Developing Community Leadership and Community Organizations
William Mitchell
With so much media attention this week to one mural in south Belfast what is it about Northern Ireland that has us fixated with images on walls? Changing from one image to another will not necessarily change how people think. What is more important is to work with the mindsets of the people in the community so that they begin reimagining life. Another contentious mural in Belfast is the one which dominates the landscape of Mount Vernon. However, a former UVF political prisoner has been working tirelessly for years to transform the lives of those who live behind the mural and how they are perceived by others. Read here about his attempts.
Introduction
In this unit we are going to be looking at community leadership and community organizations. You will be introduced to a concept of leadership, in particular the writing of Peter Senge and his notion of developing leadership to create learning organizations. One of the central themes of this is dialogue and in this we will be exploring Senge’s approach by relating it to that of the late Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire.
This relates to the collective leadership, not unique but certainly not common in community organizations, where the leader is not seen primarily as someone everyone should follow. Unlike previous units, the material in this unit will be presented as a case study of a small working-class ‘real’ community in North Belfast, which is a good example of the integration of community leadership in community organizations. In conjunction, an interview with the community development co-ordinator for the area includes extracts which are integrated into the text. At a later date, the interview will be uploaded also.
Leadership
Peter Senge and the Easter Experience
Peter Senge is director of the Center for Organizational Learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His special area of interest is learning organisations with a specific focus on decentralizing the role of leadership:
Where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. (Senge, 1990:3)
The late Brazilian Educationalist, Paulo Freire, and his notion of liberatory education, whereby the personal freedom and development of individuals can only occur in mutuality with others, suggests that power is shared, not the power of a few who improve themselves at the expense of others but the power of many who find strength and purpose in a common vision. This can best be done by what has come to be known as the Easter Experiene:
The educator for liberation has to ‘die’ as the unilateral educator of the educates, in order to be born again as the educator-educatee of the educatees-educators. An educator is a person who has to live in the deep significance of Easter. (Taylor, 1993:53)
This unit begins by examining Senge’s theory on leadership by considering the connection to Freire’s theory on liberation to determine a common denominator integral to both. To begin with, first let me present what Senge has to say about leadership in his book “The Fifth Discipline”.
Senge and leadership
Senge presents the traditional view of leaders as special people who “are deeply rooted in an individualistic and nonsystemic world view “ (1990:340), particularly in the west where leaders are seen as heroes. “Our prevailing leadership myths are still captured by the image of the captain of the cavalry leading the charge to rescue the settlers from the attacking Indians” (Senge, 1990:340). In contrast to this traditional view we are invited to consider where leaders “are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexities, clarify vision and improve shared mental models – that is, they are responsible for learning. (ibid). Similarly to Smith (2001), I will outline this new view of leadership, as identified by Senge, in three categories.
The first is leader as designer. According to Senge this aspect of leadership is not often identified or credited because “The functions of design are rarely visible; they take place behind the scenes”. (Senge 1990:341). His reasoning for this aspect being without credit is because the leader is removed from the centre of the action, aspiration to lead is without the desire to control. He gives an example of an effective leader as designer whereby process, vision, values and style are placed within a system that deals with problems before they arise. This he argues develops growth and instils consistency, to the extent that problems are not “solved” but are “dissolved”.
Crucial to this is that “design is, by its nature, an integrative science because design requires making something work in practice”. (Senge 1990:342). His example of the car being the essence of design because it only functions when the parts fit together to perform as a whole is exemplified by reiterating leaders as designers and quoting one who states, “real designers are continually trying to understand wholes” (Simon, cited in Senge, 1990:343). He concludes that leaders who see themselves as crusaders, as opposed to designers, forget that “people learn what they need to learn, not what someone else thinks they need to learn”. (Senge, 1990:345).
The second is leader as steward. At the core of this aspect of leadership Senge identifies what he terms the purpose story. Interviewing three business leaders individually, it dawned on him that behind each story and individual vision lay “ a larger, pattern of becoming that gives unique meaning to his personal aspirations and his hopes for their organization”. (Senge, 1990:345). This commonality to them all defined the leaders’ purpose story as being both personal and universal, it explained why they do what they do, with nobility
and humility behind their efforts.
According to Senge, the purpose story is central to the leader’s ability to lead. It deepens the sense of purpose or destiny to an extent that the leader develops a unique relationship to his or her own personal vision. So much so that “it brings a unique depth of meaning to his vision, a larger landscape upon which his personal dreams and goals stand out as landmarks on a longer journey. (Senge 1990:346). This then is the power of the purpose story, providing integration of ideas that gives meaning to all aspects of the leader’s work. So much so that he or she becomes a steward of the vision.
