principal spoke of how they had planned for the development of school beliefs earlier in the year, but for some reason it just did not seem like the timing was right.

During the field work, Administration Team meetings allowed me to become familiar with the planning and action that had already occurred and to contribute to continued implementation, reflection, and revision. Our conversations helped me to align research initiatives with administrative purposes and to check perceptions of ongoing activities to ensure that participant needs were met and continued access would not be jeopardized. My overall research cycle corresponded with the purposes and timing of the implementation of Restitution by administrators. However, their planning was initiated before I arrived, and their action and reflection continued after I left the site. Thus, I came to see my contribution to the inquiry as flowing into an existing current of change and contributing to the speed, strength, and direction of learning community improvement. For me, this image of “confluence” became a dominant metaphor of de-centered participation in a learning community.

Building Organizational Capacity

To access the community as a whole, I established a presence at each weekly staff meeting by participating in the “circle” sharing.

I usually gave an overview of recent activities and ended with a brief comment to emphasize my positive experience in the community. Sometimes my participation was unsophisticated and humourous, as when I simply said, “I just love this place!”, to which the principal responded, “Well, we just love you, too”. Another time I joked about painting a “Willow” tree on their staff room wall. When I risked sharing my difficult library experience with the staff, the principal helped me save face and turn it into an opportunity to empower them. He said, “If an experienced and highly qualified educator like Willow can have this experience, you know that the work you do everyday is not easy, but you are able to do it well”.

For longer, monthly staff meetings, I designed and led group learning activities to build learning community concepts and to stimulate reflection and dialogue. Topics included creative tension, formal leadership, a “learning community portrait”, and the “learning community ethic” that I was trying to synthesize from the literature and from observation of Tansi cultural patterns. The first activity connected the pattern of Reality Therapy (Glasser, 1965/2000) familiar to staff members with “creative tension”, a key concept in organizational development (Senge, 1990; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). I have come to see the second activity, an exploration of staff perceptions of administrative leadership, as indicative of a restrictive focus that reflected my academic coursework but was insufficient for an understanding of change at Tansi. The next activity, creating a “learning community portrait”, developed after I became frustrated with explaining learning community theory to small groups of teachers using a diagram.

Presenting the framework using a tree analogy and accompanying images was successful and so I asked for and received permission to paint a “learning tree” mural on the Tansi staff room wall. The mural became the backdrop for a reflective exercise in which staff members brainstormed evidence of their school’s success in the personal, interpersonal, and organizational spheres of development. This activity occurred in March, 2001, and was repeated in October, during a post-field work


visit. Finally, in April, the “learning community ethic” presentation referred to the “heart” of the tree on the mural, and emphasized my growing awareness of the importance of facilitative interpersonal relationships to community learning. Participants were invited to respond then, and the topic was raised again in a learning team, to invite participant response.

Creative tension. In response to the principal’s enthusiasm for quantitative data, I devised a series of simple forms called “perception collections” to gather staff perceptions and give them numerical or visual form for ease of interpretation. I did not claim that these methods were statistically sound but presented them as interpretive tools to stimulate group dialogue and create meaning. The first of these gathered staff members’ perceptions of the level of their commitment to Restitution, and the frequency of its use. At the staff meeting on March 1, I presented the data for discussion, with an illustration of creative tension, the difference between what you want and what you have.

Using an idea from Senge (2000), I gave out elastic bands and invited participants to model creative tension by stretching the elastic between their palms. I talked about managing creative tension by adjusting actions to bring closer alignment with vision, or by expanding vision with new information. The idea was to encourage each person to take responsibility for finding the level of tension that would best maintain his or her capacity for continuous learning. I linked this with an invitation for staff members to find their own level of involvement in the study. Much later, I realized that this teaching was coherent with the Control Theory beliefs that people need the freedom to make their own choices and to be responsible for themselves.

Formal leadership. To stimulate reflection on the contribution of administrative leadership to organizational change, and to invite administrators to find creative tension, I devised an “instant feedback” form to gather perceptions as a basis for discussion. The results of the “perception collection” on formal leadership

were tallied, graphed and presented as a handout for collaborative interpretation.

My apprehension about the appearance of “evaluating” administrators was revealed in the following request for approval for the strategy:

I think this is an easy one – it’s so neat, and then you can graph how many people think the principal is confident, how many people think – how they see. Then you get a picture of the strengths that people see. And you know, there’s no place for them to say anything negative, but what happens is, you can see – you can choose where you might like to work by what isn’t there.

Even after the principal’s reassurance that gathering such input anonymously would not violate district ethics or his personal sensibilities, my tone remained hesitant.

Months after the field work period, I came to see the emphasis on gathering and reflecting positive perceptions as the beginning of a shift from a technical, diagnostic and therapeutic approach in action research (Cohen & Manion, 1989) toward “appreciative inquiry” (Ludema, Cooperrider & Barrett, 2001). Ethical considerations, my perception of a fragile and precious relationship with participants, and my desire to enhance rather than to diminish capacity, converged to bring a subtle shift in the purpose of the research activities. Perhaps the shift occurred in response to contact with the hopeful, success-oriented cultural patterns of Tansi participants. In any case, I was no longer at the school to “fix” deficits, but to help cultivate existing strengths. Ironically, such an approach is consistent with the learning community framework, which offers to replace “metaphors of need, deficiency, and control” with those of “growth, development, and empowerment” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 131). I had read those words in preparation for the study, but field experience brought greater awareness of my conflicting assumptions and a richer understanding of the framework.

A learning community portrait. Following my frustration with trying to communicate an overall picture of learning community theory, I reinterpreted the framework as a tree analogy and prepared a coloured poster integrating


personal, inter-personal, and organizational components as leaves, flowers, and fruit, and the supporting structure of trunk and branches. On the trunk, a heart shaped from curving bark represented learning, the central purpose of an effective community. The roots drew upon learning community principles of wholeness, awareness, meaning and commitment.

When this poster brought interest and excitement to meetings with community liaison workers and teacher associates, I saw potential for the analogy to bring affirmation and creative tension to the staff as a whole. In the staff room, a yellowed mural of an outdoor scene was in contrast to the fresh image I was developing on paper. I was struck with the possibility of having my daughter Charity, a mural artist, help me transfer the new image to the wall. My journal revealed some of my thinking at this time:

The tree image is vivid, and the challenge of integrating visual art with my research excites me. Charity is keen to come and help me paint it, using her new techniques. I wonder how the staff would receive it. It would be a gift – the bringing of gifts has been significant already – the poster and the binders have meaning, aside from practicality. Ross (1996) explains the bringing of ideas to the group, like the bringing of a gift that one offers freely, to be taken up or not as the group wishes. This talk has been repeated when elders speak with the Tansi community. The message reverberates throughout the culture. Each person has gifts within them. It is up to the community to help them find their gifts.…I wonder if the greatest gift you can give to someone is to show them their gifts….This [study] is about collective identity formation, a reflection and discovery of personal, interpersonal, and organizational gifts (p. 1).

My inquiries about the possibility of painting the mural were met enthusiastically. Almost immediately, the old one disappeared and the wall was freshly painted, ready for transformation. My daughter brought acrylic paints and I prepared leaf stencils, yet I was apprehensive. Was this my job as a researcher? Would this unconventional activity meet with

academic approval? The moment we painted a long brown streak on that blank white wall was terrifying and unforgettable for me. My intellectual credibility was at stake, but I had chosen to trust my creative instinct for teaching.

The mural created a fresh and relaxing environment for Tansi staff members, and communicated my care for them. In addition, it was an effective teaching tool for building and sharing an overall picture of community growth. At the February staff meeting, the principal had asked cluster groups to identify current school successes. At the same meeting, I asked for permission to paint the tree, and when it was finished, I built upon the staff’s previous exercise in appreciative inquiry by incorporating their identified successes into a “learning community portrait”. Headings on poster board were attached to appropriate parts of the tree to denote learning community categories: personal, interpersonal (affective and cognitive), and organizational capacity. Successes on file cards were attached under the relevant headings. The finished “learning community portrait” revealed clusters of successful activity in some areas, and room for growth in others.

At a professional development day in March, participants met in the staff room to reflect on the completed “portrait”. Following Gossen’s (1996) first step in personal capacity building through Restitution, as well as a First Nations’ approach to teaching, this “learning tree” was used to stabilize identity. I did not explicitly identify areas of need for participants, but resolved, for myself, to contribute to improvement in areas where I found creative tension. I trusted others to do the same.

Two years later, the mural looked as fresh as when Charity and I first painted it. More importantly, it remained as a mnemonic device for learning community concepts, an artifact to sustain staff memory of the successful joint activity that occurred during the research, and a lasting symbol of the continuous growth of the community. The principal told me how newcomers and visitors asked about the tree, and how staff members collectively shared their memories of how we “built” the tree and what it meant to them. Visual sensemaking through the


tree analogy was, in this case, essential to internalization of the learning community framework: “Until theories of practice are visually inscribed in some way, they are like so much air – they exert pressure and they take up space but they don’t register on the senses and they can’t be handled or manipulated” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 19).

As the research neared completion, I adjusted strategies to emphasize the “learning tree” symbol and contribute to a more lasting impression. I bought a copy of Silverstein’s (1965) children’s book, “The Giving Tree” and used it to emphasize the point that the tree, analogous to our community, grew and changed to meet a child’s needs throughout his life. On April 23, 2001, my last field work day, I planned a celebration with an ice cream cake, its decorations featuring a tree with a heart and four long roots. I read a poem that I had written to show appreciation for the staff and our work together. The “learning tree” image and the poem were later included with a summary of the research in pamphlet form that was distributed to the staff in March of 2003. The image was also a prominent graphic on a revised action research plan, the “learning circle”, developed in 2002. I hoped that repeated exposure to these symbols and artifacts would help the learning “live fruitfully and creatively in future experiences” (Dewey, as cited in Wells, 2000, P. 62), for research participants as well as for those who joined the community later.

A learning community ethic. A reading of research transcripts showed that, over the course of the study, I asked questions of participants to prompt their reflection on the nature of professional relationships. For example, when someone spoke about attending to children’s needs, I often asked if they would extend the same consideration to their colleagues. When administrators talked about their dealings with students having trouble, I asked if teachers had been informed of the outcome. My interest in provoking reflection, and possibly an adjusted perspective about teachers’ responsibilities to each other, came from: (1) Mitchell’s (1996) assertion that positive affective relationships precede teachers’ shared cognitive development, (2) the learning community theory assertion that,

in healthy schools, teacher learning as well as student learning is valued, and (3) my identification of the notion of “learning community symmetry”, the idea that teachers must experience positive conditions for learning in order to be able to recreate them effectively for children.

In April, near the end of the field work period, I spoke to the staff about my developing ideas about a “learning community ethic”. This was not long after I had been part of the teachers’ group in an administrator-initiated exercise to develop school beliefs, and we had become aware of the common value of “connectedness”. In an effort to link this value with learning community theory, I referred to the “heart” of the tree mural. I explained how I first understood the heart of a learning community as a focus on learning for everyone, but I had come to understand that learning was dependent upon the capacity of professionals to care for one another (Mitchell, 1996). I suggested to participants that self-assessment of learning community participation would require considering the effects of our speech and behaviours for adult colleagues. This “ethic” would rest on “learning community symmetry”, the idea that creating a caring environment for all children in the school was dependent upon sustaining such an environment among colleagues.

This presentation was somewhat tentative, and I invited staff members to help me develop a structure for “self-evaluating our actions against the central purpose of enhancing, not diminishing, community capacity for learning”. In retrospect, I saw the exercise as modeling a sensemaking process. It was also an invitation to participate in the deep reflection required for second order change (Argyris, 1982), that is, a change at the level of beliefs that precedes and supports changes at the level of practice. Unfortunately, this session was not tape recorded and I did not build a data collection exercise into the presentation. Thus, while staff members listened intently, there was no direct evidence to show that the idea had “catalytic validity” (Lather, 1996), for changing the thinking of most participants.


However, when I asked the Monday

Morning Learning Team to use the learning community ethic as their focus for the last week of data collection, there was some evidence of contribution to the reflective personal habits they were developing. The team understood the ethic as related to self-evaluation, and to developing awareness, which in turn brings change. Amber explained:

The biggest thing that I’ve learned is that awareness brings change, right? So, when you self-evaluate, you just continue to change for the better, enhancing what you want to happen in your life, and what’s going on….Your eyes just open up to what’s happening around you and who you are, and I don’t think that could happen unless you are continually evaluating yourself.

Daisy emphasized that self-reflection, was for her, a route to greater caring for children, in two ways: (1) understanding her own needs helped her to understand student needs, and (2) awareness that her need for teaching competency sometimes conflicted with her motivation to meet students’ emotional needs allowed her to reconsider and make better choices for students. While this shift to concern for students helped me understand Daisy’s motivation, I continued to try to extend the thinking of the group toward defining obligations to adult colleagues and accepting responsibility for contributing to community learning.

