Contradictory messages and complex change: An application of constructivist and paradox theories to supervisory change

Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 10:247-269, 1996 © 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston - Manufactured in The Netherlands

Contradictory Messages and Complex Change: An Application of Constructivist and Paradox Theories to Supervisory Change

WENDY L. POOLE [email protected] Assistant Professor, Department of Education Leadership, University of Connecticut, 249 Glenbrook Road, U-93, Storrs, CT 06269-2093

Recent application of natural systems theory, including chaos and complexity theory, to organizations has resulted in increased attention to the role of contradictions and paradox within organizations and a tendency to view those contradictions as positive forces (see, for example, Fullan, 1993; Keidel, 1995; Pascale, 1990; Quinn & Kimberly, 1984; Shedd & Bacharach, 1991; Wheatley, 1994). This trend contrasts sharply with the educational reform agendas of the 1980s, which emphasized the need for control, coherence, consistency, coordination, and stability (see, for example, Argyris & Schon, 1978; Bacharach, 1990; Cameron & Quinn, 1988; Martin, 1992; Quinn & Cameron, 1988).

The early 1990s have ushered in increased respect, even reverence, for disequilibrium, diversity, contradiction, conflict, and paradox as forces that can bring about growth and renewal within organizations. For example, Senge (1990) speaks of the need for individuals and organizations to generate "creative tension" as an active force that, when properly harnessed, provides the pull toward change in organizations. Pascale (1990) perceives paradox as playing an important role in creativity, arguing that breakthroughs often occur when antithetical elements exist simultaneously and are conceived as equally valid. Land and Jarman (1992) agree, stating, "Creativity decrees that innovators introduce a maximum of tension into the thinking process, unifying concepts that often appear to be opposed, solving problems that appear impossible" (p. 168). Fullan (1993) posits that "productive educational change is full of paradoxes" (p.4), "conflict is essential to any successful change effort" (p. 27, emphasis included), and effective organizations embrace problems rather than avoid them. Fullan recommends that organizations make greater use of positive feedback mechanisms, such as problem-finding and problem-tracking, that encourage inquiry, confrontation, and learning.

Wheatley (1994) posits that traditional organizational bias toward control, coherence, consistency, coordination, and stability indicates a complementary bias toward avoiding disequilibrium, novelty, and surprise. Systems theory, says Wheatley, has traditionally venerated and perpetuated that bias:

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In the past, systems analysts and scientists studied open systems primarily focusing on the overall structure of the system. This route led away from observing or understanding the processes of change and growth that make a system viable over time. Instead, analysts went looking for those influences that would support stability, which is the desired trait of structures. Feedback loops were monitored as a way of maintaining system stability. Regulatory or negative feedback loops served this function well, signaling departures from the norm. As managers watched for substandard performance, they could make corrections and preserve the system at its current levels of activity (p. 78, emphasis included).

Yet, Wheatley argues, equilibrium is not a desirable state for organizations because it represents "the point at which the system has exhausted all of its capacity for change, done its work, and dissipated its productive capacity into useless entropy" (p. 76). Instead, open systems "have the possibility of continuously importing free energy from the environment and of exporting entropy" (p. 78). Open systems seek disequilibrium through positive feedback loops that amplify troublesome messages and pressure the system to change and grow. Wheatley suggests that the energy for organizational growth comes from outside of the system. Can troublesome messages that emanate from within the organization also generate productive energy and organizational growth?

Conflicting messages are sent to organizational members about how they should view contradictions and conflict within their respective institutions. On the one hand, the more traditional focus on control, structure, coherence, consistency, coordination, and stability suggests that contradictions are problems to be avoided. In contrast, more recent advice supports embracing contradictions as positive, even necessary, forces that can lead to renewal and growth. What advice should organizations accept or reject? Do contradictions help or hinder organizations? Do they lead to renewal or to entropy? Are they indicators of organizational dysfunction or symptoms of a healthy and natural change process? The author suggests that some of the answers may lie in the way in which paradox is framed or constructed.

The Construction of Organizational Paradox

Ford and Backoff (1988) propose that paradox within organizations may be viewed through three different perspectives: formal logic, dialectics, and trialectics. Formal logic tends to view the dualities within paradoxical situations as static dichotomies or "oppositional tendencies" whose resolution comes in the form of either/or decisions; at best they are viewed as opposite poles of a continuum and resolution occurs when compromise is achieved. Such compromise, according to Ford and Backoff, should not be viewed as an ideal resolution: "Although the compromise, because it is a mixture of both poles of tension, appears to be a form of integration, it is only superficially so because it does not allow for an outcome that encompasses both poles in their entirety" (p. 95).

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In contrast, dialectics views dualities as dynamic forces that are simultaneously conflictual and interdependent. These contradictions coexist and interact, pushing on one another in a both/and relationship, gradually building tension until, ultimately, they synthesize to form something completely different: "Once the unity of con- traditions can no longer be maintained, they negate each other and a new unity is created" (p. 97). Dialectics views change as "moving forward, but never regressing" (Thompson, 1988, p. 127).

According to the rationale of trialectics, there is no real opposition, only apparent opposition; that is, opposition is a constructed reality. Trialectics views apparent opposites, not as contradictory, but as complementary and interdependent; not as forces which push against one another, but as foci within a dynamically balanced circulation of energy, much like polar opposites of an electrical circuit. The system may suddenly transcend paradox and jump to a higher or lower state of equilibrium as it responds to an attraction or pull created by a disturbance in the balance of energy. According to Ford and Backoff (1988), disturbances are created by a reframing or reconstruction of the distinctions that create the apparent opposites, and such reconstruction emerges through social interaction and conflict, created when some organizational members see apparent opposites and others do not.