The third is leader as teacher. Once more, like the previous two categories, Senge focuses on the “bigger picture”. He argues that organisations adopt a perception of reality that needs defined by leaders. Such reality is borne out of pressures, crises and reactions that renders vision “ an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst- but not an achievable end”. (Senge, 1990:353). Drawing on their sense of stewardship, according to Senge, leaders create more empowering views of reality by influencing people to view reality at four distinct levels: events, patterns of behaviour, systemic structures and the purpose story. His argument criticises traditional leadership for attending only to events and patterns of behaviour stating this is why contemporary organisations are predominately reactive, or at best responsive.
Senge argues that for organisations to be truly generative, viewing reality at all four distinct levels, with predominant focus on purpose and systemic structure, is the task of leaders in learning organisations and, moreover, “they teach people throughout the organization to do likewise”. (1990:353). Again, it is argued, this allows people to see the ‘big picture’, the inter action between different parts of the organisation, how underlying structures parallel one another and why certain operating policies are needed for the system as a whole. But Senge points out systemic structure is not enough. “By itself, it lacks a sense of purpose. It deals with the how, not the why”. (1990:354) Those leaders who focus on the purpose story, within systemic structures, see beyond the how and why to where the organization is heading. The leader as teacher helps “people throughout an organization come to share in a larger sense of purpose, they are united in a common destiny. They have a sense of continuity and identity not achievable in any other way”. (ibid)
Leaders who attend to all three categories are able to lead learning organisations wherein it is not enough just to survive or adapt. They foster “generative learning” by practising the tools and guiding ideas that make sense of the situations they face. For Senge, these tools are the five disciplines that converge to form learning organizations. They are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision and team learning.
Systems thinking is Pete Senge’s forte. It is the foundation upon which learning organisations are built. It is the discipline that addresses the whole by providing the framework for integrating the other disciplines. This unit is not an analysis of the five disciplines but it should by pointed out that Senge argues that they provide the principles and practices that ‘mould’ leaders within learning organizations.
Freire and liberation
Having described Senge’s theory on leadership what then of the connection to Freire? This can be found in Freire’s work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972), a significant text that has had a considerable impact on informal education. This work on liberation has at its core action that is informed by reflection to produce what Freire calls praxis. It is best done by working with each other as co-learners to enhance community and build social capital. The environment for this, as opposed to traditional formal settings such as schools, has become known as culture circles. Here, participants are encouraged to develop critical consciousness to transcend oppression, leading to humanization. Freire refers to this as conscientization- “learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality”. (Friere, 1972:17).
According to Taylor consciousness that develops action actually has “ the power to transform reality”. (1993:52). Armed with the tools of codifications, in the form of images, drawings, and even words, Freire argues that learning environments are fostered whereby generative themes are identified that address issues of concrete reality such as alienation, poverty and sectarianism. “Generative themes are codifications of complex experiences which are charged with political significance and are likely to generate considerable discussion and analysis” (Heaney, 1995:10). The common denominator, which I will now go on to discuss, that in my opinion is fundamentally rooted in, and is the connection between, Senge’s theory on leadership and Freire’s on liberation, is dialogue.
Discussion
Derived from the Greek dialogos, meaning passing or moving through, dialogue flows through Senge’s leadership theory like a river ebbing towards the sea. Greatly influenced by the work of quantum theorist David Bohm, Senge sees dialogue as the product of the synthesis of systemic theory and the internal mental models we construct which shape our perceptions and actions. This results, in my opinion, in removing the leader/follower concept so readily found in bureaucratic organisations. If handled properly, as in leader as animator, or facilitator, the integration of mental models with systems, produces a dialogue that transcends individuality by achieving a new kind of mind and encourages others to share their hopes and dreams in a unique image of the future for the common good. Kouzes & Posner imply something similar when discussing the promotion of a shared sense of destiny. “Remember that leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue. Leadership isn’t about imposing the leader’s solo dream; it’s about developing a shared sense of destiny”. (2002:143)
In examining the work of both Senge and Freire the dialogical connection is found in the context. For example, replace groups within organisations with culture circles, employees with educatees and managers with educators and the parallels between both processes become clear. Senge’s theory on replacing traditional leadership with his radical model, based on the five disciplines, mirrors Freire’s cultural revolution to produce liberation, because both require dialogue to promote a change to structures and mentality.
