Christopher Koliba

Evaluating the Imperative of Intraorganizational Collaboration: A School Improvement Perspective.

“Collaboration” is a ubiquitously championed concept and widely recognized across the public and private sectors as the foundation on which the capacity for addressing complex issues is predicated. For those invested in organizational improvement, high-quality collaboration has become no less than an imperative. However, evaluators and program stakeholders often struggle to assess the quality of collaborative dynamics and the merits of collaborative structures. In this article, the authors describe an approach to demystifying and assessing interpersonal collaboration and use their consultancy work with school improvement stakeholders to illustrate a multistage collaboration evaluation process. Evaluators in a wide range of organizational settings are encouraged to utilize collaboration theory and the evaluation strategies presented herein to cultivate stakeholder capacity to understand, examine, and capitalize on the power of collaboration.

“Communities of Practice” as an Analytical Construct: Implications for Theory and Practice

Abstract The “community of practice” (CoP) has emerged as a potentially powerful unit of analysis linking the individual and the collective because it situates the role of learning, knowledge transfer, and participation among people as the central enterprise of collective action. The authors?uo; surface tensions and highlight unanswered questions regarding CoP theory, concluding that it relies on a largely normative and under-operationalized set of premises. Avenues for theory development and the empirical testing of assertions are provided.

Evaluating and Improving the Quality of Teacher Collaboration: A Field-Tested Framework for Secondary School Leaders

Teacher collaboration is an essential element of substantive school change for which principals have responsibility for cultivating. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for school leaders to employ models of supervision that focus on the performance and improvement of collective teacher behavior. In this article, the authors present a field-tested, action-research leadership framework for evaluating the quality and improving the performance of teacher collaboration at the secondary school level.

Place-Based Education in the Standards-Based Reform Era—Conflict or Complement?

In this article we discuss the relationship between place‐based education and standards‐based reforms. Using an initiative in Vermont to include place‐based standards into the state’s curricular frameworks, we examine state policy makers’ and practitioners’ views of state standards and place‐based curriculum. Furthermore, we explore the ways in which the practitioners view the impact of both of these curricular efforts on their classroom practices. We challenge the common view of incompatibility between state standards and locally responsive curriculum and offer instead a view of complementarity.

Inquiry as Intervention Employing Action Research to Surface Intersubjective Theories-in-Use and Support an Organization's Capacity to Learn

Social science can be practiced as a decidedly action-oriented and applied phenomenon, in particular within the context of organizational change and development. These practices are often prefaced by assumptions concerning the social construction of reality, the role of the researcher as an active agent for change, and the capacity of organizations to learn. This article recounts the attempts of social science researchers to employ an action research process to promote and support organizational learning within a public school setting. Addressing concerns with regard to the methodological challenges of translating individual perceptions into organizational themes or problems, the authors discuss the use of intersubjectively constructed accounts to support organizational learning.

Assessing Reflection Assignments for Public Affairs Courses: Implications for Educating Reflective Practitioners

Abstract Instructors of public affairs courses often ask students to reflect on their experiences in written assignments. The objective is to have students use this reflection to help inform their understanding of course content. In this article, the author reviews his experiences using an assessment tool to evaluate reflection assignments in the context of teaching public affairs courses, draws references to experiential learning theories, and explores implications for educating reflective practitioners.

Mapping Farm-to-School Networks Implications for Research and Practice

In this article, the contemporary Farm-to-School movement is described as a system comprised of discrete actors operating at varying levels of geographic scale, social sector, and network function. Drawing on a literature review and case study research, the authors present and analyze a Farm-to-School network in Vermont as a series of relationships between network actors predicated on the flow of financial resources, whole and processed foods, information, and regulatory authority. Furthermore, the utility for using this map to critically examine the leverage points that may drive positive change within and across the system is discussed.

The Practice of Service Learning in Local School-Community Contexts.

In this article, the authors set out to examine the ways in which service learning is practiced, perceived, and sustained in school settings. Drawing on extensive qualitative case studies, the authors highlight three cases of schools at varying levels of integration of service into their curriculum. Their history of offering service learning is summarized. Participant perceptions regarding the role of service learning in student learning and concerns regarding the relationship between service learning and student academic achievement are explored. The authors conclude that service learning is practiced amidst a series of complex, and often times conflicting, assumptions regarding the aims of education and the proper formats through which student achievement should be assessed.

Toward an Understanding of Citywide Urban Environmental Governance: An Examination of Stewardship Networks in Baltimore and Seattle

Efforts to create more sustainable cities are evident in the proliferation of sustainability policies in cities worldwide. It has become widely proposed that the success of these urban sustainability initiatives will require city agencies to partner with, and even cede authority to, organizations from other sectors and levels of government. Yet the resulting collaborative networks are often poorly understood, and the study of large whole networks has been a challenge for researchers. We believe that a better understanding of citywide environmental governance networks can inform evaluations of their effectiveness, thus contributing to improved environmental management. Through two citywide surveys in Baltimore and Seattle, we collected data on the attributes of environmental stewardship organizations and their network relationships. We applied missing data treatment approaches and conducted social network and comparative analyses to examine (a) the organizational composition of the network, and (b) how information and knowledge are shared throughout the network. Findings revealed similarities in the number of actors and their distribution across sectors, but considerable variation in the types and locations of environmental stewardship activities, and in the number and distribution of network ties in the networks of each city. We discuss the results and potential implications of network research for urban sustainability governance.

TRANSFORMATIONS TOWARDS NEW PUBLIC GOVERNANCE: CAN THE NEW PARADIGM HANDLE COMPLEXITY?

__Intro__ New public governance (NPM) has been proclaimed as an alternative governance paradigm, with some suggesting that it replaces classical public administration (CPA) and new public management (NPM). The CPA and NPM approaches are said to be unable to deal with the growing complexities facing a globalizing, networked society (e.g., Osborne 2006, 2010). It is now widely recognized that public policy making and public service delivery develop increasingly within multilevel, cross-border settings, in which former demarcations of policy fields become blurred, with a high level of individualization, pluriformity of values, information density and dynamics, and mediatization (Castells 1996; Bauman 2005, Hjarvard 2008, Sorenson and Torfing 2007). These trends lead to the proliferation of nonlinear dynamics, strategic surprises, and emergent vulnerabilities and risks (Beck, 1992; Taleb, 2006; Longstaff 2005). As a result, society is increasingly dealing with wicked problems that require the expansion of knowledge and a problemsolving capacity that cannot be provided by any single entity operating alone (Rittel and Webber, 1976; Head 2008). Pollitt et al. (2004), and Bouckaert et al. (2010) further argue that during the last decades, classical public administration and new public management have contributed to fragmentation of governance capacity, while greater coordination and collaboration seem to be required.