Sally shared how setting limits, or monitoring her own capacity, had helped her to feel more balanced, unlike the previous year when she had felt like “a tightrope walker who had fallen and was just hanging on by her teeth”:

I’ve gotten really good at saying no….I’ve gotten really good at paying attention to my needs, paying attention to the people I work with, some of their needs, and not being the rescuer. Handing it back and saying, “I can help you do that”. (p. 3)

Sally also spoke of the difficulty in supporting colleagues who were having trouble with student behaviours, when she, herself, had a good relationship with the students and did not see the behaviours.

When I suggested that it may be important to be open and ready to share learning with all colleagues, including those who may not agree with you, Daisy contributed a perspective based on Control Theory beliefs, and coherent with the First Nations value of “non-interference” (Ross, 1996):

I think the sharing is very, very important, and I think it’s important to listen and understand others as well as it is important for me to be understood, too. But I also think that it isn’t necessary to have everyone practicing Control Theory. If we really believe what Control Theory is all about, and people have different needs, I think, when you talk about self-reflection, one of the things I’ve thought about is, this works for me. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for someone else. And I shouldn’t expect it to. That’s wrong, it’s really wrong, because I am trying to, in that sense, impose my view on someone else….Part of Control Theory, a really important part of it, is that people make choices.

Thus, my developing notion of a learning community ethic, as presented, did not resonate with participants. Rather, they shared their own developing perspectives, which enabled me to revise and expand the idea so that it became more firmly grounded in authentic school experience.

Other activities. In addition to staff meetings, I experimented with other structured activities, attempting to find less formal ways to gather data, stimulate reflection, and invite diverse contributions to the study. “Making meaning” sheets presented selected quotes on a single issue, and invited oral response. Two of these, one on empowerment and another on formal leadership, were prepared and given to selected participants, based on my perception of their interest in the topic and in contributing to the research. While this device promoted, for a few participants, dialogue with me, the activity seemed disconnected from the purpose of the research. I later realized that providing opportunities for group dialogue around each theme would have been more effective. However, the learning teams, once formed,


focused on activities more central to the implementation of Restitution. Building Interpersonal Capacity in Learning Teams

In preparation for the formation of learning teams, I wanted participants to have a clear understanding of the learning community framework. Thus, I used existing structures, the cluster meetings, to share this information with small groups. To accommodate their different schedules, I met separately with community liaison workers and with teacher associates. Successive explanations helped me learn to summarize the knowledge in a way that was accessible and appealing to teachers; graphic representations of learning community theory progressed from a diagram to a poster featuring a tree metaphor. Finally, the “learning tree” mural supported the “learning community portrait” activity, and participants developed language with which to recognize continued growth as learning teams were formed.

The first meeting of a research-related learning team occurred more than half way through the field work, on March 11. I had expected a team to be formed much sooner, but it seemed necessary to establish trust at the personal level and learning community understanding at the organizational level, before participants were ready to commit to more intense interpersonal work. I also thought it was necessary to explain the process of collaborative action research to all staff in small groups, before inviting those who seemed interested to participate. Finally, staff members’ time was a factor; I watched for the earliest opportunity to plan meetings that would not be considered too great a burden.

The Monday morning team. When I began regular visits to Tansi in the fall of 2000, the principal introduced me to Fawn and Tim, and drew my attention to the way they were implementing Restitution in their classrooms. Daisy, Sally, and Awareness were also committed to Restitution and interested in opportunities for reflection. These individuals were leaders in school-wide implementation, and the first to respond to my invitation to join a

learning team. We met Monday mornings from 8:45 a.m. until the bell at 9:30, from March 11 to April 23.

Team activities centred around “pocket journals” that I provided, along with a choice of “5 Minute Journal” formats (adapted from Dr. Gary Phillips, personal com-munication, Mar., 1998). Small coloured pages were pasted into the journals each week, as a reminder of the selected journal format. Another coloured page featured the focus for the week. We began by choosing focus goals from a self-assessment sheet that was familiar to participants from their second Restitution training session. After the first two learning team meetings, I felt we needed a supporting structure to ensure a systematic, reflective pattern based on action research cycles. Inspired by a teacher’s comment, I developed a graphic image to help us “talk around the circle” (see Figure 2). After initial presentation of the handout with accompanying text, the coloured “learning circle” graphic was later placed in the centre of the table, for reference during conversation.

Figure 2. The learning circle guide to improvement-focused dialogue

I explained the learning circle guide to participants this way:

Shelley was saying something to me about the circle, and that learning never ends, and


it made me think how we could put the pattern of action research, which is what we are doing…to me, the cycle, the circle, the ideas fit together quite beautifully. So, we have the tree, as our image, the whole picture of what we could be, and we have the circle…talking around the circle together, as a way of getting there.

On the handout, the central tree had four roots, extending into a circle of awareness, meaning, commitment, and wholeness, key concepts in learning community theory. I began to use these four words as cues to refocus conversation and deepen reflection. The overall process was one of continually re-evaluating beliefs and actions in terms of an overall vision, or ideal state.

Making evaluative comparisons with an ideal state involved a shift from technical approaches to action research, in which actions are evaluated in terms of beliefs or goals. As our version of the process continued, inclusion of a wholeness component, the idea of beginning learning with a quality picture or ideal, became more significant to participants and to me. My revisions placed “wholeness” as the first step in a systematic, social learning process that included expansion of one’s ideal as well as alignment of beliefs and behaviours. This adaptation brought greater compatibility with the holistic processes that nurture learning communities (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000), and with the identity-forming concerns of Restitution (Gossen, 1996).

Key activities for the Monday Morning Learning Team were building awareness of self-talk and of creative tension. In our first meeting, I introduced the concept of monitoring one’s self-talk and this remained the underlying theme throughout several reflective cycles. For this group, the object of study was the relationship between teachers’ thoughts and behavior. Our experience confirmed that meta-cognitive strategies, including self-assessment, awareness of beliefs, and awareness of self-talk or inner speech (Manning & Payne, 1996), were developed effectively through Restitution training and more firmly established through the reflection and dialogue of collaborative action research.

The Restitution self-evaluation sheet offered some action oriented goals but participants seemed drawn to those that they could adopt as a mantra, a powerful phrase or image to mediate thought and manage emotions, thus increasing control over actions. People seemed to choose focus goals based on their anticipation of the demands of the coming week, e.g. Fawn chose “Does it really matter?” to help manage her stress during report card writing, and Daisy picked “Choose your battles” before an important meeting about student placement. Other focus goals included, “Flip it!” (a reference to re-framing a situation more optimistically), “Focus on the solution”, and “Could he/she/I have done worse?”, The significant “Am I being the person I want to be?”, was a general, underlying goal for everyone.

Conversation revealed that the use of mantras as mediational “signs” (Vygotsky, 1978) had been well-established in Restitution workshops and practicum sessions. Strategically placed, “text only” posters in several classrooms were referred to frequently throughout the day as teachers interacted with students. Some of the quotes were selected from other sources, e.g. Tim selected “Qui bono?”, or “Who benefits?” from a book by Kohn (1996). Most mantras, however, were taken directly from Restitution materials, effectively helping to enact purposeful Restitution teaching in the classroom context.

Control Theory practicum sessions, with their strategy of role playing and then analyzing recently experienced interactions, seemed particularly effective for providing mental pictures of mantras in use. Mention of a certain mantra would trigger memories of a practicum activity and participants would recall their shared experience. Fawn marveled at how everyone had tried unsuccessfully to “flip” a persistent complainer during a role play and it was “driving her crazy”. Daisy recalled a real situation she had brought to a practicum, where she was told her “caring” response to a chronic complainer was “so co-dependent”. Such reflections were often accompanied by laughter; people seemed to be amused by the way they used to think and by the sudden revelations they had experienced.


As dialogue continued, I learned that

Monday Morning participants chose thought-related goals, not to neglect action, but because they understood that behaviour could be most effectively changed through changed thinking. Language that demonstrated this internalized understanding suggested its probable source, the Control Theory “behaviour car” lesson (Glasser, 1965/2000) that was referred to in every Control Theory and Restitution training and in every practicum. To summarize, the behaviour car is driven by a person’s basic needs. Thinking and acting are the front wheels, and feeling, or emotion, and physiology are the back wheels. It is preferable to “steer” your car with the front wheels, which implies rational thinking and positive, goal-directed action. Driving on the back wheels, or acting in response to emotion or physiology, is considered dangerous. The teaching is related to Restitution, in that Gossen’s (1996) thinking and counseling language patterns are designed to restore individuals to feelings of successful identity and to rational, goal-directed behaviour that aligns with their beliefs.

The expression, “I’m on my back wheels right now”, was understood by everyone at Tansi to mean, “I’m feeling out of control”. Tim chose conscious self-regulation using this image as his focus for the week:

I think last week I ended up choosing back wheels to the front wheels about half way through the week…I’m going to stick with that once again because I enjoyed it and I think it’s fun, trying to, you know, move yourself off the back wheels when you’re really emotionally attached, or, like, getting involved emotionally. Then start thinking about it, so that’s what I’ll do”.

Amber contributed an example of the power of the behaviour car teaching for her, when she described how she gained control of her response to student vandalism to bring success for the offending students:

We walked out there and I had my low point right away, because I went totally on my back wheels and I said…“Well, if you can’t handle it and if you’re wrecking our school I guess the only option we have is to phone the police”. So, right away there, you

could tell I was on my feeling wheels because I was threatening them.

Recognition of this undesirable response enabled her to ask the question, “Is this what I want?” and to refocus on student needs. The students were asked if that’s what they wanted, for the police to be called. When the answer was no, an alternative plan was suggested:

Listen, we’re going to get groceries. When we get back, would you be helpers? Would you be willing to help us carry our groceries?”. And that just hooked ‘em! All of a sudden, they were just like – “Yeah, that’d be great!”. And, Sally said, “OK, when we get back we’ll buzz up to your classroom and if you’re ready, we’ll call you down and you can help us carry groceries”. And they went to class. And just stopped what they were doing. And it was just like they just needed someone to pay a little bit of attention to them, and bring out the good side in them, and they loved to help.

Without an understanding of the link between thinking and behaviour, and without mediating language to empower her to move from back wheels to front, this teacher may not have regained her composure. Her ability to do so strengthened her own confidence, helped the students experience success instead of trouble, and helped them to see themselves in a more positive light. Recorded in her journal and brought forward for discussion, her success became part of the learning accessible to other participants.

When the learning team met, I did not ask to see journals, as planned. I decided that more candid reflections were likely to be recorded if the journals remained private except for those portions that participants wished to share. Data collection occurred as information recorded in journals stimulated dialogue that was taped and transcribed. Passages from learning team transcripts provide evidence of learning, or internalization, through participant’s emerging control of self-regulating signs (Ball, 2000). This passage showed how the journal and her focus for the week helped Amber reflect on her learning:

Last week…I used “Does it really matter?”. I kept saying that over and over in my head.


And I’d catch myself saying it, and I’d be like, “Right on! I just said it again”. Because I find it really hard to let go of a situation sometimes, and I think that might be the power [need]…so for me, that self-talk saying, “Does it really matter?, it kind of brings my stress level down. And I just really, I can take a step back and look at the situation and let it go sometimes. I think that’s important. That’s what we were talking about last week. I really internalized that.

Other transcript passages revealed a relationship between use of internal signs and external tools. Sally shared how she internalized a self-regulation concept, which enabled her to apply it with students:

I have two things. “Could I have done worse?”, or when I’m dealing with kids, “Could the kids have done worse?”. I think that really - just flips things, and I think that everyone kind of does a double take when you say it, or when I hear it in my inner voice. So that kind of does it and I’m working really hard at having the other person fix it and not being the rescuer. And I just see what dignity that brings to everybody.

A great deal of dialogue provided evidence to suggest that “learning community symmetry”, a correspondence between learning conditions for adults and learning conditions for children, was at play in the internalization and application of new ideas. For example, Daisy said, “With Control Theory, I’ve looked inside myself. So I try looking inside the students as well, and try to think, what’s motivating that behaviour?”.

To summarize, Monday Morning Learning Team activities, rich, open dialogue among like-minded participants seemed to be encouraging and stimulating. Sally explained, “I thought about the ‘wholeness’ and my quality picture, and I’m really happy working with the people I’m working with, because we’re all on the same page”.

As a learning agent, I was pleased that I could provide this group with increased opportunity for dialogue, and with greater meta-cognitive awareness of the self-regulating

function of inner speech. The strength of the collaborative work in this team encouraged me to restructure other research activities in order to bring Tansi people together. Notably, end of project narratives were jointly constructed in October, 2001, in focus group dialogues.

However, my contribution to learning in this team was not unblemished. One willing participant was discouraged from joining the group by my offhand comment that the room was too small. I did not mean to exclude anyone; I just expected that we would find another room. Unfortunately, I was not able to persuade her to come after all, and my only consolation is that she did join one of the focus groups in October. Finally, this group convinced me that transcript reflections during the field work period was not a good idea. The first and only time we tried this, one participant was “put on his back wheels” by my observation that he had not said very much during the last meeting. Group reflection was a progressive development in community learning but reflection upon reflection did not meet participant needs and may have inhibited continued participation.

