Hawai'i Change Leaders Project

The Hawai’i Change Leaders Project (HCLP) seeks to develop a model for practice-embedded leadership development that supports administrators to become instructional leaders. Rather than conducting “business as usual” with a focus on operational issues, we believe school leadership teams need to meet together in new ways, struggle with their own practice together and explore strategies for increasing faculty and student engagement.

Inspiration for the project began with a group of school leaders in South Kona, HI, in 2005 (see "Leading for Change"), and quickly drew interest from Harold K. L. Castle Foundation, which continues to support the project. In collaboration with Hawaiian Educational Council, CLG rolled out a leadership development initiative focused on the "Leadership Practice Community" (LPC), the goal of which is to

create rigorous continuous collaborative inquiry for the improvement of learning, teaching and instructional leadership at the classroom, school and district levels in order to help all students to meet the new performance standards for learning, work and citizenship in a global knowledge economy.

Local enthusiasm for the LPC has grown; the Project now works with four Hawai’i Department of Education area complexes, or K-12 feeder patterns, comprising a total of 21 schools. Student populations in these complexes are predominately native Hawaiian. The complexes’ principals, School Renewal Specialists, Complex Area Superintendents, and teacher leaders have formed their own respective LPCs with the aim of developing their leader competencies, creating school and district cultures that support collaboration and engagement for instructional improvement, and addressing conditions so they support the improvement of teaching and learning. Essential to the LPCs evolution, a local faculty works closely with CLG to tend to each cohort’s growing edge as a change agent in service of student learning.

LPC participants report substantial and substantive changes to their leadership approach. A formal evaluation measuring the impact of LPCs was launched at the end of 2007, the results of which will be posted on our site by mid-2008. Meanwhile Kamehameha Schools has provided valuable support for the Project and there is a great deal of interest in expanding the project to additional complexes. As we continue to understand the participants’ challenges and how the Leadership Practice Community is making a difference in their work, we are encouraged by the promise of the LPC as a viable lever in the pursuit of improved student learning.