In this there are echoes of McGregor’s (1960) theory of management, whereby he identifies two theories that he calls X & Y based on understanding of human nature and assumptions about motivating and mobilising people. Theory Y, non-conventional, is without doubt the type of leadership that connects both Senge and Freire and is based on promoting dialogue to foster transformation within learning environments. I say this became the strong connection of both to dialogue firmly roots leadership to a humanization that, in simplified terms, bears the hallmarks of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, and I would lend support to this with a quote from Adair when writing about the link between developing leadership skills, humanization and Maslow. “He suggested that individual needs are arranged in an order of prepotence: The stronger at the bottom and the weaker (but more distinctively human) at the top: (Adair, 1997:40)
In establishing the link between Senge and Freire, based on the relevance to both of dialogue, and the radical ideals that are transformational, what is at the centre of Senge’s ideal, in my opinion, is that learning organisations that advocate leadership through dialogue develop leaderless learning environments.
The author alludes to this himself when he writes: “Dialogue emerges from the leaderless group once the team members have developed their skill and understanding”. (Senge, 1990:247). Hierarchy and bureaucracy have no place in Senge’s theory. Conventional, traditional methods of leadership such as trait, behavioural, situational or contingency, authoritarian and charismatic do not find seats at Senge’s table. Gone are the vertical approaches that divide and rule, producing individualism, alienation, powerlessness and isolation to be replaced by a horizontal approach that is fluid and encourages participation, motivation, creativity, mutuality and empowerment. This renders his argument both revolutionary and developmental to the extent that it could prove visionary for some organisations. When writing about such this author states: “it is a matter of regret that more organisations have not taken his advice and have remained geared to the quick fix”. (van Murik, 2001:201)
But of course no theory or argument is ever without problems. The first, with Senge’s theory on leadership, is that the type of organisation in which he advocates it could flourish is rare. His writing is aimed at business wherein production is paramount and priorities linked to profit. As this author argues about such organisations, “What is more the targets for profit are too high and time horizons too short”. (Hutton, cited in Smith, 2001:11).
The second is product versus process. We have been conditioned to live with bureaucratic, organisational structures all our lives. “We have been taught in bureaucratic schools, been sick in bureaucratic hospitals, worked in bureaucratic jobs and prayed in bureaucratic religious institutions”. (Hope & Timmel, 1995:135). Leaders in such environments like, for example, teachers in schools are discouraged to work with processes but are pressurised into delivering products, such as the curriculum.
The third, and final, is the idealism in Senge’s view of leadership. In the way he links leadership to learning environments it is understandable how individuals might struggle to grasp the idealistic nature he presents of seeing and knowing leadership reality. His theory that dialogue is a factor of our being, grounded in the source of our knowledge, may seem a bit of a pipe dream in organisations. “Related to ontological assumptions are those involving epistemology. How might we begin to understand the world and communicate this knowledge to others”? (Hunt, 1991:42)
The importance of dialogue to the leadership theory of Peter Senge and its connection to the work of Paulo Freire provides the framework for this unit,linked to the community we are about to explore, that portrays leadership in organisations and society as enabling and liberatory respectively. This leads me to conclude that I am a Senge convert. I state this because I have deducted that his leadership for learning organisations is tailor-made for informal educators and community development workers. His idea that systems theory provides a framework where action is produced out of the mental models we construct has at the core the fostering of generative, integrated learning. His attention to relationships that promote humanism, produces an ideal that, in my opinion, should be an aspiration of all youth leaders who strive to help young people help themselves. If leaders are to truly live in the deep significance of Easter then this 6th century Chinese philosophy should be borne in mind. “A leader is best when people barely know that he exists”. (Lao-Tzu, cited in Adair, 1997:53)
Background to Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon is a small protestant working-class housing estate in North Belfast. For anyone who knows their American history, as the name suggests, the name is taken from the retreat of the first president of the United States, George Washington, whose Mount Vernon stately home is still a tourist attraction today. In North Belfast, the old land gentry, going back centuries, had a scaled-down version built at the foot of Cavehill mountain overlooking Belfast Lough. In the 1950’s, the surrounding land was developed into a housing estate and within decades the building fell into disrepair, was demolished and now has a purpose-built sheltered accommodation in its place.
Like a lot of other Belfast housing estates, Mount Vernon has suffered from paramilitary influence, a negative legacy of over thirty years of political conflict. This has been physically manifested at the front entrance to the estate with the infamous paramilitary mural; “Prepared for Peace – Ready for War” sending a negative message to people from outside the estate. Such emblems dwarf the “Mount Vernon Welcomes You” sign and sends mixed messages to anyone who visits.