Reflection seemed to be stimulated by making mental notes in anticipation of journal writing, even though team members confessed that their journals were not always complete. Amber said, “I’m liking my little journal. I’m a keener with my journal”, and Sally talked about how the journal was “forcing” her to reflect at a more than superficial level. Tim described his understanding of learning team activities this way:

A lot of what we’ve been doing is self-evaluating, and I think we’re looking at how we want to be, and we’re evaluating ourselves against that…I think the groups give us a chance to do that, to think about what’s the focus, and then work toward it.

Sally ended our last session with what I interpreted as a supreme compliment. She said to me, “Thank-you for creating the conditions”.

For me, the Monday Morning team was an apprenticeship with more knowledgeable Restitution peers, where I learned to speak the language, first with them, and later internally for my own self-regulation. Their willingness to


experiment, their patience, and their openness created the conditions for me to deepen my understanding of Restitution and to sharpen my skills as a learning agent. In joint activity with them, I was able to test an approach to action research and create a revised plan that I believe is more in harmony with learning community theory and more accessible to teachers.

The classroom community learning team. The Classroom Community Learning Team was formed after discussion with a teacher who was not interested in Restitution but wanted to contribute to the study and to be a part of the growth that Tansi was experiencing. We decided to form a learning team around our common interest in the work of Kohn (1996), and to invite two others for whom this teacher was a mentor. I first met with Dorothy, Flowers, and Kimmi on March 27th, to review a handout summarizing Kohn’s strategies for building classroom communities. Our intention was to continue to meet weekly, but illness and other commitments through the month of April reduced the number of meetings to just two.

Although I do not have transcripts of these meetings, my journal notes indicated that we reviewed Kohn’s (1996) strategies and selected some to try, for example, a class suggestion box and class meetings. Using the learning circle reflection guide, we assessed the results of the new strategies for the students and made plans to extend them. An introduction to action research was effectively achieved with little explanation but with the experience of one complete cycle of reflection.

To me, the formation of this group was significant to the research because it provided an opportunity for inclusiveness and a demon-stration of flexibility. The learning processes that I was developing proved to be versatile enough to contribute to a school-wide approach to learning, with content varied according to participant needs and interests. The three group members were comfortable with each other and with me and they became willing to discuss school affairs informally with me on other occasions. I appreciated the trust that I was given and I saw myself as contributing to the cultural pattern of “connectedness” that was

important to Tansi staff members and transcended their interest in Restitution.

The primary cluster learning team. After the formation of the first learning team, others expressed interest in participating more actively in the study. In the interests of building community and maintaining inclusiveness, I continued to invite participants to join teams. As I had been attending Primary Cluster meetings, it occurred to me that building an action research component into the existing structure of regular, bi-weekly meetings could help sustain reflective practice after the study was over. “The more learning teams that exist in a school, the more likely that professional learning is available to all staff members, that individual learning is accessible to other members of the team, and that the learning is directly connected to the issues and deep mysteries faced by the professional staff” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 118).

I prepared action research handouts and pocket journals for the March 27th meeting but there was a great deal of other business and no time to share them. On the meeting of April 10, there were a few minutes left after other business. I described existing teams and offered participants the choice of joining an existing team, forming a new one, or continuing to allow time for action research at each of their cluster meetings. The group chose the latter option and so I invited them to choose a focus for the following week. However, a reflective reading of meeting transcripts made it clear to me that my presentation was too detailed for the short time frame. I did not provide concrete examples and I offered a confusing array of choices for focus goals and for journal formats. I did not present the Restitution self-evaluation sheet as a guide to goal setting, which had been a successful strategy for the Monday Morning Team. Unsure of how the group was responding and not wanting to appear too directive, I said, “It’s not me imposing my agenda, it’s more me helping you get what you want”.

Shelley, celebrated in the community for her honesty, said, “I don’t know what we want. I don’t know what you are talking about”. I remember feeling frustrated and embarrassed


and the transcripts show I did not respond to Shelley’s cue but launched into another lengthy explanation as I distributed the materials. When the bell went, teachers asked a few questions. They seemed bewildered and afraid that they would make a mistake. There wasn’t time for more explaining so I just asked them to try something and come back and share it next meeting. I’m not sure if I realized at that my time at Tansi would be over before their next meeting. Daisy, who was also in the Monday Morning group, offered assistance in the form of a question that showed others how she was approaching the journal, and asked me if that was OK. “Does it feel OK to you?”, I said, and when she said, “Yes”, our laughter eased the tension in the group. Afterward, a visiting adult student from a recreation program helped me to see the meeting in a more positive light. She was delighted to receive the materials and she said that she had never seen this valuable approach to professional development in her own program.

That meeting was perhaps the biggest failure of the research in terms of participant learning and the biggest success in terms of my growth as a learning agent. In my journal, I wrote,

I think I am learning to appreciate teachers’ needs but I always seem to over plan….The handout was confusing and yet I was pleased that I had distilled the essence of action research in just two pages. It seems to me today that the urgency of teachers' lives and the intricacies of theory are worlds apart!

My approach to action research developed as a result of this reflection. The “learning circle” was revised to begin with “wholeness”, to support team members in building a shared vision from the beginning and to allow the facilitator a better opportunity to understand team goals and needs. Also, I learned to introduce a new team to action research with a more directed, hands-on approach, one that involved fewer choices at first and taught the process by working through it rather than talking about it. I am grateful to the Tansi teachers for their generosity in allowing me to make mistakes, from which I learned a great deal.

The Restitution and respect learning team. Another mistake, in that it violated the non-

hierarchical culture that was developing at the school, was to meet with all the teacher associates to present the learning community framework. Though my preference was for heterogeneous groups, the meeting was planned to accommodate scheduling. Participants seemed willing to attend, but I was later asked why I wanted to work with teacher associates separate from teachers. This question encouraged me to ask two interested teacher associates which team mates they would like to work with, and to invite those individuals to join us. A team was formed around their interest in exploring the compatibility of Restitution with First Nations beliefs about “respect”. I explained it to team members this way:

Our research question is, “How can we work together to bring Restitution and respect to life in our school?”. And you’re interested in different things. Some of you are more interested in Restitution, and some of you are more interested in respect, but you’re interested in the same thing, you’re interested in building good relationships, in improving the way we deal with kids and with each other.

As an example of a similar synthesis of ideas, I referred to Shelley’s professional development day demonstration of her personalized integration of ideas from Restitution, Brokenleg’s teachings, and the Tansi community values posters. I suggested that members of this group would be trying to learn from each other and to “put it all together”, each in our own unique way.

An initial meeting was led by Laurie because I had to be away on the first day that members were available to meet. The group gathered and looked over the action research materials I had left for them. One participant later said that she learned by talking and experiencing and not by reading. However, the opportunity for several team members to read about action research in advance seemed to reduce the need for verbal explanations and ease the way into reflective processes, which were productive in the second meeting. An interesting development was that this group approached “talking around the circle” in a different way. Honouring the First Nations understanding of


“respect”, I did not correct them but followed their lead in a developing pattern of dialogue. As a result, I was privileged to observe a constructive process that was less goal-directed than previous patterns but continued to express learning community values and contribute to shared understandings.

Rather than choose a focus in advance and work toward it, this group identified high and low points in their relationships and analyzed each incident by “talking around the circle”. Like the Monday Morning team, there was a growing awareness of self-regulating strategies as interactions were brought to commitment and wholeness. In this group, however, there were greater differences in the levels of experience with Restitution and more “scaffolding” among peers to bring awareness into focus. Sara shared a difficult meeting with a parent that established the pattern. Lorraine, who had also been there, interpreted events and illustrated the process of reflection that developed.

When I look at this circle, I think it was an awareness for you of the perception that she took from what you said, and the meaning was confused, but it went even further to the commitment you both had. But it didn’t start out that way. It started out where, it was Sarah’s fault. And then Sarah said, you know, she overreacted, so it was like, the blame. And then it just went off from that, and they said, no, we both have a responsibility here. And how do we want to be working together? It did work out well. So then you’ve got that commitment, and I guess that’s where we got to the wholeness, because she was ready to take her kid out of the school. The wholeness is, where does this child need to be?

Laurie chose to share an event that would “focus on the positive”, and the group helped her become aware of her own strategies for maintaining her strength and self-control.

There was a sub in, and so I ended up taking three boys just out to work on Math because they were wandering the halls and not really getting anything done. And so we went and worked in the Community Room, and it was awesome! They got some work done. You know, we played some cards and it ended up

being a really good afternoon. Where it could have ended up being – they could have gotten into trouble. And incidentally, that was the day we had the lunchroom disaster and I was really frustrated with that, you know? But at the end of the day, I looked back, and I tried to focus on what happened with those three boys, because that was a very positive thing.

Continued dialogue showed how other members of the group prompted deeper reflection for Laurie and gave her language with which to understand her own successful strategies.

Lorraine: “I’m just curious. What was it that helped you to move forward for the afternoon, as opposed to being negative?”

Laurie: “Gee! You’re making me think! I guess I just, I just know what happens. I don’t know if I purposely thought to myself, I don’t want to be that way. I don’t know.”

Patricia: “You talk to me, and you tell me – I mean, you’re quite open with, you know, I’m having a rough day. And you verbalize to me exactly what you just did, ‘I’m being negative and I don’t like this’, and it’s like a venting thing, and you just need me to listen, and through that process you’re turning yourself around. And you did. So I think that was part of the process, just being able to – .“

Laurie: “To verbalize it, yeah!” Patricia: “And then you’re conscious of it.

So that, I think, is the awareness. It’s great that you could do that, at the time when you’re in that emotional state. Sometimes that’s hard.”

Lorraine: “So, you were on your back wheels?”

Laurie: “Yeah! Oh, yeah!” Lorraine: “OK, so, through self-talk, and

just even allowing someone to hear you, to vent, put you on your front wheels?”

Laurie: “Yeah! It’s like a shift.” Laurie left the group that day feeling grateful to others for their support. She appeared strengthened by her developing awareness. I


expect that she was eventually able to internalize the “shifting” language and use it independently for self-regulation, without external “venting”.

The Restitution and Respect Team began late in the study but was successful in that it brought a diverse group together to share worldviews and strategies for success and to develop shared language and common ground. Sarah emphasized her belief that all things are connected, which validated the purpose of the group. First Nations teachers stressed their pictures of wholeness. These ideal visions of the school were inclusive of all of the students and parents and pictured non-resident staff members spending more time in the local neighbourhood. Without telling others how to act, they shared their own practice of respectful behaviour toward students: “I know they are good kids. They come in and talk…I take time with them, and they respect me for that and I respect them for being who they are, and not what they did”.

I saw this group as part of a move toward “wholeness”, an integration of the perceptions and values of various learning community members. First Nations ideas and school practices were beginning to merge, thus avoiding the naiveté in thinking that a school “can or should implement initiatives that are not supported by the community or that have not been negotiated with community members” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 53). The positive question, “How can we work with our First Nations community to improve relationships?”, remained of interest to Tansi staff members and was the impetus for an extensive research project that they pursued after this study, in the fall of 2002.

The administration team. Four recorded Administrative Team meetings occurred in March and April. They included the principal and vice-principal, except for momentary absences of one or the other when called to attend to another matter. The community coordinator joined us, at my invitation, for our last meeting, when I finally understood the importance of his leadership role. In these meetings, we shared information about the general progress of the research, community development, and upcoming research plans and

school activities. This information facilitated the research but the surrounding dialogue brought the administrators and myself together in “joint activity’ or collaborative work. Our common purpose was the development of school capacity through the development of its people.

Administration Team meetings provided opportunities for the mutual influence of subtly different concerns and values, derived from our different experiences. Acceptance, respect, and trust were built in the group over time, so that attunement to emotions and alignment of beliefs often occurred. Where perspectives remained distinct, such as our different understandings of the “bottom line”, we were content to explain our respective positions but not to force agreement. Of great significance to the trustworthiness of the research, these meetings with those who were privileged to an overall view of the school and its staff were a sounding board for my developing understanding of Tansi culture.

To invite administrative reflection and to confirm or revise my understandings, I raised three main topics corresponding to emerging research themes: formal leadership, the “talking around the circle” format that was used in other learning teams, and the importance of the “bottom line” for the capacity of teachers. Meetings were relaxed and dialogue was loosely structured. A wide range of other topics were discussed that contributed to the ethnographic portrait of this study as well as to recognition of the facilitative cultural patterns that are presented in Chapter VI. However, in this section, I limit discussion to the three main topics.

I had begun whole staff activities with an inquiry into perceptions of formal leadership, as part of the organizational structure required for community development. I intended to follow that round of data collection and group interpretation with a focus on informal leadership. However, with the unexpected development of the “learning tree” mural, the resulting “learning community portrait” took precedence, and initiative by those other than administrators was examined within that activity.


A perception collection form was used to

gather data on participant perceptions of qualities demonstrated by administrators. Staff members were given a list of “ideal” leadership qualities, and asked to circle the ones that were most evident at Tansi. I explained that collecting information this way was not intended to be statistically valid, but to generate dialogue about which leadership characteristics were con-tributing to the development of the Tansi learning community. Both administrators appeared interested in reflecting on the collected perceptions, and adjusting either their behaviour or their communication to strengthen per-ceptions of qualities that were most important to them.

