Chapter 11: Developing Enabling Conditions For Continuous Improvement: Building Foundational Team “Habits of Mind”

This chapter focuses on team “habits of mind” that are foundational for the pursuit of continuous improvement, and that cannot be taken as a given, considering the typical conditions that leaders face. Contributing to growing calls for constructing an improvement infrastructure, we bring attention to group-level and organizational structures, routines, and beliefs that educators can enact to lay a foundation for undertaking any method of continuous improvement. Drawing upon insights from a multi-year research–practice partnership with a high-poverty urban school district in California, the chapter illustrates habits related to two developmental challenges: (a) Slowing down thinking by (i) routinely looking back, planning forward, and prioritizing needs and (ii) using records of practice; and (b) centering human needs and connection by (i) attending to subjectively felt needs and commitments and (ii) engaging users’ voices and fostering dialogue to inform improvement efforts. The chapter presents a series of vignettes that show how a hypothetical leader and her team—constructed from composite of key patterns we observed across teams in the partnering district—wrestled with and overcame these challenges. After each vignette, we draw upon available research to present a theoretical explanation for why leaders and teams might form inhospitable habits for continuous improvement—given the typical conditions they face—and how explicit effort and attention can be used to develop more conductive habits. The chapter ends with a self-reflection tool to diagnose the extent to which foundational habits are in place, and an action tool with recommended steps to take to establish them if not.