Among these options available for resolving paradox, formal logic views paradox as something that organizations should avoid or eliminate by selecting one of two opposites within a duality or by compromising both dualities; dialectics and trialectics encourage organizations to embrace paradox as a source of productive energy that is central to organizational change and development. Each perspective has utility depending upon the nature of the paradox. For example, Lebeck and Voorhees (as cited in Thompson, 1988, pp. 124-125), explain that

Formal logic will do for many of the situations that face us. And dialectics can handle a significant number of those remaining. It is only in ill defined and complex areas--interpersonal relations and international relations, for example--that we require trialectics.

The complexity of problems may dictate which approach is more appropriate for managing paradox within organizations. For many of the simple paradoxes that an organization may encounter, formal logic may be appropriate. However, formal logic has little utility when dealing with complex change processes.

Complex problems lend themselves to complex responses--dialectics or trialectics. Dialectics, founded on beliefs that change always represents advancement and that change emerges from conflict, manifests itself in organizations that resort to force to achieve change or those which view organizational growth as limitless. Trialectics is grounded in the notion that reality is, in large part, a constructed reality. Therefore, paradox theory is related to constructivist theory.

Constructivism has a tradition in learning theory (see, for example, Dewey, 1938; Kelly, 1955; Kolb, 1984; Mezirow, 1991; Piaget, 1952; Sheckley & Keeton, in press). Kelly (1955) described humans as creating meaning from facts and constructing

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theories or assumptions about the world that then guide behavior in relation to the world. According to Anderson (1990), these assumptions about the world "act in effect as ' inner eyes ' with which we look through our physical eyes upon reality" (p. 38), causing us to see certain events and to ignore others. Meaning construction is described as a dialectic process in that previous constructions of reality influence interpretations of new experiences and these new experiences influence the construction of reality. Individuals continuously test their assumptions and may confirm and instantiate those assumptions or they may disconfirm and reconstruct assumptions as new evidence emerges (Sheckley & Keeton, in press).

Theorists such as Berger and Luckmann (1966), Vygotsky (1978), and symbolic interactionists (see, for example, Becker & McCall, 1990; Blumer, 1969; Habermas, 1984; Mead, 1938; Perinbanayagam, 1985) contribute a social dimension to constructivist theory. From a social constructivist viewpoint, meanings are negotiated through daily interactions between members of social networks as they engage in the interpre- tive process. As members develop common meanings these may form part of the deep structure of culture (Schein, 1985), assumptions that are difficult to change because they are often "not explicit, discussed, or understood, but buried at the level of unstated assumptions" (Fullan, 1991, p. 42). To change tacit beliefs and assumptions network members must become aware that they exist and then engage in the process of meaning reconstruction.

What this means in relation to organizational contradictions is that various organizational members or groups may construct different oppositions or construct oppositions differently. Controversy and conflict within organizations may stem, not from paradox itself, but from how organizational members frame paradox. Organizational members may construct or see dualities as simple either/or distinctions, they may construct them as contradictory but interdependent opposites, they may construct them as apparent opposites that are complementary as well as interdependent, or they may construct them in other, yet undescribed, ways. This implies that a response to paradox must take into consideration how the paradox is constructed by organizational members. A reconstruction, or reframing of the paradox may lead to new possibilities for the organization. This article explores the implications of the construction of paradox through a case study of organizational change occurring within a school district in central New York.

Methodology

Data were collected within the context of a broader study that focused on a unique approach to teacher supervision and evaluation called Supportive Supervision. 1 The study took place in Lawrence School District (a pseudonym) in central New york, which developed Supportive Supervision and piloted the model during a two-year period between 1991 and 1993. Supportive Supervision was subsequently implemented districtwide in the fall of 1993.

The study focused on the construction of meaning related to new roles and relation-


ships initiated by the Supportive Supervision Model. Questions that were posed included What meaning do teachers and administrators construct about the purpose of Supportive Supervision and their respective roles within the new model? What meaning do teachers and administrators construct about the teacher-administrator relationship within Supportive Supervision? Do teachers and administrators share common understandings about this relationship? How do individual and common understandings develop?

Data were collected between 1991 and 1993 during a two-year piloting of Supportive Supervision, and during follow-up visits conducted in the fall of 1993 and in the spring and fall of 1994. Participants included a cohort of 22 educators--six teachers and one administrator at the K-2 level; five teachers, five teacher/department chairs, and two administrators at the high-school level; two district-level administrators, and one teacher/district-level administrator. These participants, with the exception of one district-level administrator, participated in the pilot project. In September 1993, six teachers (three in the K-2 school, three in the high school) were added to the study in order to gain the perspective of those whose first engagement with Supportive Supervision came after full implementation. Thus, a total of 38 teachers and administrators participated in the study. Of the 32 teachers and teacher/department chairs, 18 were women, and of the six administrators or teacher/administrators, two were women.

Data collection consisted of observation, participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. I observed faculty meetings, department meetings, district staff development committee meetings, school-community meetings, union meetings, staff development sessions, and pilot-team meetings. Participant observation occurred in informal settings, such as lunch rooms and before, between, and after formal meetings attended by participants. Participant observation was used infrequently in formal settings, such as during staff-development sessions related to Supportive Supervision when participants invited me to participate in experiential activities assigned by facili- tators. Also, the district staff development committee requested, as reciprocity for participation in the study, feedback from an outsider's perspective about the Supportive Supervision Model or about the change process. Reports and feedback consisted of descriptive information and an effort was made to avoid value-laden language that may have unduly influenced participant behavior.

Two to three semistructured interviews, 40-60 minutes long, were conducted with each participant. Interviews with teachers focused on why teachers had or had not volunteered to participate in the pilot project, what goals teachers had established, what progress teachers were making toward their goals, what helped or hindered teachers in achieving their goals, how Supportive Supervision influenced instructional practice, and how Supportive Supervision influenced professional relationships. Interviews with administrators and union leaders focused on the history and philosophy of Supportive Supervision, reasons for union/administration involvement in Supportive Supervision, the change process, how Supportive Supervision influenced relationships among professional educators, how collective bargaining affected Supportive Supervision, and the relationship between Supportive Supervision and other reform initiatives.