On March 8th , the Administration Team meeting focused on interpreting the data and the dialogue revealed leadership qualities that were not on the form. Both administrators showed that they were very open to receiving data for the purpose of self-assessment. Their in-terpretations demonstrated the ability to generate creative tension from feedback, as well as the ability to frame feedback in a positive and encouraging light, often with humour. For example, the principal was concerned that “honesty”, “trustworthiness” and “integrity” were less frequently chosen qualities; it was important for him that others would see him “walking the talk”. His confidence in his own honesty was unshaken but he wondered how he might communicate his integrity more effectively to staff. A serious exchange between principal and vice-principal showed a determination to maintain a positive attitude: “We have many more strengths than we do weaknesses!”, was answered with, “Well actually, I don’t think any of these are weaknesses. See, they are all strengths. Some of them are stronger than others”. With humour, the vice principal dismissed the descriptor “wise”. She felt she was too young to be wise and neither did she want to be viewed as “successful”, if success was related to a need for status.

Unexpectedly, interpretation showed which of the supposedly ideal qualities Tansi administrators valued highly and which were not valued. For example, a high frequency of

“strong vision”, “kind” and “supportive” affirmed important leadership priorities. However, “consistent” and “has high standards” were seen as incompatible with Restitution practice, which calls for situation-specific remedies and empowers people to set standards for themselves. The principal commented wryly, “I think we are very consistent in being inconsistent”. This gave me an opportunity to bring forward language used by another participant, the idea of being “consistent with beliefs”. The vice-principal agreed that a set of articulated, shared beliefs, which the staff was close to developing, was needed to inform decisions and bring a greater sense that decisions were consistent.

With characteristic tolerance of am-biguity, the principal remained reflective.

It could be that some stuff we are doing is not understood. Like the knife incident. You know, they say, we have bottom lines and we don’t stick to them. People don’t understand, you know, the process. Or it could be something else. We say we deal with children in such a manner, but people don’t feel they are being dealt with in the same manner.

A later comment revealed how this reflection justified actions which may have been strengthened because of the creative tension generated in dialogue: “What I try to do now is, I’m starting to invite the teachers to come into the process…then perhaps they will say, ‘OK, I don’t need to send them to the office because I can do this on my own’”. The principal explained that he found the exercise helpful and he expected his reflection to continue as situations brought understanding of where certain perceptions may have come from.

However, there was also a strong shift away from emphasis on administrative leadership as an impetus for change. When I was asked what kinds of things people were saying in the interviews, I answered with a long and excited description of internalized ideas; stronger, healthier people; and the beginning of a language of acceptance for students as well as teachers. The principal’s quiet response altered my sense of Tansi values: “That’s a lot more important than what people think of their


principal”. This was the beginning of a re-conceptualization of leadership, furthered by understanding of the de-centered role I had come to play as learning agent, and by the “leader-rich” environment (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) that I observed at Tansi.

In a subsequent meeting, the principal made another comment that I eventually understood as more than modesty. Paradoxically, a great strength of his leadership seemed to be that he steadfastly refused to take credit for the changes that were occurring but insisted they be attributed to the quality of the staff.

I’m not sure if your research will stress this enough, but I feel as a principal, that I was very lucky with the staff this year, because we can come and talk about seeding ideas and so on, but if people are sterile to the ideas, you know – I think if you look at the staff as being a good soil, then it will be easy to seed. The wind can do it.

The principal seemed to know that a “learning community” rather than a “leadership” narrative would explain positive changes more fully and continue to strengthen all staff members as well as their bonds with each other. Further, he resisted any suggestion, however subtle, that he was “in control” of the school or the staff. His deep belief in the dignity and power of each human being and in each person’s right to make choices, was evident in his consistent practice of Control Theory and Restitution. The cultural pattern of “empowerment” was revealed in almost every administrative action, whether this principal’s interaction was with students or with staff members.

On April 5, I presented the “learning circle” that was helping to focus other learning team discussions. I described how, without guidance, conversation seemed to lack purpose and did not give participants the satisfaction of “moving forward”. To experience “talking around the circle” together, we discussed the development of school culture, which provided an overall picture of the year’s organizational learning. We began with “awareness”, and the principal’s comments showed that there had been many points of awareness of the group’s needs that helped to determine the next steps: “A number

of times in the last year we’ve been at some sort of “Y” in the road”. He spoke of the first days of the school year, when, for the first time many parents and some students attended a series of short, practical presentations by members of the staff experienced in Restitution. His assessment was, “it really started the year on a good footing, from my perspective, and my perception was that people were accepting the parents there, and it was not a big distracter or a big stress factor in their lives.”

By November, there was awareness that many staff members had made a “paradigm shift” away from rules, and were interested in establishing beliefs. Yet, there was a “gut feeling” that others weren’t ready for such a commitment. The vice-principal described how she addressed conflict over the differences between consequences, punishment, and Restitution, with role plays that translated theoretical questions into the practical question of, “What would it look like?” She said,

It gave them some support in just how they could talk to kids and questions to ask. So that’s sort of where I thought they were coming from at that point, because they weren’t ready for the beliefs and yet, they needed more understanding and just more involvement.

The principal added his idea that the next step should be the development of a social contract, because of the “broken front” of personal change. He expected that further Control Theory training and practicums would cause some staff members to begin questioning practices for greater alignment with their developing beliefs. In anticipation of conflict, he felt it would be best to have established agreement about the way people wanted to communicate with each other. The vice-principal agreed, and made a comparison with the need to build relationships with students before conflict arises.

The “meaning” attributed to what had been learned focused on relationships and led to a discussion of teachers’ commitments to “teach the whole child”. Administrators spoke of their own needs to be “in relationship” or to value “connectedness”, and of the caring capacity of


teachers who were strong enough to attend to the needs of some of the most difficult students. For example, the principal praised a teacher who had initiated the return of a student to her classroom, from a special program that the student had been assigned to but had not attended. It seemed that, above all, Restitution and Control Theory was credited with helping teachers develop the strength and skill to care for the social and emotional needs of students. The vice principal explained,

When you look at all the need here - in other areas, more of their needs focus on the academic. The social is taken care of. There is a family unit. There is that love and belonging, that connectedness. Here there is, but its different, and I think there’s more [focus] on the survival”.

Coming to “wholeness” on the “learning circle”, administrators described their ideal visions as coming from Quality Schools (Glasser, 1990). The principal recalled a previous school where an empowered community of parents had made choices intended to preserve their language and culture for the benefit of their children. Thus, a complete round of the “learning circle” was achieved. Beginning with a whole picture of what the school could be, the development of awareness, meaning and commitment over the course of several months was understood as having brought the staff closer, in reality, to their “wholeness” ideal. In the process, their vision of what was possible had been more fully developed.

The final Administration Team meeting came after a difficult time, when the principal had been away and I had observed examples of teacher defensiveness that I found demoralizing after so much growth. Concerned with a lack of academic progress, teachers talked of “preparing parents” for decisions that seemed pre-made. Some were resentful of the district promotion policy and lacked faith that students would continue to learn in subsequent grades. Ironically, they saw failure as a remedy to prevent failure in the future. Further, there were more students in the halls during class time and teachers were throwing up their hands and retreating behind closed classroom doors.

Tension that had been gathering for some time around the “bottom line”, publicized by posters around the school that read, “No weapons”, “no drugs or alcohol”, and “no direct defiance of a teacher”. While some wanted the signs removed because they contributed to a negative picture of the school, others wanted these “rules” more strictly enforced. It was said that the bottom line was there to “protect the beliefs”. However, I felt that the bottom line was at the time, insufficient to preserve teachers’ beliefs in Restitution, in the viability of the learning community, and in their own personal capacity to continue learning and changing.

After reviewing Senge’s (1990) spiral processes, I came to see the bottom line as a natural divide between the growth and the decay of school initiative. It seemed that the “bottom line” could be a baseline for teachers’ capacity, a point above which their strength and motivation to be open to new ways of thinking and working continued to grow, and below which they began to shrink. Without this baseline of confidence that their safety needs would be met, people were less capable of contributing to the collaborative effort. Without a guarantee of basic external controls, chaos and growing fear could reverse the upward spiral of change, toward the hopelessness, despair, and defensive behaviours that would bring further damage to the group’s capacity to grow and change.

One incident that was a symptom of this downward turn showed a lapse in com-munication. When the vice-principal found that a small boy had a “little” knife at school, she made sure the situation was safe but did not send him home. Rumours spread quickly about a weapon at school that had not been dealt with and some staff members were angry. In this instance, it seemed they wanted punishment for the child and not just a solution to the problem.

At our April 23rd meeting, I asked if the bottom line was the minimum standard needed for teachers to want to be at Tansi. The principal corrected me, “for people not to want to have their children here”, but explained that the teachers had also been there when the bottom line was established. I continued to probe for commitment to the well-being of teachers and


discovered a great deal more creative tension than I had seen before. The principal clarified that the bottom line was not zero tolerance and did not guarantee that a student would be sent home. The bottom line meant that an administrator would deal with the situation in a way that considered the well-being of the child. However, teacher behaviours were seen as sometimes contributing to direct defiance, in which case, he asked, “Why should the child be punished?” The reality of teachers “living in a black and white world”, and saying, “You behave or you’re out of here” was in stark contrast with his ideal of real choices for children in need-fulfilling classrooms. Teachers from traditional schools had not seen the kind of “openness” that was desired, and for some, perhaps the motivation was not there.

Yet hopefulness was maintained. The principal looked ahead three or four years, to an expectation that the bottom line would be raised and behaviour would improve as a result of caring treatment and of teaching.

Because, if we’re teaching the whole child….if we really adopt a caring attitude toward the kid, and say, I know you are misbehaving right now and I want to try to give you other ways that you can meet your needs and that will be acceptable to us as well as you, a way that will not destroy the rest of the class, or a way that will be respectful and safe…so we go back to our beliefs and say, you know, “This is what we believe. Do you believe it? And I’m not going to tell you not to meet your needs, but I want to help you find other ways to meet them.

Again, asked how to protect teachers’ ability to do this, the principal acknowledged need for more discussion, but he admitted, sadly, “sometimes you have to give up on a kid to save a teacher”. However, he shared a personal reflection:

It is different when you sit in this chair, and you’re saying to a child, essentially I am sentencing you to be a street kid. And to bear the responsibility of saying, I will send you to the street, where you will not be – It’s not such an easy decision to make.

Responsibility, a prominent theme in the Tansi community, emerged again as the principal explained his view that teachers were responsible for themselves and in control of meeting their own needs. He was not a “caped saviour”; it was not his job to provide support if none was asked for. However, it is noteworthy that he was not suggesting independence but interdependence. For teachers who wanted to be part of the solution to their problems, there were many people who could help if they would just ask. If they were unable to cope, he hoped they would find a situation that was better for them because, for the first time, there were people who wanted to come to Tansi and who wanted to contribute to the philosophy that was developing.

Thus, my view of the bottom line as a protection for teachers’ capacity to remain committed to continued improvement was not, at that time, shared by school people. The community coordinator said, “I’m not sure I understand. I see what you’re saying here, about how people can become closed down, but I didn’t see it relating to the bottom line. I didn’t make that connection”. However, if my conversation had been with teachers, I believe there would have been greater understanding. I continued to see the potential in viewing the “bottom line” as a baseline for teachers’ learning capacity, or a “threshold of hope”. I continued to consider implications for the development of a “learning community ethic”, a set of principles by which educators could assess their interpersonal interactions, and monitor the quality of their contributions to the learning capacity of their professional community.

Summary of learning team activities. To honour the social constructivist view of learning means to create conditions that will support and promote collective as well as individual learning and that will support individual learning that grows out of conversations with other learners (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 5). Learning teams were, to a degree, successful by these criteria. Conditions for learning were created for many Tansi staff members. However, it took longer than expected to build trust, and to come to understand individuals and the community well enough to design learning activities that


would meet their needs. Thus, time ran out and cycles of inquiry were not repeated enough to become internalized and continue without support after I left the site. The activity system (Blackler, 1992) of teacher inquiry as self-designed professional development proved to be difficult to establish. However, the response of the Tansi staff led to a revision of the collaborative action research process, the “learning circle”, which has since been used with a greater degree of success. Further, participants at Tansi had an introduction to research processes, which may have encouraged them in their subsequent exploration of how to align their practices with First Nations values.

Finally, in considering that presentational knowledge did not develop because learning teams did not, to my knowledge, share their work formally with the whole staff, I came to a new conceptualization of presentational knowledge. One strength of Tansi participants seemed to be their integrity. They lived their beliefs and they were internally transformed by their experience with Restitution and by participation in a vibrant learning community. Thus, continued collaboration with them could be considered an authentic way to share presentational knowledge. Since the study, several active learning team participants, including Pat, Amber, Mark, Sally, Lorraine, and Daisy, have, in fact, made presentations on Control Theory and Restitution, and have continued to provide leadership in its implementation at Tansi and other locations.

