Transformative Educational Leadership Journal | ISSUE Spring 2025
Secondary school students have well documented dips in belonging and secondary school structures are notoriously difficult to shift in ways that can transformatively address this lack of belonging. In this peek into her dissertation, Lynn offers leaders a pathway through this complex context as they strive to ensure all learners thrive. The frameworks she draws together will be especially helpful.
By Lynn Archer
This article is an adapted summary of my dissertation-in-practice (DiP) Weaving New Stories: Decolonizing and Transforming Secondary Schools for Equity, Belonging, and Learning.
The following insights are intended as a provocation of what is to come:
- Undertaking change in secondary schools requires serious consideration of context, leadership, and existing problems of practice.
- Provincial student learning surveys indicate that approximately 50% of secondary students in BC feel a sense of belonging at school (MoECC, 2023).
- Having a sense of belonging is particularly important for adolescents’ psychological well-being, identity, and academic success (Allen, Gray, et al., 2022).
- The values, practices, and structures of secondary schools continue to reflect the hegemony of Western, Eurocentric perspectives and a lack of belongingness for all students (Lopez, 2020; Louie & Prince, 2023).
Given these insights, how do we decolonize and transform secondary schools into equitable environments of belonging and learning for all students in a meaningful and lasting way? To address this overarching question, I considered three supporting questions:
- Will developing secondary school leaders’ shared knowledge support their capability to foster school staffs’ collective efficacy for equitable practices of belonging and learning? (Shields, 2019).
- Can professional learning networks of inquiry and collaboration support the collective process of decolonizing and transforming secondary schools? (Brown, 2018; McGregor, 2019).
- Will understanding and implementing belongingness strategies with Indigenous and culturally sustaining pedagogies enhance students’ sense of belonging and learning? (Halbert & Kaser, 2022).
These guiding questions kept me focused on my change vision of school communities acting together for change, so students are not just surviving through playing the competitive game of school or avoiding school but thriving and seeing themselves in their learning (Allen et al., 2018; Cranston & Jean-Paul, 2022; Goddard et al., 2021; Lopez, 2020; Paris, 2021; Shields, 2019).
To help me work through these questions, I developed a hybrid, two-eyed change model which reflects the reality of BC’s diverse, intersectional schools through its combination of Indigenous, racialized, and post-modernist perspectives (Archibald, 2008; FPPL, 2008; Stroh, 2015). Guided by Archibald’s storywork principles and the First Peoples Principles of Learning, the hybrid, two-eyed change model uses Stroh’s (2015) four stages of systems thinking for social change in a responsive, relational story-based process.
(Adapted from Archibald, 2008; FPPL, 2008; Stroh, 2015)
The first stage of readiness develops through reverence and willingness to learn each other’s stories. The second stage of understanding and acceptance develops through respectful exploration of individual experience to begin to shape a shared vision. The third stage of commitment develops through reciprocity and reflexive relationality to agree upon a shared vision and commit to an action plan. While the fourth stage of focus, momentum, and adjustment through shared responsibility supports acting with patience over time to achieve the desired learning environments
While I recognize the value of having foundational theories, I also realize that without action they lack meaning (Lopez, 2020; Shields, 2019). To foster readiness and commitment to collective action requires planning and coherent systems thinking for social change (Stroh, 2015). Thus, the change implementation plan, or the “how” of change, is framed by the four phases of systems thinking for social change (Stroh, 2015) while Indigenous principles provide the ethical guidance for relationality and trust (Archibald, 2008; FPPL, 2008). The change implementation plan is a complex process of hearing the stories of students, staff, and families in order to weave shared vision and action for decolonial, transformative change.
(Archer, 2024)
To support ongoing learning, there are multiple networks of action to mobilize shared knowledge. One network is the professional learning network (PLN) for school leaders – to build self-efficacy. Another network is school inquiry teams (SIT) comprised of school leaders and teachers at each school – to build collective efficacy. As well, there is the inquiry professional learning network–advisory (IPLN-A) comprised of district leaders, school leaders, and teachers – to frame district learning. And finally, there is the umbrella district inquiry learning network (IPLN) where school inquiry teams come together to collaborate, inquire, and learn – to build system coherence, pedagogical learning, and transformation.