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Within the context of the pilot project, between 1991 and 1993, the teacher union and district management engaged in a problematic round of contract negotiations lasting 18 months. The issue of contract negotiations was raised frequently by participants, especially by teachers and union leaders, during interviews and district pilot team meetings. Contract negotiations affected teachers' perceptions about, and participation in, the Supportive Supervision pilot project. Thus, significant portions of data related to union issues and the role of the teacher union in Supportive Supervision.

Methods used to analyze data were consistent with Taylor and Bogdan's (1984) discovery/coding/discounting approach and with methods suggested by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and Patton (1990). I immersed myself in the data, reading and rereading it. Data were systematically unitized by reducing them to meaningful segments of data. As themes emerged, they were identified and named, and data were coded according to these identified themes. Data were searched for patterns that occurred across themes, across events and interviews, within and across positions (teachers, building administrators, district administrators, union leaders), and over time (from the first year to the second year of the pilot project). Data were discounted and rejected where credibility was questionable. As themes and working hypotheses emerged they were presented to key informants in the study as a means of checking their validity and credibility. Reports made to the district staff development committee also served as a means of checking validity of data. Feedback from teachers and administrators during and following these presentations was used to validate both the data and the analysis, and to make revisions where appropriate. A review of the literature was conducted to confirm or disconfirm findings and to facilitate the generation of alternative explana- tions of the findings. The theoretical framework that emerged integrated paradox theory and constructivist theory, and data were interpreted through this integrated framework of the construction of paradox.

Supportive Supervision

Lawrence School District in central New York serves approximately 3600 students within an homogenous (98% white) and geographically large rural region. Although recently challenged by an economic recession, increasing numbers of children who qualify for free or reduced lunches, overcrowding in two of its five schools, and state cuts in educational financing, the district has earned a reputation for excellence as measured by student scores on statewide achievement tests. Teachers and administrators within the school system are proud of their success, and the district's mission of "Excellence of Opportunity and Instruction" is symbolic of the district's commitment to quality education. Leaders within the district perceive professional development to be a means of achieving continuous instructional improvement.

James Miller, appointed superintendent in 1982, reported that he became frustrated by the perceived complacency of some teachers in relation to professional development, and he coined the expression, "Doing nothing is not an option" to communicate to teachers his expectation that they would actively pursue professional development


activities. He perceived that many teachers were passive about their professional growth and content to allow others to plan professional development activities for them. The vision he described was a district where all teachers would emulate what many teachers were doing already and assume ultimate responsibility for their professional growth. Miller reported that he respected those teachers who continually upgraded their knowledge and skills and who experimented with new instructional strategies in their classrooms. He observed that "we have teachers that have demonstrated, repeat- edly, outstanding ability to reflect and change and get better and do outstanding work," and he wanted this sense of personal responsibility and commitment to continuing professional growth to become the norm for all teachers within the district.

First, the organization needed to establish an expectation for continuing professional growth. In Miller's view, it was teacher evaluation that established expectations about what teachers were responsible for, and accountable for, within the district. He criticized the traditional teacher evaluation system because it focused on the continuous reaffirmation of teacher competence and failed to set an expectation of continuing growth and improvement. Miller charged the Professional Staff Development Committee (PSDC) to develop a teacher evaluation system that would promote professional growth within a safe and nonthreatening environment. The PSDC, with representation from among teachers from each school in the district, building-level administrators, central office administration, and the teachers union, was responsible for staff development policy, planning, and delivery within the district.

After three years of reviewing research, visiting sites with exemplary teacher evaluation models, and gathering input and feedback from district teachers and administrators, the PSDC developed The Supportive Supervision Model. The details of Supportive Supervision are described in a previous article (Poole, 1994); however, to summarize briefly, the model consists of three options for teacher supervision and evaluation: 1) under Directive Supervision nontenured teachers work closely with their administrator, collaboratively developing professional growth goals and collaboratively assessing progress toward those goals; 2) Intensive Supervision is a highly structured and collaborative remediation process for teachers who are identified by their administrators as at risk of being terminated; 3) Self-directed Supervision, the central focus of the model, involves the majority of teachers--those who are competent and tenured. Self-directed Supervision gives the teacher responsibility for developing short-term or long-term goals for professional growth and a plan for achieving those goals. Teachers self-direct their professional growth and they account for their progress toward achieving those goals by self-evaluating their progress at mid-year and again at year-end. Teachers are encouraged, but not required, to select someone to serve as a cognitive coach (Costa & Garmston, 1994) throughout the growth process. The administrator's role is described as that of facilitator and possibly coach, if the teach invites the administrator to serve as coach.

Part of Superintendent Miller's vision for professional educators involved teachers and administrators collaborating to achieve improved instruction for students. He denounced the traditional hierarchical relationships as they presently existed between teachers and administrators--relationships that created a we/they mentality and often

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hampered the organization in meeting its goals, especially those related to instructional improvement and enhanced learning for students. He spoke about the need to "break down the we/they barriers." He believed that teachers and administrators, alike, needed to come to view themselves as part of the same struggle, as educators who each contributed to the organization through different, but equally important means. In his remarks at a districtwide staff development day, Miller described the Supportive Supervision Model as one that would "break down walls and labels" and "forge new relationships."

Although there were cynics who shared skepticism about Supportive Supervision, there were as many teachers who were enthusiastic about the new model, especially among the pilot project volunteers. However, during the second year of the pilot project there occurred a marked increase in cynicism and anger related to Supportive Supervision. Those who previously had expressed faith in Supportive Supervision spoke increasingly about contradictory messages and skepticism about the possibility of real change in the district. Perceived contradictions threatened to disrupt, perhaps even derail, the change process. What were these contradictions and what role did they play in the organizational change process?

Contradictory Messages

Teacher responses to Supportive Supervision were influenced by both traditional and emerging messages about the role of teachers and about the teacher-administrator relationship. The messages, as perceived by teachers, were confusing, contradictory, and conflicting.