Reflection and Revision: An Outsider Again

Reflection occurred throughout the study, for me as well as for the participants. However, notable revisions to my un-derstandings and to my practice as a learning agent occurred after the field work period, when I no longer had access to participants but continued to revisit our experience through tapes and transcripts. Outcomes of the research included the development of two tools designed to support and “scaffold” educators as they embark upon school improvement from within (Barth, 1990). These were, (1) a “learning community ethic”, and (2) the “learning circle” guide to collaborative inquiry. A third result of this study

was the notion of “confluence”, a re-conceptualization of leadership that may be more appropriate than existing metaphors for learning communities moving toward a “leader-rich” environment. The following section presents each of these “revisions” in greater detail.

A Learning Community Ethic

The “learning community ethic” is a self-assessment or decision-making tool designed for those who wish to interact in ways that strengthen the learning capacity of their professional community. It is a set of criteria synthesized from the literature and from self-monitoring behaviours that I observed at Tansi Community School. This set of criteria invites reflection at three levels: personal, interpersonal, and organizational. While this tool will need to be tested and refined in practice, an outline is presented here.

Noddings’ (1995) ethic of care and Senge’s (2000) adaptation of creative tension were integrated in a set of “signs” (Vygotsky, 1978), for internal self-monitoring of learning capacity (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) and a “tool” for exerting control over one’s context. Mature, active citizens in a learning community will choose to accept responsibility for maintaining the personal and organizational levels of creative tension that contribute to continuous growth. Tension is found in the gap between our existing performance and our “quality picture” (Glasser, 1990), or between reality and an ideal vision. When learning community members are energized by opportunities to learn, to collaborate, to try new practices, and to set goals to move closer to a developing ideal vision of themselves as teachers, the amount of tension they are experiencing is appropriate, creative, and conducive to learning. When they are exhausted, frustrated, defensive or isolated, the tension becomes destructive, and they may need to find support or adjust expectations temporarily until strength and motivation returns. In a learning community, finding and managing a “threshold of hope”, the turning point between creative and destructive tension, is each person’s responsibility. Only individuals have enough information to make that call for


themselves (Powers, 1998), and it cannot be made administratively or hierarchically.

Interpersonal awareness is the heart of a learning community and like a heart or a butterfly, it has symmetry. Helping to preserve “right relationships” (Jamie Fiddler, Cree elder, personal communication, Marl. 2001) with other adults in our schools strengthens them, and enables them to maintain caring relationships with the students for whom all colleagues share responsibility. Thus, in the interests of children, learning community citizens will choose to become more aware of the effect of their actions and words on their peers. They may adapt their behaviour to maintain the successful identities of colleagues (Gossen, 1996a), to facilitate joint work (Rosenholtz, 1989), and to expand the community’s capacity for learning. This may mean that goals are set to improve communication or conflict resolution skills, or that others will be invited to help community standards for dealing with conflict. It will mean that time spent establishing relationships with colleagues is valued, both for its own sake and for opportunities to find common ground and to deepen friendly conversations to professional dialogue about beliefs and practices. Also required for learning is an appreciation of diverse perspectives and of generous, constructive feedback. Positive relationships will facilitate that requirement.

Finally, an organizational aspect of this ethic requires learning community citizens to become familiar with and monitor their own “bottom lines”, or “thresholds of hope”. With personal awareness comes a responsibility for community members to communicate their needs respectfully, or, if necessary and feasible, remove themselves from the situation in order to regain personal capacity for growth in another situation. Trust that such communication will be met with concern is derived, in turn, from the notion of symmetry, a belief that it is right to preserve the learning capacities of those who share one’s responsibility for teaching and caring for children. With enhanced awareness of basic survival needs (Glasser, 1990), both personal and collective, communities can work together to maintain at least the minimum standards for preservation of learning capacity.

The “Learning Circle”: A Revised Plan for Collaborative Action Research

Difficulties that I encountered in attempting to introduce action research led to a revised plan or format, a tool with potential as a constructivist professional development strategy. The plan incorporated the “talking around the circle” pattern of dialogue with an apprenticeship approach to team learning. That is, the transforming power of action-oriented dialogue was expected to be better understood through experience with more knowledgeable peers than by hearing or reading about it. As at Tansi, the plan encouraged learning teams to meet around a visual prompt, a tree within a circle. The tree represented an ideal state that the group wished to reach, and the circle and its processes provided a way to move toward that goal.

I first suggested that Tansi learning team members begin reflection with “awareness”, or the difference between the real and the ideal, and continue their dialogue focusing on the key learning community concepts of “meaning”, “commitment”, and finally, “wholeness”. The revised plan began with “wholeness”, so that a group and its facilitator would initiate dialogue with a shared picture of where they wanted to be. At Tansi, participants used the circle in a variety of ways, such as when the Restitution and Respect Team used all four points on the circle to analyze a single incident, and when the Administration Team interpreted a year’s events as a single cycle. However, the more recent plan invited teachers to commit to four meetings, and provided them with guidelines for emphasizing one point of the circle at each meeting. Since the Tansi study, I have facilitated other teacher research with the “learning circle” as a guide, and those participants are now ready to use the format themselves as they assume leadership of new learning teams .

The Notion of Confluence

The notion of confluence began to form as I attempted to understand my leadership role as learning agent at Tansi. I was “leading” a growth process that I had not initiated and I was not controlling. In my journal, I wrote:


I am finding an abundance of wisdom already flowing [at Tansi]. The people are immersed in it. My role is de-centred and fluid; I am not the creator or even the catalyst for this learning. I am losing interest in the common tasks of school improvement researchers, to harness the river’s energy and alter its course. Humbled, I see that my opportunity is to mingle the contents of my vessel with this great body of learning, coming to harmony with the strength of a great current.

Perhaps framing my role this way was, at first, a way to ward off the feeling that I was not successful in bringing change to Tansi. Learning community theory did not, at first, make sense to many participants, and collaborative action research was for most, a foreign process. I was viewed as an advocate of Restitution, and I appreciated the concept while feeling less than competent in its practice.

However, as the study proceeded I began to see merit in a redefinition of the learning agent’s role. From the beginning, I had presented the implementation of Restitution and the growth of a learning community as mutually beneficial and not as competing innovations. It was appropriate that I be part of the change but not central to it. While Restitution brought information and strategies, I brought sense-making tools to help with internalization, and a vision of positive picture of overall growth to nurture the change and enhance future capacity. I realized that any learning agent, or indeed, any leader with or without an administrative title, could become part of a professional community and endeavour to sense the existing, positive direction of change, however subtle. Such a leader would soon be attuned to facilitative group values and aligned with group purposes, contributing the personal resources that would help to bring about goal achievement. Group success would then enhance learning capacity, by bringing increased interest and energy for subsequent change.

Further, I began to see that the notion of confluence could explain Tansi’s success in a way that was more “circumstantially adequate” (Gubrium & Holstein, 2000, p. 490) than describing it in terms of leadership and

followership, or even as a “leader-rich” environment (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). I wanted the findings of this research to represent, accurately, the principal’s insistence that Tansi’s success was not due to his leadership, but existing language and metaphors from the field of educational administration seemed inadequate. As I listened to some teachers attribute their success to their administrator’s willingness to “let them” do what they believed was best for children, I began to see firmly-entrenched hierarchical expectations in education as limiting to self-efficacy and to personal learning capacity.

The notion of confluence is non-hierarchical. It provides an image in which all members of a learning community are invited to sense the positive direction of improvement, and to attune emotions and align beliefs and practices to contribute, in whatever ways they can, to the strength and direction of the change current. Confluence is about voluntary coordination of effort, and allowing one’s gifts to flow into spaces where they are needed. As Pat observed, once the flow begins, it is not important who started it.

Chapter Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the action research portion of the research, including the “planning”, “doing”, and “reflecting and revising”, and explains departures from the original research plan. Within the “doing” stage, whole staff activities are presented and learning team activities are described as nested cycles of inquiry. Detailed descriptions of learning team activities included participant dialogue, to add to the trust-worthiness of the study and to provide supporting evidence for the findings in Chapter VI. Actions or commitments resulting from the overall research cycle of planning, building, and reflecting on the process of developing a learning community, included three outcomes that may be useful beyond the Tansi site. These include: a learning community ethic, a learning circle guide to action research, and the notion of confluence, a metaphor for the strength and direction of self-coordinated change. With this expanded repertoire of community-building tools, new cycles of inquiry can begin. Success


at Tansi certainly contributes to an initial picture of wholeness concerning what is possible in the development of learning communities.

Chapter VI DATA ANALYSIS: ADDRESSING THE

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

“Our most important task…is continuously to craft the unconditional positive question that

allows the whole system to discover, amplify and multiply the alignment of strength in such a way

that weaknesses and deficiencies become increasingly irrelevant.”

(Ludema, Cooperrider, & Barrett, 2001, p. 189)

The purpose of this study was to see if the implementation of Restitution would contribute to professional learning community development, to identify the factors that contributed to or obstructed learning, and to discover teacher perceptions of the effects of any change on teaching practice and learning conditions for students. A reading of the literature suggests that collaborative, school-wide initiatives can unite staffs and develop capacity. I wondered if Restitution, with its focus on improving student behaviour and school relationships, would be an innovation with particular leverage for change. As the study progressed, I became interested in testing the power of the positive question, “How are we becoming a learning community?”.

In this chapter, I address these research questions systematically and briefly, building on the rich descriptions from Chapters IV and V that contributed to these findings. First, I establish that participants did, in fact, feel that they had learned a great deal and that their community was stronger for it. Next, I explore the processes that facilitated personal learning, its accessibility to the group through interpersonal interaction, and community growth. Four cultural patterns that contributed to the development of capacity at all levels are identified and supporting evidence is given. The chapter ends with participant comments on the impact of their learning for students and their families and a chapter summary.

Personal Learning, Accessibility, and Learning Community Development

The ethnographic description of the Tansi

learning community referred to the learning architecture that was present and developed during the field work period. An overwhelming majority of staff members were interested in learning to practice Restitution, perhaps because they saw themselves as educators who need to be more concerned with students’ social and emotional development. Many staff members were able to integrate Restitution with their personal beliefs, or with their First Nations worldview. Participants were familiar with a holistic perspective, with goal-setting, and with self-regulating comparisons of actions with beliefs as they moved toward ideal versions of themselves. Several staff members were motivated toward personal change as a result of negative experiences; their ideal selves were defined more clearly in contrast with memories of those who had hurt them. For some staff members, the study’s personal history and belief statement and subsequent interview /dialogue brought greater understanding of this source of their motivation.

Personal learning occurred as staff members began using the scripts and mantras of Restitution in their interactions with students, and as this research brought opportunities for collaborative reflection and dialogue to build metacognitive awareness with colleagues. Participants were amused to find that they used Restitution language for self-regulating their own emotions and behaviour and improving their relationships as much as for counseling students. Learning was shared through interactions in “cluster” groups, whole staff meeting activities, and through joint activity as teacher associates worked with several teachers, and teachers partnered for special events. The combination of an interpretive approach to action research, the natural pattern of joint activity in a “Community” school, and the reflective habits of Restitution helped make personal learning accessible through interpersonal interaction among colleagues. In a relatively short time, new, strengthening patterns


of interaction became part of the unexamined culture of the learning community.

Evidence that participants felt their learning community had improved as a result of the implementation of Restitution and the research activities is found in the project evaluation forms that were completed by five groups at a staff meeting in May, 2001, as well as in focus group dialogues that were recorded during my visit in October, 2001. Neither of these data gathering strategies asked participants to separate the contributions of Restitution from learning community work, which included whole staff activities and collaboration in learning teams. Consistent with the notion of confluence, the innovation and the opportunities that supported its implementation flowed together. For most participants, the processes of this research were seen as part of the overall change process initiated by the school staff.

Representative examples provide insights into the personal change that was experienced by many participants. Lorraine articulated the impact for her.

Well, personally, myself, I went into this expecting to be changed professionally – and I wasn’t. I was changed personally. I was caught quite off guard, to be honest. Very off guard, because I was surprised at the turmoil it created inside of me, and of the person I was, or thought I was. That was interesting.

Nicole connected her personal change with change in the community as follows:

I feel like I was uptight. I didn’t know how to deal with things, like problems or conflicts between kids, and then when I came here, I started watching other people deal with it, and the way they dealt with it through Control Theory and Restitution. I started picking it up and practicing it myself. And so, sometimes it comes easy and sometimes I forget and go back to my old ways. But I can see the school has changed, from when I first came here.

Finally, Marie showed her un-derstanding of the power of personal change to alter social conditions this way, “You change one little thing

about yourself and you change everything around you”.

A Favourable Disposition to Learning

A favourable disposition to further learning can be interpreted as an indication that change occurred and capacity developed. Difficulty sustaining the change points to its fragility and the need for continued cultural work to induct new members and maintain existing beliefs. In the spring of 2002, almost a year after the end of the field work, the Tansi principal described the nature of ongoing learning at Tansi. In spite of efforts to develop effective conflict resolution strategies and the “spirit of connectedness”, there had been, after all, some conflict and some hurt. Challenges to “connectedness” and “confluence” included staff changes due to promotions and maternity leaves, with more anticipated.

