Leadership for Educational Equity

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Residencies in LEEP

Purpose

Residencies are a central part of the LEEP curriculum. They play a unique role in the three-course structure within which the key themes of the program are explored. For each theme, Equity and Excellence, Systemic Reform, Decision Making, and Resource Management, the program aims for students to:    

• Analyze main problems by understanding their symptoms and underlying structural causes; 
• Connect symptoms and causes to remedies and understand the technical, political, and cultural requirements for improvement strategies to be effective;
• Examine actions of district administrators in real life as they make decisions, allocate resources, shape administrative procedures, and implement policies and programs for schools.

While the first two of these objectives can fruitfully be pursued in campus-based seminars, the third objective is best served in the field-based setting of a residency.

The residencies:

• Give students a first-hand experience of the workings of district or system level administration and encourage them to conduct systematic inquiries in this setting;
• Help them make the transition from school-based actors to district -based actors with an appreciation for systemic and political aspects of that role;
• Anchor theoretical knowledge acquired in campus-based seminars in the practice of management and leadership;
• Prepare students for their dissertation projects.

Topics

Over the two years of course taking, students participate in two summer residencies. One of them is dedicated to the themes of resource management (RM)  and decision making (DM), the other to the themes of equity and excellence (EE) and systemic reform (SR). The residencies are timed to directly follow, or coincide with, campus-based seminars in these thematic concentrations. Choice of residency placements needs to be in keeping with the thematic concentration of the residency.  

For example, within the first concentration (EE/SR), the residency could center on a particular program that a district adopted to further equity or excellence. Students could study how the program is rolled out or scaled up; how districts or similar administrative units deal with problems of implementation; how professional development is organized; or how the program is received by teachers, parents, community actors, and other stakeholders.

Within the DM/RM concentration, for example, the residency could focus on decision-making processes around budgetary issues. Perhaps there are contract negotiations going on, or painful adjustments due to state budget cuts are needed; or new categorical funds become available, and the like. Students could study the role of data in the haggling and negotiation among various constituencies (school board, ethnic lobbies, unions, internal bureaucratic infighting, cabinet divisions and so on). This all depends on what is going on at the time and where and with whom students are placed.  

Types of Projects

There are two types of residency projects:

1. Inquiry-oriented residencies: In these projects, students want to understand why a certain problem comes about through actions in real life; what people in their organization do to produce or solve the problem; or why a process plays out the way it does. They observe, ask questions, and interpret other people’s actions to make sense of them.
   
   
2. Task-oriented residencies: In these types of residencies, students come to understand their chosen problem by conducting a limited task or producing a specific product that may help others to solve the problem. Hence they learn about their organization by doing.

Students interact with the LEEP field supervisor, a university faculty, and a residency liaison, a person in the host office who guides or supervises the work. In cooperation with the student, the LEEP field supervisor identifies sites, tasks, and liaisons conducive for the thematic concentration of the residency and the interests of the student. The university faculty member and LEEP field supervisor together guide the inquiry and grade the final paper. The LEEP field supervisor communicates with the district liaison about the work students have completed during the residency.   

Requirements for Residency Course

Although off-campus, the Residency counts as a full academic course. Its requirements are multiple:

• Active participation in residencies: Students are required to spend at least 6 full days in their residency site. These days can be scheduled with flexibility, but must be coordinated to some degree with the web-based assignments (see below). 
  
  
• Active participation in web-based learning: The inquiry projects are mostly web-facilitated through b-Space, the university-adopted virtual classroom program. Every week, students post short assignments to b-Space and respond to others in their assigned small groups.
  
  
• Final presentation: In the last week of the summer term, students present a short power-point presentation of the findings from their residency as a way to share their learning and receive feedback for their final paper. 
  
  
• Final paper: A final paper is submitted at the end of the summer that describes the project, discusses findings, and reflects on new understandings. Late papers will result in the reduction of your grade.
  

Schedule:

In the spring prior to the summer residency, LEEP students work with the LEEP field supervisor to identify and refine a potential residency project and secure access to the site for the residency.

During the summer, there are in-person class meetings at the beginning and end of the semester to launch the project and report to each other on its findings.

Final Paper

Format for the main body of the inquiry-oriented residency:

1. Describe the problem that you are studying. Discuss why it is important.
   
   
2. Outline your main inquiry questions.  These questions should flow out of your discussion of the problem.
   
   
3. Review related research literature (books, articles, reports, etc.) on your problem and discuss how that helps you make sense of the problem.  At a minimum, you need to review at least three relevant articles.  You are certainly welcome to review more than that in this section.
   
   
4. Describe how you conducted your inquiry investigation.  What did you do in your inquiry?  What kinds of evidence did you use? Think of evidence broadly here.  It could be data, information from interviews, information from observations, things that you obtain from district documents (planning documents, policy statements, etc.), or things you notice during the course of your time on site. Justify why you used these forms of evidence.
   
   
5. Outline your key themes or findings. Be sure to provide evidence for the claims that you are making.
   
   
6. Discuss recommendations for improvement.  Your recommendations must flow directly from your findings.  Also discuss any further questions or issues that remain open or unanswered.
   

Format for the main body of a task-oriented residency:

1. Describe the problem that you are studying. Discuss why it is important.
   
   
2. Describe the task that you did to address the problem. Give an overview.
   
   
3. Review related research literature (books, articles, reports, etc.) on your problem and discuss how that helps you make sense of the problem.  At a minimum, you need to review at least three relevant articles.  You are certainly welcome to review more than that in this section.
   
   
4. Describe the proceduresor actionsdid you took to complete the task/ produce the product. Be sure to talk about why you did what you did.
   
   
5. Describe the product that resulted. What are the key components of the product?  What are the key findings or lessons that the product conveys?
   
   
6. Discuss the effects of your product or your task. How does it contribute to the work in your residency site?  Discuss the limitations of your task.  What could you have done differently to improve the approach? Discuss any further questions or issues that remain open or unanswered.
   

Executive summary

The executive summary should be a 2-page summary of the key findings from the inquiry or the task.  The audience of this executive summary is the site of the residency. Students  share the executive summary with the host office. For this reason, attention to audience is absolutely crucial. Findings are reported in a way that is useful to the district sponsor and in ways that they are able to hear it.  Attention to the political context is crucial.