Emerging Messages About the Role of Teachers

District administrators, staff development leaders, and teacher union leaders intended Supportive Supervision to represent a formal shift in thinking about the role of teachers. Supportive Supervision was intended to break down traditional hierarchical relationships between administrators and teachers and to create new relationships founded upon mutual trust and support. The teacher would assume responsibility for professional growth and instructional improvement. The administrator would become less the inspector of teacher competence and more a facilitator of teacher growth. Administrators and teacher leaders sent explicit messages to teachers, described in the following sections, about teacher autonomy, the quality of teachers' work, and increased teacher involvement in decision making.

Quality teachers, innovative work. From the beginning of the pilot project, administrators and teacher leaders openly expressed the view that the majority of teachers in the district were competent, capable professionals and that pilot participants numbered among the best teachers in the district. Those messages were often direct and explicit:


"You're here because you have volunteered, and it is clear that you're the best." At other times, the message was less direct. For example, an administrator made the following comment to teachers at a pilot team meeting: "Those of us who are good teachers do that [reflect upon their classroom instruction] all the time anyway; this [Supportive Supervision] just formalizes it." Although this administrator did not explicitly state, "You are good teachers," the language he chose tended to include participating teachers in the category of quality teachers.

Teachers in the pilot group were constantly reminded that Supportive Supervision was innovative, cutting edge, and that it was "going to have a tremendous impact on our industry." By implication, teachers' involvement in the Supportive Supervision pilot project demonstrated that they were innovative leaders within the district and within the teaching profession.

Teacher autonomy and self-directedness. Pilot participants received training in cognitive coaching (Costa & Garmston, 1994), a model for facilitating teacher reflec- tion upon their classroom practice. The main premise of cognitive coaching is that "the coach transfers to the teacher responsibility for thinking about the teacher's teaching," and the ultimate goal of cognitive coaching is teacher autonomy, defined by district teacher and administrative leaders as "the willingness and capacity to be self-directing within a collaborative environment." While teachers were expected to consult with, and collaborate with, other professionals for the purpose of achieving instructional improvement, they would maintain ownership and control of their classroom instruction.

Increased involvement in decision making. Coinciding with Supportive Supervision was a growing trend within the district toward involving teachers in decision making related to a broader range of issues. Teachers had traditionally participated as members of committees related to curriculum, student placement, and matters about which their building administrators periodically sought their input. Increasingly, however, teachers were becoming involving in decision making that had hitherto been the prerogative of administrators. Teachers had participated in the development of a strategic plan for the district; they participated as members of the PSDC, a committee whose mandate was to direct professional staff development within the district; teachers in one school participated in the hiring of their new principal; and the district was in the process of establishing site-based decision making teams within each school with the intention that teachers would participate as members of these teams. Teacher participation in the development, piloting, and evaluation of Supportive Supervision was another example of the trend toward increased teacher involvement in decision making.

In summary, the language of the Supportive Supervision model, and the language used by administrators and teacher leaders, depicted teachers as responsible, capable, reflective, self-directed, and self-correcting experts. Teachers embraced this interpretation of their role. Participants in the pilot project developed increasing ownership of the model, and many of them came to believe that, "It's our model; the impetus did not come from the teachers . . . . but it has been teacher driven." These teachers heard

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explicit messages about increased responsibility coupled with increased personal and collective teacher influence. They viewed Supportive Supervision as a means for teachers to take responsibility for their professional growth, as a means of empowering themselves, and also as a means for extending teacher influence to a broader range of professional issues. There remained, however, a number of traditional messages that added to the ambiguity of the change process.

Traditional Messages About the Role of Teachers

While teachers participating in the pilot project received explicit messages about teacher empowerment and teacher professionalism, they perceived that administrators continued to send paradoxical messages that emphasized the powerlessness of teachers and lack of value in teachers' work. These messages, although sometimes more tacit than the emerging messages, were perceived by teachers as equally powerful, if not more powerful. Several issues, some more directly related to Supportive Supervision than others, illustrated these traditional messages. A few of have been selected as examples and described in the following sections.

The politics of grading. In the fall of 1991 high school teachers struggled to develop a consensual grading policy in response to a directive from the superintendent who had detected inconsistencies in teachers' individual approaches to computing final grades. The greatest discrepancy revolved around how teachers incorporated scores on statewide regents exams into the final course grade. The state gave schools discretionary power to determine whether students would receive credit for courses and the school, in turn, gave teachers discretion to decide how grades would be determined for their respective courses. This discretionary power led to a variety of procedures used by teachers to determine grades, and each teacher had a rationale about why one procedure was appropriate.

After months of debate at the departmental and school levels, the faculty unanimously decided upon a grading policy that would achieve consistency relative to the most significant issues raised by the superintendent while effectively maintaining teacher discretion in establishing criteria for the receipt of credit in their respective courses. Upon receiving the grading policy, the superintendent rejected it and directed the faculty to develop another policy through an open process that would involve students and parents.

Teachers responded angrily, accusing the superintendent of sending contradictory messages to teachers: "For some reason we're getting two stories. [Superintendent Miller] is telling us, 'All you need is a procedure. I don't care what the procedure is.' And then we're hearing, 'Well, you got the wrong procedure; you gotta work on it."

From the perspective of the most skeptical teachers, teacher empowerment was nothing more than a paper tiger, and "what it amounts to is that teachers keep giving answers until they hit upon the one that the [administrator] is looking for." From their experience, as expressed by one teacher, "We go to leadership conferences and


cognitive coaching conferences, and so on, and then they're over and things continue the same way we did them before." The superintendent, disappointed in these teacher responses, admonished teachers to "learn that teacher involvement in decision making doesn't mean they always get what they want," which prompted other teachers to share the perspective that "they [administrators and teacher leaders] talk about teacher participation, but in the end everything is top-down."

