Leadership & Organizational Learning

What is LILA?

An animated short that describes what Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) is about.

Art Works at Work: The Impact of Workplace Art

This paper explores the impact that employees and board members of an organization believe the art in their workplace has on their experience at work and identifies the exhibition’s features salient to their experience of the art. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 affiliates of an Australian organization with an institutional art collection. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis by two researchers, with a final inter-rater reliability of 0.96. The results showed that respondents believe there are five main ways they are impacted by the art in their workplace: the art promotes social interactions, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making, generally enhances the workplace environment and fosters learning. Participants indicated the salient features of the collection are its changing nature, creativity, diversity, quality and connection to the organization’s mission. The findings suggest that there may be a number of positive impacts on employees and other affiliates when art is present in the workplace, including interpersonal learning and mission-related content learning. The findings suggest that art connected to the organization’s mission, rotating exhibitions and diverse collections are valued by workplace viewers. The study highlights the importance of the aesthetic environment in the workplace and is one of the first to examine artworks in the work setting.

When Change Has Legs

Perkins, D. N., & Reese, J. D. (2014). When change has legs. Educational Leadership,71(8), 42-47.

From the introduction: "Initiatives to improve teaching and learning remind us of New Year's resolutions. They often launch at the beginning of the year—the school year. They commence with a cherished vision of possibility and a spirit of commitment. They begin with genuine progress. But most New Year's resolutions fail. And similarly, many initiatives to improve teaching and learning prove shaky in the long term."

Learning that matters: A review of the research on the qualities of school leadership...

From the introduction: What does it mean to lead learning that matters in schools? This whitepaper aims to spark discussion about this question by examining the research-based qualities of school leadership that support student learning. It reviews concepts of school leadership in which leadership for learning is defined as the social behaviors of envisioning and influencing learning that matters in schools. Although leaders in positions of power can display leadership behaviors, others involved in the school – including parents, teachers, and students – also play pivotal leadership roles. The whitepaper reviews two kinds of research-based school leadership models that differ in the nature of learning that is required in order to reach the goals of school change: technical leadership models and adaptive leadership models. Though the specific leadership behaviors in each model are qualitatively different, research suggests that there are three types of key leadership behaviors in each: setting direction, developing people, and creating culture. The paper illustrates how these behaviors are manifested in the adaptive challenges faced by the Big Picture Schools.

Learning that Matters: An Expanding Universe

What's worth teaching is perhaps the most central question of education. Choices about what's worth teaching made by educators, school boards, and governments fill up the schooldays of students. However, many educational leaders today feel that this fundamental question does not get enough attention. Too much effort goes toward doing the same job better and not enough toward rethinking what the job is. In this spirit, educational leaders in many independent schools and some public schools have introduced new themes, such as 21st century skills, digital technologies, interdisciplinary learning, world citizenship, global perspectives and global problems. While mastery of reading and mathematics remains a tremendously important agenda, the universe of what's deemed worth teaching by one or another advocate is expanding dramatically.

This white paper offers a broad but brief overview of trends in that expanding universe.