Surrounded by some of the wealthiest areas of Northern Ireland, Mount Vernon would be categorised as a pocket of multiple deprivation. Prior to 2004 the estate had a very low level of community activity, although the community housing association, which was relatively new in the neighbourhood, had been successful in getting the local Housing Executive to convert a small group of unoccupied maisonettes into a community centre. With this in place, funding for a community development co-ordinator was secured and in autumn 2004 William Hutchinson took up post.
Hutchinson entered community development in 1990 as the director of the Springfield Intercommunity Development Project, a cross-community forum which brought together Republican and Loyalist communities to explore ways to address social issues using community relations, community development and conflict resolution approaches.
He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1998, representing North Belfast and is also a former councillor of the Belfast City Council, representing the Oldpark electoral ward for two council terms. He has now returned to the community as co-ordinator of the Mount Vernon Community Development Forum.
Previously he has been lay member of the Department of Education and Training Inspectorate having responsibility with his colleagues for inspections of all education sectors in Northern Ireland. Hutchinson is a Social Science graduate with a post graduate diploma in Town Planning. He is currently leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.
Working with people to develop plans and strategies
Before discussing in more detail the Mount Vernon community, let us think about the importance of working with people in communities to develop plans and strategies. In his interview, Hutchinson discusses the importance of effective leadership that involves the participation of others, when he states This isn’t about me. What he is arguing is that if plans and strategies, for the vision of a future for a community are his design alone then the commitment and participation of those that matter most, the residents are diluted. Equally, should he, for example, move on to another job, then the strategy is harder to implement.
In this respect, there are parallels to what he is referring to and to what Collins, (2001), terms as “Level 5 Leaders”. These, he argues, are present in the most successful organizations where the leader demonstrates personal humility/professional will and is able to think strategically. This is also to be found in the discussion on humility when the authors refer to the writing of Heitetz, (1999:25), by saying:
He argues that true leaders are educators, their task is to work with communities to face problems and lead themselves rather than to influence people to agree to a particular position. They help to build environments in which people can reflect upon how they can help with solving problems and with achieving goals.
One of the first tasks of Hutchinson was to involve as many residents as possible in the planning and implementation of a strategy for the community. This he agreed would ensure that utilising the skills and experiences of those people who live, and therefore have a vested interest in the community, would help instil ownership of the project. Here we can see the Senge influence of having a shared vision, one that is not imposed, or is the will of one person, but is rather created by the collective will of a group of people.
Over 260 residents, approximately one third of the population of Mount Vernon, contributed to the creation of a 10 year strategy. The problems they identified as needing to be addressed included:
- the low level of community engagement with the community centre
- the low level of engagement between the housing estate and organisations who should or could deliver services to the community
- low level of expectations of residents from the area
- low level of community development skills and experience within the residents of the housing estate.
It is interesting to note how Hutchinson managed to engage so many residents in such a short space of time. What he did was to partner a number of individuals who had particular skills in certain disciplines. The first worked for a business development organisation and had experience in mapping strategies with small businesses. The second was a freelance community artist who previously was successfully involved in securing the bid for the city of Liverpool as the European City of Culture. This mixture of experience in business, art and his own in planning was collectively used in introductory sessions with the management committee of the Mount Vernon Community Development Forum in planning how to engage the wider community. What resulted was the creation of a strategy planning group, a successful funding application and a project that they called ‘THE BIG WEEKEND’.
The Big Weekend was an engagement process with the aim to involve as many residents, from as wide an age range as possible, in real dialogue about the needs of their community and their vision for the future. The medium Hutchinson used to achieve this was that of community Art – a broad range of workshops that made planning action and strategies fun but with a co-learning element relative to the needs of the participants. He claims that this produced distributional leadership – When leaders recognise the benefits of building leaders to help create sustainability. In other words, the more people who have the capacity to take the reins and develop collaborative programmes that work, the greater the success will be in that community or neighbourhood.
In the weeks leading up to the Big Weekend, arts workshops were help with 6 separate groups: These included a children’s school group, junior/senior youth club members, an adult creative writing group, a women’s group and a senior citizens group. Workshops included: Arts and play for the children and their parents, a Tea Dance for sheltered accommodation residents and Senior Citizens, an inter-generational music evening, “Question of Sport” evening with members of the local semi-professional football team, African drumming and dance, a ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ evening, and a ‘Big Brother Diary Room’ style video of people’s opinions. All these workshops produced a cross-section of ideas of what local people thought should be the future for their community and these were all exhibited on the Big Weekend with invitations for further comment from all those attending.