Teacher salaries and resources. The teacher union entered into contract negotiations with the school board in January 1992, and teacher salaries quickly became a major issue. Teachers perceived themselves to be underpaid in relation to peers in neighboring districts, and although they recognized that financial problems restricted the school board's ability to significantly reduce the disparity in the short term, they expected the school board to make a long-term commitment, at least in principle, to salary parity.

The school board perceived itself unable to make long-term commitments because the level of state aid was unpredictable and because they were reluctant to tie the hands of future school boards. Some taxpayers openly expressed their anger that school taxes were rising at a time when the community was experiencing an economic recession, and a school board request for a bond issue to finance renovations and construction within the school district had recently been defeated. Board members feared a potential tax revolt from community members, and they were unwilling to seek additional local taxes to satisfy teacher demands for salary increases.

After 18 months of negotiations a tentative agreement, which gave teachers a modest increase in salary, was reached, but the school board offered no commitment to long-term salary parity with neighboring districts. Although teachers ratified the agreement, they generally reacted to the contract settlement with a combination of anger, frustration, and discouragement. For them, the settlement symbolized the degree to which the district undervalued their work. The following comment represented sentiments expressed by many teachers:

I don't want to do extra . . . . I 've been here long enough that I 'm just tired of putting all this work out, not getting paid for it, not getting recognition for it. Getting nothing but knocked down, but expected to do the very best you can.

Salary was one way that teachers measured the value that school board members placed upon teachers' work. For teachers, "the dollars and cents are symbolic because there are many more issues involved than just the dollars." Comments such as, "Our work is not valued," and "If we're on the cutting edge . . . . why are we at the top and doing the most and getting paid so low?" were heard frequently at pilot team meetings and during interviews. Teachers talked about a lack of recognition and appreciation for doing the extras--the tasks and activities that were not required under their contract but which they frequently performed.

This perspective was reinforced by teachers' inability to acquire time to engage with colleagues in cognitive coaching. Often, collaborating teachers did not have

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common planning periods and their after-school schedules were difficult to coordinate due to teachers' involvement in extra- and co-curricular activities and in community activities, and because of teachers' varying responsibilities for their own children. Teachers expected the school district to provide time for them to effectively engage in Supportive Supervision activities, including cognitive coaching. In the words of one teacher, "You [the school district] can't steal any more [time] !" In addition, teachers believed that if additional time was not made available and they had to use personal time to complete their responsibilities, then they deserved compensation for that time. Teachers questioned the logic of continuing to engage in additional work without additional resources or financial compensation.

Superintendent Miller argued, before his departure, that Supportive Supervision did not require teachers to accept additional responsibilities but simply to do what professional teachers are expected to do. He explained to teachers:

You know, all you have to do is what you have already been doing. Responsible teachers who are in the growth mode do it in spite of administrators. Now you're thinking too much about it. Just do what you've done in the past. If you think you're doing something new and you need time for it, it will hold you back.

The superintendent described as "unprofessional" those teachers "who are using negotiation differences [chiefly related to salary issues] as an excuse not to do things," like Supportive Supervision.

Union leaders urged teachers not to let their displeasure about the salary settlement interfere with their engagement in Supportive Supervision. After a district pilot team meeting, a teacher approached the union president and informed him that "I talked to four people before I came here. They don't want to do any of this [Supportive Supervision]." His response was, "You know they're wrong." She replied, "Yeah, we know they're wrong."

Control over goal-setting in Supportive Supervision. Administrators agreed that some teachers could be expected to avoid substantive engagement in Supportive Supervision. According to Superintendent Fogarty (who had replaced Miller):

I think there are those members of the teaching staff who are dodging [Supportive Supervision] as best they can . . . . Their goals are not demanding, they're not stretching, and probably they've got the goals achieved about the second week of school. The rest of the time they're unobserved and they really feel like they're beyond administrative supervision. We don't have very much of that. I just don't know what that does for the staff support of Supportive Supervision if people are allowed to skate their way through it.

Although administrators agreed that "we don't have very many skaters," they were concerned about the possibility that low-risk goal-setting behavior on the part of a few


teachers might eventually discourage those who were currently setting challenging goals and that this might lead to the pervasiveness of mediocre goals. Some administrators began to argue that they needed more substantive involvement in teacher goal- setting.

One principal formally required teachers to submit their goals for her feedback. Objection came from teacher union leaders and from individual teachers, one who argued:

I don't feel that that is appropriate. Those goals are my goals, and its nobody's business to evaluate my goals. The whole purpose of Supportive Supervision was to be safe and supportive and it was to be ownership and autonomy for the teacher. If the administrator is approving or disapproving of certain goals then this is taking away the teacher's ownership of those goals.

Those teachers who were most suspicious of administrative intent interpreted administrative monitoring of goals as evidence that administrators were unwilling or unable to let go of traditional hierarchical interaction patterns. Others, such as the teacher union president, perceived these incidents as temporary slips that were to be expected as administrators struggled with their new role. From his perspective:

We never really realized [administrators] were going to be impacted the most. One of the things they have to do is they need to keep going back--this is a traditional role of an administrator; this is the new role of administrator. Do they weave back and forth together or are they separate, or is this one stronger than this one?

The union president interpreted discrepancies between espoused theory and theory-in- use (Argyris & Schon, 1978) as behavior that was consistent with the process of reconstructing meaning. For him, these discrepancies were temporary inconsistencies to be expected in a complex change process, whereas for most teachers they were real and conflicting contradictions.

To summarize, administrators perceived little, if any, inconsistencies between their behaviors and the discourse of Supportive Supervision, but teachers generally perceived that administrators were sending contradictory messages about teachers' roles within the organization. The espoused messages of Supportive Supervision that spoke of teacher professionalism, teacher empowerment, teacher autonomy, teacher involvement in decision making, and the value of teachers' work appeared to contradict other messages that emphasized traditional hierarchical control over teachers, the undervaluing of teachers' work, and the powerlessness of teachers to influence decision making. Issues such as administrators' pursuit of control over the goal-setting process within Supportive Supervision and the superintendent intervention in the high school grading policy emphasized hierarchical control and contradicted the messages of professionalism, empowerment, and autonomy. The issue of teacher salaries, as perceived by teachers, indicated the undervaluing of their work, contradicting the

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messages about quality and innovative work that were part of the discourse of Supportive Supervision.

