Chapter 6: A Model for Addressing Adaptive Challenges by Merging Ideas: How One Program Designed a Hacking Framework to Address Adaptive Challenges and Discovered the Ecotone

Digital shifts and innovations occur with a rapidity that create a never-ending learning curve. In the field of education, the slow adoption of technology in schools, along with the regular and rapid development of innovations, provides educators with the ultimate “adaptive challenge.” Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky (2009) define adaptive challenges as those “can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties.” (p. 45). Their adaptive leadership framework serves as the bedrock of an emerging framework we have developed and are introducing in this chapter. Using and standing on their shoulders and of other great thinkers, we have designed a framework for working through adaptive challenges. We believe that acts of leadership create growth and change. In this chapter, we set the context for our framework as a leadership model. We then highlight the digital divide as the quintessential adaptive challenge for educators. The “Hacking Leadership” framework is introduced and the components within that framework are described. Finally, we introduce the“ecotone”.