Tansi people were moving on to provide leadership in other schools, and while this enhanced the school’s reputation, sustaining the change without them was sometimes tiring for those who remained. There was now a shortage of funds for training for new staff, but turnover brought some opportunity in that people with Control Theory and Restitution backgrounds were applying for positions at Tansi. Excitement for learning brought an interesting challenge; so many people were learning and doing different things that fragmentation of the community was a concern. The principal felt there was a need to coordinate and consolidate learning, which confirmed my belief that collaborative inquiry will be more effective when it begin and ends with the development of a shared picture of wholeness.

As a result of this research, the principal felt that Tansi staff members were more comfortable organizing themselves into teams. A grant for $1000 to buy sets of books had encouraged staff members to read widely, and there seemed to be a great desire to absorb information. Sharing the reading had presented new opportunities for dialogue, and people were meeting socially to make sense of their professional reading, but not necessarily to analyze it critically. The principal felt that a greater readiness point may have been


reached, at this time, for the action research strategies that I had tried to introduce the year before. (I hoped the revised learning circle material would be useful to them, for implementation of the new ideas they were reading about.) Finally, the principal celebrated the fact that Tansi professional learning appeared to focus more now on how to teach than on how to produce compliant students. I interpreted this to mean that Tansi staff members, through the practice of Restitution and through learning community development, had gained the capacity to move beyond a concern for basic survival.

Facilitating and Obstructing Factors

This section highlights factors that contributed to community learning, as part of a developing culture that minimized obstacles to change. Further, as this culture became more firmly established, it was difficult to separate contributing factors from products of growth. Senge’s (1990) spiraling patterns of growth and the resulting “synergy” provided an appropriate image of this change, further illuminated by Mitchell and Sackney’s (2000) notion of learning communities as self-generating entities. Significant factors include shared language and open communication; common beliefs; and meta-cognitive internal signs, including mantras, cues, and visual symbols. These factors are also part of the four distinct cultural patterns described in a later section.

Shared language and open communication were consistently identified by participants as the most significant contributing factor for personal and community growth at Tansi. Mohtew said, “Since everybody’s speaking the same language, you’re getting the same support everywhere”. One person wrote, “I felt more accepted and it was easier to state my opinions. The staff is closer, in my perception”. Another participant linked the opportunity to be “open and honest” with a feeling that the school was “becoming better”, and with an improved personal orientation to learning, “I’m more open to learning new ideas”. This individual’s goals for continued improvement included “more personal analysis” and more reflection, which illustrates a connection between cultural

development and personal learning. Changed personal beliefs about acceptance and the right of each person to have his or her own perceptions seemed to enhance a culture of sharing ideas, which, in turn, contributed to personal growth.

Tim emphasized that the sharing of ideas had enabled him to improve his reflection skills, to connect with others, and to better understand and cope with change. As evidence of the positive energy that comes with enhanced capacity, he said that he was “very satisfied” with the school, and “enjoyed the opportunity to teach in a dynamic and changing environment”. His goals included learning more about metacognition and the “learning tree” philosophy, and use of the “learning circle” model to create new learning teams.

Participants appreciated this research for helping them work toward common beliefs, which they saw as a milestone in school growth. Some saw a lack of common beliefs as a challenge, as indicated in the terse statement, “sometimes there is resistance”. Articulation of common beliefs, when the staff appeared ready for them, helped establish common ground and bring “connectedness” that included those who did not practice Restitution. However, there remained personal differences that were a source of frustration. In spite of the non-coercive implementation of Restitution, some participants experienced and resented cultural pressure, evident when one person muttered, “We can all go in the same direction, but we don’t have to march!”. Frequently, learning team members expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to work with those who were “on the same page”. At the same time as they reminded themselves that all of their colleagues had the right to choose their own paths.

The language of Restitution acknowledged the creation and maintenance of common beliefs, as part of a script that asked questions such as, “What do we believe about hurting others?” and “Do you believe it?”. A negative answer led to careful probing, and rational acknowledgement that the counseled person did not, in fact, believe that it was acceptable to hurt. Fawn emphasized the importance of taking


time to establish common beliefs with students, in order to have a ready reference point for such discussions. However, in spite of ongoing work to emphasize common ground among the staff, some beliefs about teaching were not easily coordinated. Particularly, a sense of order and control in the classroom was not something that every person was ready to risk for the unproven benefits of Restitution. Some dissonance remained, and yet the force of common beliefs appeared strong enough to keep a few staff members from leaving the school, and to carry many others along together in the refinement of their Restitution practice.

Continual enactment of common beliefs required on-going self-assessment and adjustment, aided by metacognitive “signs”, including cues, mantras, and visual symbols. Widespread and consistent use of these contributors to growth were obvious to me and became more apparent to participants over the course of our work together. I refer to the signals that prompted a typical pattern of response in interpersonal interaction as “cues”. For example, during my first visit to the school a year after the field work, I expressed dissatisfaction with my new job. I was alone with two staff members, who responded to the “unhappy” cue and suddenly became more intensely involved in the conversation. As they worked together to help me reframe or “flip” my view of the situation, and to make me aware of how much I must be needed, I was impressed by the teamwork that occurred without any verbal coordination between them. I was reminded of the “silver lining” Restitution practicum exercise that involved one person sharing a regretful situation while two others worked together to help create an alternative, more strengthening perception. The staff members involved in this situation may have been drawing on their own First Nations cultural patterns rather than the Restitution exercise. However, similarities suggested that such a pattern could be learned and applied when certain cues were presented.

Mantras, standard questions, and abbreviated references to Control Theory and Restitution training and practicum activities appeared to perform a related function. Practitioners learned to respond to cues to apply

the patterns learned in exercises and role plays. When describing student interactions with colleagues, their language gave evidence of the use of internal signs that helped them adjust their thinking and behaviour to respond to the situation according to new patterns. For instance, Amber’s mental question, “What do I want?” during the rocks and grocery incident reminded her to alter her own behaviour. Participants would describe a sequence of events that showed how certain student responses prompted them to “do behaviour car”, “help them flip it”, or do “okay to make a mistake”. This abbreviated language appeared to perform an important internal function, aiding the choice of strategies in the moment, as well as a communicative function that facilitated the sharing of procedural experience with colleagues who also spoke or were learning to speak that language.

Visual symbols were similar to mantras in that they contributed to the maintenance of a desired inner state. Sally described how she switched from thinking about work to thinking about home and family when she reached a certain landmark on her drive home. Fawn, Tim, and Daisy explained how they referred frequently to strategically placed “mantra” posters to guide them while teaching. In Fawn’s classroom, students were encouraged to connect the basic needs of Control Theory with culturally and personally meaningful visual symbols, which produced an attractive display of happy faces, buffalo, eagles, and tipis. First Nations culture and artistic style was affirmed by the green vine that wound its way through the hallways and culminated in an image of learning and growth in one stairwell. Posters in the foyer and family portraits in the hallway were constant reminders of “connectedness”, the awareness that ppeople were cared for here, and a community was forming around traditional First Nations beliefs. Thus, visual images were consciously employed to contribute to the positive inner speech of the learning community and of individuals.

A common orientation to the visual and symbolic invited confluence, as various artists including students, staff, and people in the neighbourhood shared their gifts. Attractive


shirts were ordered, sporting the First Nations book and tree motif that had been designed by a staff member. The response to my butterfly analogy and the proliferation of visual symbols at Tansi encouraged me to employ communication images when words were insufficient. Staff members referred to the staff room mural as the “learning tree”, and internalized it as a symbol of their growth, as indicated by the comment “The learning tree on our wall is very effective. It’s nice to see our progress, and where we need improvement”. Others appreciated the learning tree as a celebration of success, and attributed an increased level of self-confidence to taking time to celebrate through research-related activities. The power of a visual analogy as an artifact of socio-cultural history, or as a mnemonic device, was illustrated when, sometime after the study, staff members shared their knowledge of learning community theory and what it mean to them with reference to the branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit of the “learning tree”. The river image invoked in the notion of confluence may have a similar, natural resonance with educators at Tansi and elsewhere.

Cultural Patterns that Generated Capacity

Tansi’s “pathways to competency” (Senge, 1990, p. 6) were sets of cultural tools or patterns that appeared to be transformational in that they were employed, often unconsciously, to act upon the environment and generate strength and hope. They are comparable to neo-Vygotskian activity systems, the cultural instruments of change, and to Sackman’s (as cited in Weick, 1995) sensemaking mechanisms. These tools are an aspect of culture, shared through language patterns based upon common experience and reiterated through visual imagery.

Participants recognized that a change in language throughout the school was the most noticeable evidence of growth. However, they may not have understood the extent to which new language generated change. Gergen (1992) suggests that “languages of understanding are interlaced with what else we do; they are insinuated into our daily activities in such a way that without the languages the pattern of activity would be transformed or collapse” (p. 216). The

scripts and mantras of Restitution and Control Theory, when used for internal as well as external language, appeared to support consistent, facilitative patterns of interaction. As patterns were distributed among participants through shared interactions, they became part of the cultural fabric of the community, and gained the power to influence future actions and expectations of the group. They were, in fact, the “patterns of shared, basic assumptions taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel” (Schein, as cited in Firestone & Louis, 1999). Further, these patterns, like neo-Vygotskian “activity systems” (Engestrom, as cited in Blackler, 1992) were learned intuitively and operated, for the most part, below the level of consciousness. Through dialogue that brought awareness, the patterns became more consciously accessible for intentional use and community development.

As an outsider, I may have been more sensitive to diverse language and behaviour patterns in the Tansi community than participants themselves. I first became aware of repeated use of words and phrases that echoed those I had heard in Restitution and Control Theory training sessions. However, the neo-Vygotskian notion of “activity systems” prompted me to look for an intention, or “object” behind repeated patterns of verbal interaction. Thus, I came to see that words I heard repeated at Tansi were part of a set of habitual and value-based responses to certain situations. The community appeared to have moved beyond creating the structural conditions for growth, identified by Louis and Kruse (1995) as necessary but not sufficient, to generating cultural tools of interaction that could strengthen group capacity and move to “confluence”, a flow of change with its own momentum. The interaction of these patterns, supported by collaborative, non-hierarchical structures, appeared to “create the conditions” for learning and improvement.

Methodology for identifying cultural patterns included “member checks” (Miles & Huberman, 1994), which helped reduce a list of repeated words to a set of patterns most significant for developing capacity and creating confluence, the coordinated strength, speed, and


direction of change. Continued data analysis subsumed some patterns into others, such as “integrity” into “identity”, and led to the understanding that each heading represented groups of patterns that shared a similar function, or object. Examining apparent relationships between the pattern sets, I determined that “hope” was not a pattern in itself, but was generated by the interaction of four other patterns which I identified with the key words, “identity”, “empowerment”, “awareness”, and “connectedness”. Thus, customary ways of interacting appeared to support activity that strengthened and energized Tansi people.

In the sections that follow, I present repeated, illustrative examples as evidence of the existence of each set of patterns, thereby contributing to the trustworthiness of the findings. For each of the four categories, I provide representative examples of language and behaviour patterns, and where possible, examples of “disruptions” that made the patterns evident. Each pattern is related to Restitution, learning community theory, or First Nations ideas. I complete each section by describing my conscious use of the pattern as a cultural tool for continued community development.

Patterns of Identity Construction

Patterns of positive “identity construction” involved building and maintaining “success” identities for individuals and for the school. Language patterns emphasized positive characteristics and ascribed favourable meaning to actions. Behaviour patterns created opportunities for students and colleagues to see themselves and be seen by others in a positive light. Internal speech or dialogue and interaction “stabilized” damaged identities. Ceremonies, symbols, and artifacts were visual reminders of positive identity. Inclusive and invitational patterns invited people to share in the positive group identity that was forming.

I first noticed the pattern of “identity construction” during an exchange in a staff meeting, when a disruption of the pattern prompted a swift and sharp reaction. Jo remarked casually that, without a supportive staff, it would be “hell on wheels” to work at

Tansi. When Shelley and others disagreed emphatically, insisting that it was a good neighbourhood with good families, I saw that a cultural pattern of positive identity construction had been violated. Amber was deeply disturbed when her own thoughts violated the pattern of constructing and maintaining a favourable perception of students. She rejected her own realization that students were “acting like animals” as a sign that she was “off balance”. Struggling to stabilize her own identity, or to regain what she considered was an appropriate perspective, Amber was inspired by the vice-principal. The administrator responded her call for help by breezing in, opening a window, and sharing a personal story with the students as though they were her special friends. Through her actions, the vice principal restored the cultural pattern of positive identity construction, acting out of her assumption that the students were worthy of respectful treatment. Students responded to this change in approach by behaving like pleasant and respectful children, helping Amber to restore her belief in them and in herself as a caring person.