Discussion

Interpretations of critical incidents and actions described in this case led to the construction of contradictions and apparent contradictions. As suggested earlier in this article, the framing of paradox determines the response to paradox. According to Ford and Backoff (1988), organizational members may construct the dualities of a paradox as either/or distinctions between which they must choose; they may construct the dualities as interdependent but contradictory opposites, accepting the inevitable conflict; or they may construct the dualities as apparent opposites that may coexist and that are essentially interdependent and complementary. An examination of the contradictions that manifested themselves within the study revealed that various organizational members constructed contradictions, or made meaning of them, in different ways. Inherent to all of the critical incidents in this case was the contradiction or apparent contradiction between the dualities of involvement in decision making as authority and involvement in decision making as influence, and the dualities of value added as additional work and value added as inherent responsibility.

Involvement in Decision Making: The Dualities of Authority and Influence; Received Power and Personal Agency

Administrator involvement in teacher goal-setting. Issues such as administrator involvement in teacher goal-setting made explicit various constructions of the dualities (authority and influence) involved in the decision-making process. For example, administrators perceived that they needed to be involved in teachers' goal-setting. First, it was a means of helping teachers to establish reasonable goals and a means of avoiding teacher discouragement that might result from the establishment of unrealistic goals. Second, it was a means of ensuring that some teachers did not skate through Supportive Supervision with weak or inappropriate goals, thereby reducing the incentive among teachers to establish challenging goals. Finally administrative involvement in goal-setting was perceived as a reasonable trade-off for administrative accountability. They argued, and many teachers agreed, that if administrators assumed the burden of accountability for what occurred within their schools, then they should have the right to monitor and influence goals that would eventually have an impact on accountability. In their view, autonomy and control could not exist simultaneously. One duality would need to be compromised and these teachers and administrators chose to compromise autonomy in favor of control.

Another perspective, shared by another group of teachers and administrators, viewed administrator demands for increased influence in goal-setting as controlling behavior--a perpetuation of the hierarchical, paternalistic relationship between teacher


and administrator. They believed that administrator interference in goal-setting threatened to undermine the purpose of Supportive Supervision--teachers assuming responsibility for their professional growth--by placing that responsibility back in the hands of the administrator. These teachers and administrators were willing to compromise control for the sake of autonomy.

The problem appears to be unresolvable--administrator control versus teacher autonomy--opposing and contradictory dualities. In the examples cited, teachers and administrators constructed administrator involvement in decision making about teacher goals as an issue of control. Constructing administrator involvement as control raised the question of authority. Who has the authority to control teacher goals? However, according to Shedd and Bacharach (1991, p.142), authority is a finite quantity, meaning that "the more authority one person or party has in a particular situation the less is available to others." Applied to the example described, this means that the more control administrators exercise over goal-setting, the less control teachers have over their goals. Viewed in this way, from the perspective of formal logic, administrator control and teacher autonomy are distinct and oppositional. Problem resolution must come in the form of choice or compromise between the two, neither of which is satisfactory.

From the perspective of dialectics, a resolution to the problem would arise from the conflict between the dualities. Administrator control and teacher autonomy would push against each other until some form of synthesis occurred that would generate an entirely new possibility that would move the organization forward. However, none of the participants expressed a dialectic perspective and no evidence was found that conflict related to perceived contradictions between dualities was leading to positive outcomes. In contrast, outcomes included decreased participation in Supportive Supervision and increased tension in teacher-administrator relationships.

However, an alternative construction of administrator involvement in the goal- setting process was offered by other organizational members. For example, the chair of the district staff development committee constructed administrator involvement as the administrator's right to know what goals teachers had established. In his view, the problem could be resolved if teachers simply communicated their decisions about goals to their administrators. In another example, the union president suggested that administrator involvement meant the administrator's right to influence the process, not through the imposition of control, but through the use of cognitive coaching skills that any professional might use to influence a colleague. According to Shedd and Bacharach (1991, p. 142) influence is not a fixed quantity, that is, "two parties may each have 'a lot' of influence over each other's decisions." Perceiving power as influence means that power is energy that flows among organizational members. When framed as influence, administrator involvement in goal-setting does not threaten teacher autonomy and self-direction, and the dualities of teacher autonomy and administrator control are viewed as complementary rather than as conflictual. This construction of administrator involvement offers an alternative interpretation of apparent contradictions that opens possibilities for creative solutions to a constructed problem.

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Teacher involvement in decision making. The issue of the high-school grading policy illustrates how teacher perceptions about their role in decision making differed from that of administrators. When the superintendent charged the high-school faculty with responsibility for developing a grading policy, teachers constructed that mission as "All you need is a procedure; I don't care what the procedure is." Teachers developed a grading policy, believing that for this issue they had full authority to make a decision that would then be implemented. The superintendent's subsequent rejection of their grading policy angered teachers because they believed they had been betrayed. From the teachers' perspective, the superintendent had acted in a way that contradicted his message about teachers' roles within the decision-making process. The grading policy issue was one more example of teacher powerlessness and of administrator duplicity.

From this, and similar, experiences teachers had constructed their decision-making authority as a form of received power that could be rescinded at any time and without notice. This meant that, in practice, teachers had little decision-making authori ty-- they were powerless. The more cynical teachers contended that the teacher's role in decision making amounted to nothing more than a time-wasting game involving teachers giving answers until they hit upon the one that the administrator wanted. These frustrated cynics urged administrators to "just tell us what they want so we can get out of here," indicating that they were tired of the game. These teachers assumed a passive aggressive role that involved aggressively probing for indications of what administrators wanted and then passively rubber stamping these decisions so that they could get on with the real work of teaching. They defined decision making in terms of authority--the more authority held by one party, the less held by the other. For teachers who perceived themselves to be powerless, any attempts by administrators to involve teachers in decision making were regarded as contradictions of the perceived power structure.

