Instructional Leadership and the Sociopolitics of School Turnarounds: Changing Stakeholder Beliefs through Immersive Collaborative Learning

Abstract

This article highlights case production and analysis efforts associated with a multi-year, multimedia case development project focused on providing alternative organizational learning opportunities to regional K-12 schools and school districts. The School Leadership Case Simulation (SLCS) Project utilizes a unique multi-entity partnership and school-based collaborative learning design in which teams of university-based education researchers, multimedia production specialists, and regional education service center school improvement consultants work in tandem with K-12 school educators and community members to help these school stakeholders develop and produce multimedia organizational learning cases about their own real-world, context-specific school dilemma challenges. Collaborative team learning efforts of one group of school educators and community stakeholders grappling with an organizationally entrenched set of instructional leadership and school improvement challenges in one regional high school community are presented. Project findings relating to the viability and usefulness of the project’s multi-entity, immersive collaborative teaming design and multimedia-integrated case learning tools for helping groups of K-12 school community stakeholders learn how to adopt a team-centered organizational learning approach to reframing their real-world school leadership dilemma challenges and engage directly in data-informed, collaborative decision-making are presented and discussed.