Our Work
CODE Consortium for System Leadership and Innovation
Our Work
The current focus of the CCSLI is to develop the concept of Leading from the Middle within the context of the four pillars of Ontario's "Achieving Excellence": student achievement, student wellbeing, equity, and public confidence. Andy Hargreaves recently identified the key principles of districts that "lead from the middle." These include:
- Responsiveness. Local district solutions address and respond to distinctive local needs and diversities.
- Responsibility. Districts together take collective responsibility for all students' and all districts' success.
- Initiative. Districts together take the initiative rather than merely implementing other people's initiatives.
- Integration. Districts together strive to integrate their own efforts with government priorities wherever possible and desirable.
- Transparency. Districts together establish transparency of participation and results.
- Humility. No district sees itself as superior to all the others. Each district learns from the rest. All districts also learn from systems elsewhere.
Each of the ten member boards of the CODE Consortium is currently engaged in a project related to one or more aspects of supporting student achievement and well-being. While the substance of each project is unique, all of the projects have been designed to reflect a "leading from the middle" approach using a guiding framework that supports: collaborative inquiry; collective responsibility; a focus on student and staff well-being and achievement; and, coherence-making at the school and district levels.
Board representatives meet to share their progress and refine their work. The Consortium leadership team conducts collaborative consultations with each Board team to identify elements that are shared among all Consortium members.
Consortium members also meet regularly with the Boston College Research Team to inform and support the development of the research framework and process.
Our Process
The ten member boards of the CODE Consortium are engaged in projects designed to attain the four pillars of "Achieving Excellence": student achievement, student wellbeing, equity, and public confidence. While the substance of each project is unique, all of the projects have been designed to reflect a "Leading from the Middle" approach using a guiding framework that supports collaborative inquiry, collective responsibility, a focus on student and staff well-being and achievement and, coherence-making at the school and district levels.
Board representatives meet regularly to share their progress and refine their work. The Consortium leadership team conducts collaborative consultations with each Board team to identify elements that are shared among all Consortium members.
Consortium members also meet regularly with Boston College researchers to inform and support the development of the research framework.