Conclusion Through Fullan’s “Six Secrets of Change”

In order for an organization to change and evolve into a cohesive group of systems-thinkers, Michael Fullan suggests that these conditions for change should be addressed by the principal and other instructional leaders:

1. Love your employees - Invest in the staff development and organizational structures that will allow each teacher to reach success, and congruently, for each student to reach success.
2. Connect Peers with Purpose - Getting into each other’s classrooms (and for principals, into each other’s building levels) through a variety of structured and purposeful data-gathering activities sets the climate and culture needed for continuous system improvement.

3. Capacity Building Prevails - “The strength of the Bulldog is in the
   pack. . .”  and “Any system is only as strong as the individuals within...”   For any system to accomplish significant gains, educators must practice what they preach about teaching for learner differences, on both the adult and student levels.
4. Learning Is the Work - Deprivatizing classrooms and building levels in the system results in a culture where working and learning to work better are the same thing.  Congruency sets the foundation for a safe-to-risk environment where everyone from the superintendent to the youngest  kindergarten student is a learner contributing to the success of the system.
5. Transparency Rules - Clearly and continuously sharing results and the conditions that led to those results is the work of any successful system.  There is no room in a successful organization for independent contractors who shut themselves off from the rest of the system.  Purposeful transparency involves even the most reluctant staff members in systems thinking.    
6. Systems Learn - Fullan’s final secret on successful change takes us back to where we started with these big-picture components for continual system improvement:
   1. Identify critical knowledge. [Think Iowa Core Curriculum]
      
   2. Transfer knowledge using job instruction. [Think ICC Characteristics of Effective Instruction and job embedded staff development]
      
   3. Verify learning and success. [Think Iowa Professional Development Model]
      

It’s also useful to wrap-up where we started with what systems researchers Liker and Meier describe as “intentional mindfulness” rather than “mindless conforming.”  Schools must place a high value on creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving at the same time they focus on “consistency of practice” and a set of non-negotiables that have been identified as crucial to success.  It is up to the school leaders of Iowa to see that these systemic conditions are mutually inclusive now and in the future if Iowa is truly to reach the mission of teaching and learning for all.