For First Nations teachers, it was important to be considered “as good as” others. Kimmi once confided to me that this school was not considered as good as others because there were more First Nations teachers here. However, language patterns continually contributed to acceptance of the Tansi neighbourhood, students, families, and teachers themselves as “good”, “strong”, or even “amazing”. A First Nations teacher saw a lack of identity as the root of problems in student behaviour and school relationships. She emphasized this point as follows: “It’s me. My identity. Who I am. Talk to the kids and make them feel good about who they are”. This described, in essence, the patterns of interaction that made the construction of a positive identity for others a common feature of Tansi conversations.

Noteworthy examples of positive identity construction occurred when students were sent to the principal. Before dealing with the incident that prompted the visit, the principal spent time establishing his favourable perception of the student by recalling incidents of their success, or remarking on how long it had been since the


student had been required to make a visit to the office. Another common pattern occurred when students referred to themselves or their classmates unfavourably. Without arguing with the perception, teachers would often present another point of view, such as, “I see you helping your younger brother all the time. I think you can do a lot of things”.

Conscious concern for community identity showed in bulletin boards that were created and carefully maintained by teacher associates. While the principal wondered if their time may have been better spend interacting directly with students, attractive displays seemed to fulfill an “identity” need and to have a symbolic function. Their message seemed to be, “We are a good school. Vandalism is not the norm here.” As staff members became more consciously aware of the need to establish positive identities, they made further efforts to arrange their physical environment to send positive messages. One staff member said, “What do chain link fences and locked doors say about us?”.

Another strategy for building positive individual identity for students, as well as a more favourable image of the school among schools in other city neighbourhoods, was the promotion of public performances by the First Nations dance troupe. I observed students who appeared detached from most academic work listening, watching, and practicing intently to gain mastery of dance steps. When performing in their elaborate costumes, students exuded pride and dignity, characteristics that did not come to mind when they were observed elsewhere.

An orientation to caring for others seemed to be at the center of patterns of identity construction. A poignant and illustrative example occurred when a youth who was recently moved to a foster home permitted his teacher to comb and rebraid his long hair while his classmates were playing basketball. Because she cared for him, the teacher did not want him to see himself or permit others to see him as unkempt. Caring was also an essential part of identity-preservation when teachers maintained contact with parents whose children had been removed from their homes by social services.

One teacher explained that she called the parents, just to let them know that their child was okay and that they could count on his being well-cared for at school. I interpreted this to be a profound expression of caring for the families, and an affirmation of their picture of themselves as caring parents in spite of the difficult circumstances.

Sometimes a sense of positive identity could be construed as unrealistic. The husband of one of the staff members participated in the pattern when he assured me that my car would be as safe parked near Tansi for the evening as it would be in any other neighbourhood. Teachers also stated that the hallway behaviour or Tansi students was no worse than that of students in other schools. Both of these assertions were debatable and yet it was not appropriate to correct the positive perceptions. One participant remarked, in frustration, that a positive point of view was fine, but “it had to be real”. Yet many others patiently allowed people to hold the opinion that was most helpful to their continued functioning, until they were ready to seek additional information for themselves. I did leave my car on the street and it was undamaged when I returned, so who is to say which perception of the neighbourhood was “correct”? However, the positive perception was certainly more useful for building empowered identities and for enabling participants to contribute to community growth rather than becoming frightened, overwhelmed, or discouraged.

As a theme of “positive identity construction” began to emerge, I raised it with participants to confirm its importance, using the Control Theory language that was familiar to them:

One of the things I’ve been thinking of is “image”. Identity is important here. We spend a lot of time figuring out who we are, and controlling so that we can be who we want to be – controlling perceptions and aligning behaviour. Restitution practice, with its emphasis on

“stabilizing the identity”, (Gossen, 1996a), made powerful contributions to this cultural tool. There was repeated connection of action to beliefs and identity through the standard


questions, “If you do that, what does it say about you?” and “Are you being the person you want to be?”. Further, damaged identities were stabilized or restored with a script that included the awkward, but effective statement, “You didn’t do that for no reason”, and mantras such as, “perfection is not a human condition”. Pat found the mantra, “It’s okay to make a mistake”, particularly effective for restoration of his picture of himself as a successful person, which empowered him to persevere in the pursuit of his self-improvement goals.

As a learning agent, I understood identity constructing patterns intuitively, before I could identify their purpose and provide examples. I re-designed the research to build on the list of successes generated at a staff meeting. The result was the “learning community portrait”, which led to the key question, “How are we becoming a learning community?”, a conscious exercise of strategies resembling the “appreciative inquiry” methods (Ludema, Cooperrider & Barrett, 2001) I became aware of after the field work period. My gifts to Tansi, the butterfly change poster and learning tree mural were artifacts that remained at the school. These symbols of continuous growth were left to remind existing staff of the research, and to prompt storytelling that would make newcomers aware of this positive aspect of Tansi’s socio-cultural history.

Learning community theory encourages professional communities to define themselves and their school, much as Restitution and Control Theory invites individuals to move in an “overall direction” and become the people they want to be. It relates to Senge’s (1990) discipline of “personal mastery”, the notion that we can choose who we are and who we want to become. Identity construction was particularly significant in this community because so many students and their families had suffered a loss of identity through loss of their communities and their language. First Nations families from reserves across the province became isolated when they moved to the city. Rapid demographic change in the Tansi neighbourhood also contributed to a de-stabilization of identities and roles. High transience for both students and staff at Tansi

made the process of maintaining a positive group identity an ongoing challenge.

Patterns of Empowerment

Cultural patterns that empowered others were evident on my first visit to Tansi, when the principal introduced me in a way that communicated his respect for research and lent credibility to my request in the eyes of the staff. Months later, when I was introduced in a similar way by a student whom the principal had mentored, I realized that a cultural pattern had been established. Speeches, introductions, and ceremonies were opportunities to empower. Status was shared through introductions.

Empowerment was a prominent feature of administrative practice, in interactions with teachers and with students. Teachers were encouraged to help set agendas, to initiate projects, and to contribute honest and open feedback. The “circle” format for staff meetings emphasized a non-hierarchical approach to school business, and both the “sign-in book” and the intercom were available for staff to use as communication tools without administrative approval. Leadership was not limited to administrators, but was a valued contribution from any member of the staff. Indeed, “leadership” as an organizing concept for school improvement was seriously questioned by the principal, which led me to develop the notion of confluence as an alternative.

In most schools, it may be true that principals play a key role in directing “power relationships toward teaching and learning”, and in creating power relations that are “mutual, interdependent, and responsive” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 93). However, the Tansi experience demonstrates that an administrator’s most empowering action may be to reject the traditional concentration of power in their own role. The fact that principals are seen as key players within current and limiting mental models does not mean that this is how it must be, or that an alternate conception would not be more conducive to learning community development. As Mitchell and Sackney also state, “power is not a commodity that the principal has the right to give or withhold, nor is


empowerment the prerogative of the principal” (p. 101). Yet many Tansi staff members had learned to distrust controlling administrators, and seemed to need encouragement to trust that this situation was different. To this effect, the Tansi principal’s role was key.

Conscious and purposeful affirmation of professional status and decision-making power was extended to staff members and teams such as the “cluster” groups. However, the value of “empowerment” was violated when the Primary Cluster plan to organize staffing for a “readiness” classroom was overturned in mid-year by a decision made at the school division level. Teachers expressed their disappointment with cynicism, and I believe this response would have damaged their capacity for other initiatives had patterns of empowerment not been as strong as they were at the school level.

The practice of Restitution, with its emphasis on self-assessment, is inherently conducive to human agency, and therefore empowering. Restitution counseling involves invitations and prompts to encourage students to regain control of their behaviour, and includes “relinquishing statements” (Diaz, Neal, & Amaya-Williams, 1990) to signal that em-powerment. It is a strategy devised to facilitate students’ moral learning, so that they become empowered to meet their own needs and solve their own problems.

Amber shared an ideal picture of herself that involved student empowerment through Restitution.

I would like to be completely confident that I could deal with students lacking in some of their needs. I would not like to discipline but rather, help the student to self-manage in situations. I would like to have a relationship with them where trust comes easily. I would listen to them instead of assuming that I know what the problem is and how to fix it….I do believe that with effort, I can put into practice more easily the training that I’ve had – to ask what the child wants (needs) and then let the child decide what he/she wants to do about it.

Patterns of self-empowerment for teachers became a function of Restitution when the language and scripts were used for self-management.

The First Nations value of non-interference (Ross, 1996) and “respect” can be seen as generating significant patterns of “empowerment” within their culture. At the school level, Restitution honours Glasser’s (1990) emphasis on non-coercion as well as the First Nations conception of human freedom by moving away from external control toward development of internal controls based on community values. As Daisy described it, “obedience” was still a relevant concept for an empowered individual, but it was focused inward, and resembled the concept of self-discipline. “I think I have a strong sense of obedience, but it’s obeying my inner instinct, what I feel is right”. Essentially, the difference between controlling and empowering students involved a distinction between viewing student misconduct as an opportunity to administer discipline or, alternatively, to teach students more acceptable behaviours. This distinction may illuminate the First Nations teachings that sometimes equate learning with healing. In this context, adaptive learning may mean that one moves past the hurt and becomes aligned once more with one’s supportive community.

Further, the First Nations value of “respect” dictates that it is inappropriate to correct others when you feel they are making a mistake. All you can do is share your own experience with them, and allow them the power to “complete the circle” for themselves (Karen). This is a cultural pattern that was experienced with non-First Nations staff members at Tansi, as when Daisy explained to me that she had made an assumption once, about another person’s motivations, and she was “so wrong”. At first I thought she was changing the subject of our preceding conversation, but then I realized there was a message for me, if I chose to accept it. I was a little embarrassed, but not as much as I would have been had she pointed out my “mistake” explicitly.

The value of empowerment for teachers in terms of school improvement has been


questioned in the literature (Marks & Louis, 1997). However, at Tansi, teachers used a growing sense of their own efficacy to work together to reform their school, rather than to preserve their own autonomy. Patterns of “connectedness” seemed to interact with those of “empowerment”, to produce a general acceptance of interdependence as the way to accomplish goals. My contribution to patterns of “empowerment” was to ask the positive question, “How are we becoming a learning community?”, and reflect the successes of the group back to them using the language of learning community theory. The learning community framework that I shared with them enriched their ideal vision of what schools could be, and gave a credible name and form to their activities. My interest in professional learning at Tansi was empowering in that I gave participants the message that their initiatives were important and worthy of investigation. My approach, which was one of “confluence”, lent power to their initiative by bringing additional insights and resources to it.

Tansi patterns of empowerment displayed the self-designing nature of a learning community, and demonstrated the notion that people can shape the environments that shape them. While Restitution offers empowerment opportunities to students, the development of a learning community offers them to teachers. Common to both is an increase in capacity to learn to control situations pro-socially, rather than by attempting to control others. Habitual reflection involves patterns of “awareness”, but a successful perception of one’s own identity, and a sense of empowerment are needed to take actions that will increase congruence between beliefs and behaviour. Therefore, empowerment is similar to “capacity” and both are related to adaptive learning. “In a learning community, individuals feel a deep sense of empowerment and autonomy and a deep personal commitment to the work of the school” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 93). Patterns of Awareness

Glasser’s (1965/2000) Reality Therapy questions were the “script” that embedded patterns of “awareness” into the Tansi school

culture. It became natural for staff members to compare current reality with their preferred future. Language patterns made this means of self-assessment a powerful form of inner speech for self-regulation, as well as a communication tool for aligning group processes. Different forms of the overall pattern included “awareness” of one’s own needs and values, “awareness” of how one’s actions affected others, and “awareness” of how meaning is made and altered through language.

Restitution contributed to awareness patterns through a focus on self-assessment, as expressed by Shelley: “I really believe I am not going to make a change if I don’t evaluate what I do and how I do it. Not so much centering things on the child and what they’re doing”. Other contributions were made through the Reality Therapy questions, and the habit of accessing one’s “quality pictures”, or bringing one’s hopes and dreams into clear focus. Use of a key phrase such as “help me understand…” was a tactic to encourage shared awareness, which aided collaboration and problem solving. Another question, “What did you make that mean?” illustrated consciousness of meaning construction through a choice of possible perceptions. This was related to talk of “thinking wheels” and “feeling wheels”, which built the understanding that changed thinking would alter one’s feelings, and to the “silver lining” exercise, in which two Restitution students were asked to help a third “flip” a disappointment toward a more positive perspective. “Flipping it” was a frequent pattern that generated more positive awareness, as was the intentional movement from “back wheels” to “front wheels”, from an emotional response to a rational one, in a given situation. Gossen’s “complain to me baby” script generated awareness of the destructive power of complaining, and taught strategies for helping colleagues to limit this behaviour and focus more on the future. Here, the key question was, “How would you like it to be?”.

First Nations teachings contributed to “awareness” patterns through the traditional respect for multiple perspectives, symbolized in a talking circle where everyone is invited to share his or her point of view. The prominent


place of relationships in First Nations cultures contributed to a disposition to seek to awareness of how one’s actions could be affecting others. One participant described how the elders would watch and interpret a young person’s body language, and make comments or ask questions to help the person become more aware of their own needs and emotions. This teacher helped me to understand “awareness” from a First Nations cultural perspective, explaining that children were once taught to be aware of themselves in relationship to everyone and everything around them. Awareness of physiology was also part of Restitution training, and so the elders’ ways were perpetuated with students through Restitution practice.