The teacher union president, on the other hand, believed that teachers limited their ability to influence decision making because of the way they constructed their role in decision making. He chided teachers for their passivity and he urged them to become more assertive and influential in decisions that affected teachers' classroom practice. He explained:

Before, a lot of people thought that joint decision making is doing what the other person wants. I think what we're saying is t h a t . . , we're not going to sit idly by and go along with them . . . . I guess we're going to take professionalism and advocacy together and do what we need to do . . . . We're going to try to get the best education for children . . . . We're not going to waste our time and energy on things that are not good for education. And when somebody says, "We need this program," well, maybe there's an alternative we can do. Something that will help teachers more.

The union president defined decision making in terms of influence rather than authority. He defined power as personal agency rather than received power. Teachers, in his view, had considerable power to influence decisions, especially on matters that were close to the classroom and most important to them. Teachers who focused


attention on authority or received power perceived themselves to be powerless and missed many opportunities to exercise their influence, whereas those who focused on influence and personal agency perceived themselves as empowered and behaved proactively. He perceived little, if any, real contradiction between administrators' messages about increased teacher involvement in decision making and administrator behavior in relation to decision making. The interests of teachers and administrators were valid, could co-exist, and could be achieved satisfactorily.

Value Added: The Dualities of Additional Work and Inherent Responsibility

The teacher salary issue was another example of how various organizational members constructed reality differently. From the perspective of teachers, salaries represented fair compensation for their work, and because teachers perceived that initiatives like Supportive Supervision required teachers to take on more responsibility and complete more work, they believed that they should be compensated, either with additional time to complete the work or with salary increases. Since the school district seemed reluctant to provide teachers with time during the school schedule to fulfill these new responsibilities, teachers argued that they should be compensated in the form of increased salaries.

The pursuit of increased salaries was consistent with teachers' construction of the employer-employee contract--fair compensation for value added; value added as additional work. Teachers perceived themselves as adding value to the school district by completing additional work and, therefore, they should be fairly compensated. When compensation was not forthcoming, withholding participation in Supportive Supervision was perceived as a legitimate means for achieving what was rightfully theirs.

From the perspective of the superintendent, Supportive Supervision required no additional work from teachers. He told teachers, "If you think you're doing something new and you need time for it, it will hold you back." Supportive Supervision did not require teachers to assume additional responsibility, only that responsibility for which good teachers had already accepted responsibility--what "responsible teachers who are in the growth mode do." In other words, adding value to the school district through continuous improvement of instruction was an inherent responsibility of the teaching profession. The superintendent, who perceived that adding value was what good teachers had always done and what all teachers should be responsible for doing, considered it unprofessional that teachers should withhold or contemplate withholding participation in Supportive Supervision as a means of achieving salary increases.

Different constructions of what constituted value added resulted in an apparent contradiction between teacher professionalism and teachers' salary interests. Teacher union leaders added yet another perspective--that teachers could pursue their salary interests and also continue to be involved in Supportive Supervision. From the president's perspective, teachers did not need to choose between involvement in Supportive Supervision and a salary increase. There was no inherent contradiction

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between teacher professionalism and teachers' salary interests. These goals were interdependent and complementary and they could coexist.

The vice president of the union attempted to convince teachers not to argue that "we'll be better when we're paid more," and instead to argue that "we should be paid more because we're good." His perspective integrated the dual perspectives related to value added. Adding value to the school district through continuous improvement was a responsibility inherent to the professional role of teachers. However, the school district also had a moral responsibility to fairly compensate teachers for the value that they added. Resolving the issue, from this trialectic perspective, where the dualities are complementary and interdependent, meant both/and rather than either/or thinking.

Paradox Theory as a Contribution to Understanding Organizational Contradictions and Change

Paradox theory offers a unique perspective from which to view tacit contradictions that may become more or less explicit during complex change initiatives. First, paradox theory raises the question of whether contradictions are more apparent than real. Many of the teachers and administrators involved in this study certainly perceived the contradictions they described as real. Yet it is clear that others considered the contradictions to be constructed reality. What is clear is that organization members act on the basis of their perceptions. If contradictions are perceived as real, organizational members will act as if they are real and, if contradictions are perceived as apparent, organizational members will act accordingly, often working to encourage other organizational members to reconstruct dualities differently.

What causes some organizational members to construct organizational contradictions as real and other to construct them as apparent? One cannot reach any conclu- sions on the basis of this study; however, the behavior of one organizational member offers some clues. The teacher union president tends, moreso than other members of the organization, to construct as apparent contradictions those contradictions described by others in the study. Interestingly, the union president also tended to identify closely with organizational goals. Although all teachers and administrators espoused a belief in continuous improvement of instruction, the teacher union president reported having a great deal invested in that organizational goal. His two children attended schools within the district and both were students with special needs. He believed that continuous improvement of instruction might help his children, and he was deeply committed to this goal. Other teachers within the study had children within the school district, but none talked about the possibility of benefiting from Supportive Supervision in other than professional ways. The union president may have had personal and professional goals that were more closely linked to organizational goals than others within the study.

Another explanation might be the degree to which the union president enjoyed opportunities to interact with a variety of teachers and administrators within the


district. Social constructivist theory would argue that increased interaction, although not guaranteeing the development of shared understandings, may increase the potential for individuals to understand the perspectives of others. Perhaps the increased interaction with teachers and administrators experienced by the union president, combined with his personal and professional investment in organizational goals, made it more likely that he would develop a more integrated perspective that permitted him to view dualities as complementary and interdependent.

Examining organizational contradictions through paradox theory permits us to perceive more of the complexity within organizations. It allows us to see that contradictions do not have the same meaning for all organizational members and that multiple interpretations exist. Also, an examination of the dualities inherent within paradox revealed that paradox is embedded within other paradox. For example, unpacking the paradox of traditional messages and emerging messages during the change process led to an examination of the dualities of teacher autonomy and administrator control which, in turn, led to critical analysis of the dualities of authority and influence, received power and personal agency. Paradox theory may be a useful tool for helping us to uncover and understanding some of the basic assumptions embedded within layers of organizational culture and practice.

