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Planned organizational change in a professional learning community: implementation and experimentation of a practice-driven decision-making process using local multisource data

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Abstract

In the early 2000s, the Québec government joined the international movement in new public management by adopting accountability policies, results-based management (RBM), and the systematic collection and analysis of multisource data to regulate and improve its education system. This study reports on one initiative involving the members of a professional learning community (PLC) in a francophone-sector secondary school in the province of Québec, Canada. Planned organizational change was introduced through the development of a pedagogical decision-making process supported by local multisource data. The project took place over a 10-month period in 2019–2020. The analysis of the semi-structured interview data was inspired by the 3 stages of Lewin’s (1947) change management model: unfreeze, introduce change, and refreeze. In total, five main themes were identified: complexity of the data collection and analysis process, multiplicity of the data management software and storage platforms, process implementation, process experimentation, and process sustainability. Outcomes of the planned organizational change include gains in both time and the optimization of the data collection and analysis process, and an improved sense of efficacy and accountability on the part of the teachers toward their students’ success.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the authors’ obligation to guarantee confidentiality and data protection (Laval University’s policies on research ethics).

Notes

  1. New public management, an international trend in public administration, became popular in the 1990s. Among its characteristics are as follows: administrative decentralization, the notion of transparency with regard to service costs and quality, the emergence of effective delivery models for goods and services, the rational distribution of needs-based resources, and user input in service delivery evaluation (Hood 1991; Lane 2000).

  2. A professional learning community is a collaborative work method used by members of a school team engaged in a process of group reflection for the continuous improvement of student achievement (Bouchamma et al. 2019; Roy and Hord 2006).

  3. To remain focused on the object of the present research, a follow-up article on the conception of this tool is in preparation.

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Funding

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Foundations and Practices in Education, Laval University, 2320 rue des Bibliothèques, Québec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    André Villeneuve & Yamina Bouchamma

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  1. André Villeneuve
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  2. Yamina Bouchamma
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study. Material preparation and data collection were performed by AV and analyses were performed by AV and YB. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AV and YB commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to André Villeneuve.

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We declare that the study complies with Laval University’s policies on research ethics.

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Consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Consent was obtained from all individual participants for publication.

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Villeneuve, A., Bouchamma, Y. Planned organizational change in a professional learning community: implementation and experimentation of a practice-driven decision-making process using local multisource data. SN Soc Sci 1, 98 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00096-8

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