Cultural patterns of “awareness” are related to Senge’s (1990) disciplines of “personal mastery”, which keeps dreams alive while acknowledging current reality, and to “mental models”, which brings assumptions to the surface for examination. I believe it is also required for “team learning”, and indeed, this set of patterns seems the one most related to learning. Awareness of the difference between the real and the ideal state was commonly understood to be required to focus goal setting toward change (Powers, 1998). For example, the principal suggested that lack of awareness could explain participant responses that showed no creative tension between the practice of Restitution and its desired use.

Of the four cultural tools identified, I may have contributed most to patterns of awareness. While teachers were used to self-assessment and comparison to an ideal state, they did not appear to connect this activity with professional development beyond the practice of Restitution. This kind of “awareness” was stimulated in learning teams, where systematic reflection focused on teaching practice, and on integrating practice with theory for new and useful professional understandings. Because this was an unfamiliar pattern, I found it necessary to link it to language and symbols with which participants were becoming familiar, and to adjust expectations to teachers’ schedules. The result was the “learning circle”, a revised plan for short, manageable cycles of teacher research,

an “awareness” tool that may be of benefit to other developing learning communities.

The “learning tree” exercise generated awareness of Tansi characteristics as compared to an ideal composite of effective schools and resulted in a “learning community portrait’. Thus, creative tension was generated when research, presented in the accessible form of the tree analogy, expanded the staff members’ view of what an ideal school could be. Self-assessment seems to require a set of standards or criteria against which to measure one’s growth. My contribution was to make a new set of standards accessible and to build awareness of the “creative tension” that identified “room to grow”. An interesting post script to that exercise occurred two years after the field work, when Sally used the elastic band demonstration of creative tension (Senge, 2000) to help a student learn how to manage his learning and his stress level.

As a researcher, I contributed to patterns of “awareness” by asking many questions that consciously and sometimes inadvertently brought participant assumptions to light. For example, I used “learning community symmetry” as a mantra of my own, and when participants talked about their dedication to meeting the needs of children, I took it as a cue to ask if they were extending similar considerations to their colleagues. However, the asking of questions to stimulate thinking may be another example of “confluence”, or my participation in Tansi’s existing cultural patterns. Others asked questions for the same purpose, such as when I shared my goal for losing weight, in order to gain more respect as a professional. I was asked, “So that’s your belief, that overweight people aren’t as respected?”. As part of the cultural milieu, questions were most effective in presenting another point of view without imposing it.

As my perceptions of the Tansi context and its patterns and strengths developed, I endeavoured to share these openly with participants through verbal interactions and later through written materials. My perspective was valued as “fresh eyes come to help” (Lorraine), which in itself, illustrated an orientation to


“awareness”, and learning through attention to multiple perspectives.

Patterns of Connectedness

When groups were developing their shared beliefs, someone in the “teachers” group said, “We believe in the power of connectedness”. The group was silent for a moment, considering that statement, and “connectedness” became a common word in dialogue as well as one of four shared beliefs sanctioned by all groups and posted in the hall. The value of maintaining caring relationships was at the core of this set of patterns. Variations on the theme included open, honest communication and active listening without making assumptions; strategies for un-derstanding, accepting, and allowing oneself to be influenced by other points of view; patterns for finding and emphasizing common ground rather than difference; and methods to acknowledge, celebrate, and share diverse perspectives. An essential component of the “connectedness” pattern set were the mechanisms in place to combat isolation of any individual, and to draw that person into active participation in the community.

Fawn helped establish that a foundation of connectedness was the “bottom line” of trust, a shared understanding that you would be safe in the classroom. She also identified connectedness as a remedy for the fear that comes with change: Seeking the knowledge to understand, that’s essential - But it’s quite an investment for that understanding, and then for change, for that connectedness, communication, and change”. Finally, she linked connectedness, understanding and teaching, in response to the frustration Shelley experienced when trying to teach a child with whom it seemed possible to connect. Fawn’s response was, “…because there’s no time to teach. There’s no understanding”.

Tim emphasized the value of open communication, and the development of trust that occurs when one can assume the other person will maintain an emotionally-balanced state. “For learning relationships, you have to be able to listen, and you have to be able to express yourself without fear on either side….You have to have an understanding that neither one of you

is out to, you know, hurt the other one….An explosion is something that hurts”.

For some, patterns of “connectedness” were violated when classroom doors were locked while class was in session. Cathy expressed her concern, “I’m thinking of these kids’ point of view. You know, you always have to knock on the door because you can’t get into your own classroom”. She related this experience to a missing sense of belonging, and a lack of feeling welcome. Another affront to the basic value of connectedness occurred when a teacher aired her complaints about a colleague publicly. The social contract that was forged soon after this incident emphasized the importance of speaking to the person with whom one had the complaint. A breakdown of communication seemed to be viewed as a lack of “connectedness”. Finally, connectedness was violated on the rare occasions when students were required to leave Tansi because of extreme behavioural issues. This was usually an occasion for great sadness among those staff members who worked closely with the individual, and certainly it was a grave concern for the principal.

A First Nations worldview, with its holistic perspective and emphasis on the interrelatedness of all things, contributed to the patterns of “connectedness” that were in operation at Tansi. The ideal was not to reject needy students but to embrace and nurture them in a caring community. In my efforts to understand this way of thinking, I sought out a Cree friend and advisor, Jamie Fiddler, who shared with me the “embracive” concept of “Me” or “Nyo” “wah-koo-to-win”, the “spirit of right relationships” that places the Creator at the center of effective communication, and draws outsiders in because they want to be a part of such goodness. Cree speakers at the school knew this word, but were not as familiar with it’s meaning. To them, connectedness implied the notion of “Tawow”, which means “all are welcome”, or, as it was tersely explained to me by a lady making bannock, “You act like you belong, and you belong”.

Like “connectedness”, learning community theory emphasizes the importance of trust among school colleagues. “Establishing trust is


the responsibility of everyone in the school community” (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000, p. 51), and “it is the responsibility of all members to heal the communication problems at their school” (p. 97). For the most part, Tansi staff members accepted that responsibility, and thus provided another example of their development as a learning community.

As a learning agent, my contribution to “connectedness” was to sense its varied patterns, and model them in my interactions. I felt a responsibility to build a network of personal contacts that would enable me to help distribute the healthy patterns of development that I found. It was essential that the research remain open and inclusive, with a positive perspective that would invite involvement and leave participants strengthened by the experience. As I came to understand the value of connectedness, I adjusted the research plan so that data-gathering activities would also be opportunities for participants to build relationships. In reflection after the field work period, I considered that patterns of “connectedness” could possibly be formalized, so that other communities could learn from them. This led to the “learning community ethic” that was an outcome of the research. Comments on the Interaction of Cultural Patterns

The interactive nature of the four sets of cultural patterns, or tools, must be emphasized. For the purpose of analysis, patterns that were experienced holistically within a complex and dynamic socio-cultural environment have been identified as distinct processes. In keeping with Senge’s (1990) conception of growth as synergistic, spiral process, Tansi’s cultural patterns generated greater strength or capacity through their interaction. For example, patterns of “awareness” drew attention to creative tension and areas where there was “room to grow”. Behaviour was constantly and consciously examined in light of beliefs about who “we” wanted to be, building on personal and community visions achieved through patterns of “identity construction”. Frequent references to “we” in dialogue about community goals (What do we want to be doing?) and

community ethics (How do we want to be treating each other?) emphasized “connectedness”, which, in turn, also contributed to the construction of a positive group identity.

The function, or “object” of all of these cultural patterns, in interaction, was to keep community beliefs present in language and in action. Thus, integrity developed, and brought with it strength, as community members learned to trust themselves. Hope grew with the development of a successful group identity, and increased trust among colleagues. With it, hope brought other aspects of capacity, including energy and commitment. Figure 3 is a simple graphic representation of the interaction of cultural patterns and its results. The shaded area represents capacity, as it appeared to be generated by the facilitative cultural patterns of “identity construction”, “empowerment”, “awareness”, and “connectedness”.

The Significance of Restitution

Analysis of the four sets of facilitative cultural patterns that were identified at Tansi demonstrated the significance of interpersonal relationships for the development of community capacity. Open relationships were a key to mutual influence, the exchange of knowledge that made personal learning accessible to others as it became part of the cultural fabric of the organization. Thus, Restitution, with its emphasis on repairing harm and strengthening relationships through non-coercive, tolerant and respectful means, appeared to have particular leverage for cultural change. In addition, Restitution training provided strategies to enhance creative visioning, as in awareness of one’s “quality pictures” (Glasser, 1965/2000), which, under favourable social conditions such as those that developed at Tansi, led to shared goals that incorporated several perspectives of the ideal school. Finally, Restitution training offered scripts, mantras, and collaborative exercises that enhanced metacognitive skills, and gave participants the internal “signs” with which to monitor their thinking and behaviour effectively toward desired goals.


Reflecting on my success as a change agent, I believe that intuitive alignment with developing cultural patterns at Tansi contributed to their proliferation and to the strength and speed of cultural change. For instance, I came to understand the value of “connectedness”, and re-organized my year-end project evaluation, as well as focus group dialogues held in the fall, to bring opportunities for shaping a positive group narrative. The pattern, or habit, of “connecting” was affirmed once again as the “correct” or “usual” way to approach staff activities, including research. Further, cognitive awareness and articulation of the patterns made them more accessible to me and to others as consciously-employed “tools” for improving school culture. While much of my ability to articulate the patterns developed in post-fieldwork reflection, Tansi staff members have read drafts and excerpts from this research report and the principal reports they have found my perceptions useful and encouraging.

Increased awareness of the facilitative patterns that I have identified may strengthen them further, and lead to discovery of other patterns that are similarly valuable. Perhaps participants will be encouraged to continue asking the unconditionally positive question, “How are we becoming a learning community?”, that has helped them begin to overcome restrictive mental models and self-limiting roles within their school culture (Firestone & Louis,

1999). If so, they may see that this question contributes to all four patterns, (1) by forming a positive group identity, (2) by developing the self-efficacy that contributes to empowerment, (3) by bringing “awareness” and tension for learning, and (4) by emphasizing the “connectedness”, that assumes members of the community are achieving their ideal vision together.

Identity Construction

Empowerment Awareness

HOPE

Connectedness Perceived Impact on the Student Learning Environment

The notion of “learning community symmetry”, leads one to assume that, in time, the cultural benefits experienced by the professional community at Tansi would be accessible to students. The change in language was already beginning to occur during the research period, as reported by Tim, “I hear kids talking, from the start of the year to now, much differently. I see kids interacting with people differently. Other people see it and say, you know, I saw this student say this to another student, and those are your words”.

Figure 3. Capacity as strength, commitment, energy, and hope generated by interactive and facilitative cultural patterns.

While examples of improved interactions with students have been presented here, the greatest effect for students and their families seemed to be the improved relationship that Tansi enjoyed with its families. Shelley expressed an understanding of change in terms of cultural diversity, connecting the school to it’s predominantly First Nations neighbourhood: “It’s fitting – the way we operate as a school now, is more fitting for and serves the people that we work with and the community a lot better than the typical [norm]”.

The learning orientation that developed in the Tansi community was powerfully illustrated by the strength of their goals for greater parental involvement at the end of the field work, and by their continued work toward that goal over the next two years. Three groups mentioned this goal in their final project evaluations; the strategies they suggested to achieve it included continued invitations to parents, and having staff members go out into the community more. Shelley commented on school growth, suggesting that continued learning would result in development of the larger community:


Our whole perspective, school-based has changed. With the people, the people involved. The people in the school have changed also. I think it’s a global thing. It’s universal. It’s all of us. It’s teachers, students, parents, community – beginning to be the community.

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, I have reviewed findings relevant to the research questions, “Has learning community development occurred?”, “What were the facilitating and obstructing factors?”, and “What were the perceived effects for students and their families?”. Given the appreciative inquiry approach (Ludema, Cooperrider & Barrett, 2001), facilitating factors were given more attention than obstructing factors, which were often overcome, to a degree, as the learning community developed. Cultural patterns were identified as significant for their contribution to learning community de-velopment and to the growth in adaptive capacity experienced by the staff. It was the interaction of these patterns, stimulated by the language of Control Theory and of Restitution, that seemed to weave the personal learning of participants into the cultural fabric of a learning community.

Author’s Note To conclude this excerpt, I want to

emphasize a quote from Karen, one of the study participants, that was particularly powerful for me and relates strongly to the respectful, non-coercive and invitational practice of Restitution as well as to the non-prescriptive nature of qualitative research:

Not every elder is going to tell you the same story, and it is up to you to make the circle, apply it to your life.

Although this study focused on a specific time and place, I believe there is much to learn from the Tansi example. Along with the Tansi participants, I offer best wishes for you own journey toward profound improvement through Restitution.

Willow Brown, September, 2008

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