Organizational members in this study tended to assume the perspective of formal logic with respect to paradox. Few organizational members assumed a trialectic perspective and none were discovered who expressed a dialectic perspective. This may have significant implications for organizational change.

Formal logic, which views dualities as polar opposites between which the organization chooses, tends to view change as a substantive and rapid shift that then becomes static and defines the new reality. Organizational members who assume a formal logic perspective may expect rapid and all-encompassing organizational change, as if the organization and its members can leap from one paradigm to another, leaving behind all remnants of the previous paradigm. This is a highly simplistic and unrealistic view of organizational change, based upon what we know about the complexity of the change process (Fullan, 1993). Organizational members who assume a formal logic perspective may be intolerant of the coexistence of old and new paradigms.

On the other hand, dialectic and trialectic perspectives view organizational change as a dynamic process that involves the coexistence, and the interdependence, of dualities. Those who tended toward dialectic or trialectic perspectives would not be surprised to find remnants of the old paradigm coexisting with the new. They may indeed perceive such coexistence as necessary to bring about substantive change.

Within this study, two paradigms were operating at the same time in the school district--a new paradigm that viewed teachers as experts who make decisions about instruction and instructional improvement, and a traditional paradigm that perpetuated hierarchical structures and paternalistic relationships between administrators and teachers. One might interpret this phenomenon as an example of leadership designed to co-opt teachers into acceptance of mandated change; an example of leadership that uses the rhetoric of teacher professionalism and empowerment while maintaining hierarchical structures and the status quo for administrators. Such interpretations are

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too simplistic to explain the complexity of the change effort in the school district described in this study.

By the end of the study, organizational members were only beginning to realize the depth of the change they were undertaking, and how it involved patterns of beliefs and assumptions that were part of the deep structure of personal mental models and organizational culture. Action and experimentation with Supportive Supervision highlighted some of the contradictions between espoused theory (where the organization wanted to go) and theory-in-use (where the organization has been). Critical incidents and actions such as those related to the high-school grading policy issue, the teacher salaries and resources issue, and the teacher goal-setting issue, raised the level of awareness of tacit assumptions held by organizational members, creating opportunities for those assumptions to become more explicit, interpretable, and discussible.

The problem experienced within this school district was one of transition rather than change. Bridges (1991) defines change as action and transition as a psychological process of letting go of the past and grasping the future. Transition is far more complex and difficult to achieve than change. Within this study, for example, implementing a new model of teacher supervision and evaluation was relatively easy, while getting organizational members to reconstruct assumptions, many of them tacit, that had become part of the deep structure of organizational culture was far more difficult. Bridges argues that organizational change often is an event, or a series of events, and that people's individual and collective transition to the change is a process. The distinction between change and transition is useful in this case because it underscores the shortsightedness of criticizing administrators for what, at first glance, appears to be co-opting teachers to accept mandated change and a hierarchical status quo. Even those who have a clear vision of the change they wish to achieve need to experience a process of transition.

Paradox theory raises questions about an emerging perspective within the organizational change literature that conflict in organizations is productive. The dialectic perspective expects dualities to act in opposition to one another, creating conflict that would eventually culminate in a fusion between the dualities and the creation of something completely different, somewhat like a chemical reaction. However, this perspective also assumes that change is always progressive, and never regressive. The assumption that organizational conflict is positive, leading to progressive change may be an oversimplification. When the dualities within a contradiction or paradox are constructed as polar and conflicting opposites, and when organizational members tend to support one polarity or the other, the subsequent conflict may be unproductive if organizational members are not willing or able to perceive the validity of opposing viewpoints. For example, organizational members within the study engaged in what Keidel (1995) calls 'two-variable thinking' between teacher autonomy and administrative control. Constructing or framing the administrator's role in goal-setting as teacher autonomy versus administrator control, created dualities that were opposite and conflicting. While organizational members maintained these oppositional dualities, there appeared to be little likelihood that conflict would lead to productive joint action. Indeed, Supportive Supervision appeared to have stalled.


Productive educational change, as Fullan (1993) contends, is full of paradoxes and organizations should assume that conflict is essential to any successful change effort. However, paradoxical conflict may be unproductive if organizational members continue to construct paradoxical situations from rigid, conflicting perspectives. Productive conflict may require that organizational members develop the capacity to examine paradox from a number of different perspectives.

Further Research

The findings of this study revealed that organizational members constructed paradox differently and that the construction of paradox guided individual behavior. These findings have yet to be confirmed in other organizational contexts; however, they may mean that the capacity of educational organizations to solve complex problems or to engage in self-renewal is influenced by the way in which organizational members construct paradox. For this reason researchers need to pay closer attention to the various ways in which organizational members construct paradox.

Unfortunately the study raises more questions than it answers. For example, Why do organizational members construct paradox differently? Is this always a matter of subjective perception, or are there objective factors that influence this phenomenon? Is there a tendency across educational organizations, as in this study, for organizational members to construct paradox from the perspective of formal logic? Is it possible for organizational members to construct specific paradoxes from different perspectives? What are the implications of the construction of paradox for the outcomes of change initiatives? Does paradox, when constructed from a particular perspective, lead to more productive outcomes? Can organizational members learn to reconstruct paradox? If so, how? Can all contradictions be constructed as apparent or are some necessarily real? In what ways is the ability to finally name a contradiction as real or apparent related to the existence or manufacture of power in organizations? The possibilities for research appear to be endless. Answers to most, if not all, of these questions will likely require longitudinal studies and ethnographic methodology.

Notes

1. This study was partially funded by the Spencer Foundation and by OERI.

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Documents

Contradictory messages and complex change: An application of constructivist and paradox theories to supervisory change