Diagnosis and Design for School Improvement: Using a Distributed Perspective to Lead and Manage Change

This practical resource highlights the critical importance of diagnosis and design in the work of leading and managing for school improvement. The authors maintain that today’s school leaders and managers, under intense pressure to improve student learning, cannot simply adopt and implement pre-packaged reforms manufactured outside the school. Rather, to effect real reform, they must understand how leading and managing for instructional improvement gets done in their school and in turn use their diagnoses as the basis for mindful design and redesign. This book is a must-read for school administrators, teachers, stakeholders, and reformers who seek a new way to improve teaching and learning.

• Draws on over 10 years of empirical study and includes detailed vignettes to examine real-world examples of school social networks.
• Combines distributed leadership with diagnosis and design and grounds that work in the daily life of schools.
• Looks at both formal and informal aspects of the school organization.
• Includes suggestions and tools for doing the work of diagnosis and design.

James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change and Chair of the graduate program in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Amy Franz Coldren is an administrator and teacher at Frederick Community College in Frederick, Maryland.