The proposed paper draws from three sources and synthesizes the authors’ insights about design-based school improvement gained over several years of research and practical intervention in leadership preparation programs and local public schools. A new book, published in the spring of 2016 at Harvard Education Press (Mintrop, 2016), lays out the principles and theoretical underpinnings of design-based school improvement and provides practical examples. Design-based school improvement is a systematic and disciplined form of innovative problem solving. It is informed by clear and thoughtful ideas about the adult learning that is needed to accomplish intended results. Design-based school improvement takes into account the complexity of specific organizational contexts, employs the predictive quality of research and the creative power of practical problem-solving, and achieves results iteratively, in trial and error fashion. The second source from which the proposed paper draws is a research study of ten educational leaders and their cognitions (Hallinger, Leithwood, Murphy, 1993; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995; Spillane & Coldren, 2011) as they engage in design-based thinking about school change. So far, the study findings have been condensed in research papers presented at various conferences (Mintrop & Zumpe, 2015). Design-based thinking, deceptively easy in its compelling rationality, in fact runs up against problem solving heuristics that seem to be deeply ingrained in educational leaders’ common sense notions of how organizations change. One such heuristic we termed: “My problem is the absence of my solution” and “My problem of change is overcoming the resistance of my teachers.” A two-year study of a beginning design development partnership between a university and a public school district in the United States, our third source of the paper, has confirmed the power of these aforementioned types of heuristics and has shown how the latter congeal in an organization-wide pattern of treating teachers as implementers of externally developed interventions, rather than as adult learners and co-designers (Coburn & Stein, 2010; Knapp, Honig, Plecki, Portin, & Copland, 2014). The co-design partnership aims at transforming an implementation-oriented leadership approach into a learning-centered approach. This research has also been presented in conference papers heretofore (Mintrop & Baral, 2015). The paper condenses and synthesizes insights gained so far. Presumably, school improvement entrepreneurs and designers have characteristics in common, but they also differ several ways. A lively discussion can thus be expected during the symposium.

Coburn, C. E. & Stein, M. K. (2010). Research and practice in education: Building alliances, bridging the divide. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Hallinger, P., Leithwood, K. A., Murphy, J., eds. (1993). Cognitive Perspectives of Educational Leadership. Teachers College Press. Knapp, M. S., Honig, M. I., Plecki, M. L., Portin, B. S., & Copland, M. A. (2014). Learning-Focused Leadership in Action. New York, NY: Routledge. Leithwood, K., & Steinbach, R. (1995). Expert Problem Solving: Evidence from School and District Leaders. SUNY Press. Mintrop, R. & Baral, M. (2015). The fuzzy front-end of co-design. Paper presented at the annual University Council for Educational Administration Convention, San Diego, CA. Mintrop, R. & Zumpe, E. (2015). Educational leaders’ thinking about school improvement between PDSA and garbage can. Paper presented at the annual University Council for Educational Administration Convention, San Diego, CA. Mintrop, R. with Baral, M., Hall, J., & Zumpe, E. (2016). Design-based school improvement: A practical guide for education leaders. Boston, MA: Harvard Education Press. Spillane, J. P., & Coldren, A. F. (2011). Diagnosis and design for school improvement: Using a distributed perspective to lead and manage change. Teachers College Press.