Weaving lasting change also requires creating a pathway for mobilizing knowledge to deepen the dialogic processes of the change plan and using the spiral of inquiry as a continuous improvement process to holistically weave a decolonial process for monitoring and evaluating change (Anderson & McLachlan, 2016; Halbert & Kaser, 2022). Overall, the change implementation plan, knowledge mobilization pathway, and spiral of inquiry guide the realization of leadership efficacy, learning networks, and generative conversations. In turn, these actions develop trust, shared understanding, and collective action so the long term goal of continuous collaborative inquiry and equitable action for belonging and learning for all secondary students may be achieved (Allen et al., 2018; Goddard et al., 2021; Liou & Daly, 2020; McGregor et al., 2020; Stroh, 2015).
Weaving new stories of belonging and learning in secondary schools involves bringing everyone into the change process through shared knowledge and action which is critical for creating a “coherent field of shared understanding” (Senge, 2020, p. 59) within diverse, racialized, and intersectional school and district communities (Anderson & McLachlan, 2016; Cranston & Jean-Paul, 2022; Shields, 2019). The following scenario suggests what a school might be like where staff works together to centre belonging and learning:
As Nylah enters Vista Secondary School, she is greeted by the school’s principal. She walks past many groups of students chatting and studying together in the entrance foyer and sees a volleyball practice underway in the gymnasium. She drops off a book at the library learning commons, talks briefly with some friends, and then goes to her first class.
At the doorway, her teacher asks about her shift at work yesterday evening. Nylah replies that it was okay but went late. As the rest of the class enters the room, they form a sharing circle with the teacher to ask questions, share an idea, or choose to listen. After the sharing circle, the teacher reviews previous learning, teaches a new concept, facilitates cooperative practice time, and then provides personalized support for students. A couple of students arrive late to class, but they enter quietly knowing they will have an opportunity to communicate with the teacher regarding their personal situation. The same consideration is available for Nylah and her classmates if they are experiencing learning challenges or are unable to complete an activity by the established timeline. At the end of the class, students complete a ticket out the door reflection form to give the teacher information for future learning.
At Nylah’s next class the teacher also greets students personally and has a group check-in before beginning the lesson activities. After lunch with her friends, she spends the afternoon with her grade-based learning team and teacher mentors to continue developing their cross-curricular project based on the theme of community connections. Nylah’s team has decided to focus on how to enhance connections between youth and newcomer citizens in their community. At the end of the school year, families, friends, and community members will attend the school’s community open house to hear students explain their projects and reflect on their learning.
I will close with a few questions for all of us to think about as we weave new stories of equity, belonging, and learning for all:
- How might we be more open and patient with the story process?
- How might we activate the mind, body, spirit, and heart through the storywork principles of reverence, respect, reciprocity, responsibility, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy (Archibald, 2008)?
- When are we most able to open our hearts and minds to the pluriversal and intersectional world in which we live (Chrona, 2022; Cranston & Jean-Paul, 2022)?
- What structures help us engage in reverent and respectful dialogue so we may truly hear all peoples’ voices and transform existing systems for personal and public good (Shields, 2019; Stroh, 2015)?
- What scenarios have you engaged in with your three ears (the two on the sides of our head and the one that is in our heart) and our Two-Eyed Seeing in a good way (Archibald, Lee-Morgan, et al., 2019; Munroe, 2013)?
To read the complete dissertation and see the full reference list, click here.
Dr. Lynn Archer
Dr. Lynn Archer is a retired Assistant Superintendent. She is a critical friend to fellow educational leaders and an educational consultant. Lynn values working with teams of educators to engage in collaborative inquiry for the purpose of transforming learning for all children through equity practices, responsive pedagogy, collective action, and educator efficacy.