The major outcome of this process was the creation of 8 sub-strategies, all with a particular theme, that influenced the overall creation of a strategy map for Mount Vernon. The 8 themes were Young People, Families, Health, Environment, Employment, Community Spirit, Arts, Sports and Culture, and Education. This created mini partnerships between residents and 43 separate identified providers, (such as the North & West Health Trust, The Belfast Education & Library Board etc.), who attended a follow-up presentation by the community residents. The strategy, in turn, was also presented to the Minister for Social Development, the Deputy Chief Constable and to international delegates at a cultural conference organised by the Community Arts Forum.
Activity
Spend some time reflecting on your own experience engaging others. Have you been in the role of community leader/educator with the responsibility of, for example, working with a group to identify their needs and design some plan of action? If so, how did you achieve it? Did you use face-to-face questions/answers, did you conduct a questionnaire or were you more creative with the use of music, sporting activities etc? If you have yet to have this experience, is there anything in what you have read about the Mount Vernon community that would have you think differently about engaging groups?
Working together for change to put plans into action
If you don’t know where you want to go it doesn’t matter which path you take (Carroll, 1865)
Building on the success of “The Big Weekend”, Hutchinson now had a path to follow with the collective response of the community members also participating. To ensure the sustainability of this, small groups of 3 or 4 people were identified, (from the 8 themed sub-groups that collectively made up the Mount Vernon strategy), with the task of designing achievable actions that each sub-group could transfer into outcomes that fed back into the bigger strategy picture. Hutchinson maintains this helped build a culture of sharing the vision and workload thus ensuring once more the wider involvement of the community.
There are echoes here of the type of management culture in organisations that Hardy, (1985) refers to as TASK. The task culture assumes a net-like approach concerned with the continuous and successful solution of problems. Members of task cultures like to define problems, allocate resources and produce solutions. Its power base is neither centre nor top but net-like. It draws resources from all parts of the systems within the organisation so that they may be focused on a particular knot or problem. A series of self-contained units, with specific responsibility in overall strategy, made up of members with talent, creativity and fresh approach suggests mutual respect reigns.
Hardy (1985:28) argues that this type of culture is good for groups with a common purpose wherein: Leadership in a common purpose group is seldom a hot issue: instead there is usually mutual respect, a minimum of procedural niceties and a desire to help rather than exploit when others get into difficulties. It is a purposeful commando.
Once more we are drawn back to the main focus of the Mount Vernon Community and their main objective – a strategy – and I want to draw attention to an unlikely source to draw parallels with Hutchinson’s approach. It strikes me that his success in engaging the wider community by developing ownership of a shared vision, through collective leadership, thus creating the type of culture where teams with tasks succeed, has a militaristic approach found the writings of Che Guevara, (1961).
In his discussion on the tactics of guerrilla warfare he highlights the success of small bands of 4 or 5 men by stating: “The function of this guerrilla band will not be to carry out independent actions but to coordinate its activities with overall strategic plans in such a way as to support the action of larger groups”. This mirrors the approach of the Mount Vernon community in working together to put plans into action. Each small sub-group was encouraged to think strategically by planning ahead, setting short, medium and long-term goals. Before the strategy process, groups that were part of the Mount Vernon Forum were inclined to work on their own with little or no involvement with other groups. Now, like Guevara’s guerrilla bands, representatives from the sub-groups met every 6 weeks to report on progress, sharing information, giving and receiving advice from other groups, all the time feeding into the ‘bigger picture’ Thus supporting the action of the larger group- The community.
This working together to put plans into action had the collective effect of creating a series of outcomes beneficial to the whole community. Overall, Hutchinson observed that individuals involved in the process became much more confident to the extent that they were able to discuss their involvement with providers and interested visitors and make formal presentations at meetings and conferences. In addition, a series of tangible outcomes are evidence of action such as:
- Three local women conducted and produced a community audit
- The skills acquired in this have been transferred to other communities
- A Wildlife Garden in the estate was created
- A Healthy lifestyles programme was conducted in partnerships with a local Boys Club
- A Healthy cooking project, in partnership with the local youth club introduced young people to healthier eating
- A public arts projects was created on the estate
- A social enterprise partnership with a neighbouring community won the Sir George Quigley Award
- A poly tunnel, environmental friendly area was created
In addition to these physical actions that can be seen, a change in people’s attitudes has also been evidenced. Hutchinson maintains that not only do the people believe that it is possible to change things in Mount Vernon, they believe they have a major role to play shaping and delivering that change. This has been brought about by a strong core of people leading a process that others have engaged with to produce the shared leadership Doyle & Smith, (1999), write about. People who thought they did not have skills, knew very little and had no confidence discovered through this process that they had skills, knowledge and ability. Some had creative skills, some organisational skills and some developed new skills in particular areas they shared with others. Everyone involved learned about working together. This collaboration sets us up neatly for the final heading of this unit – Evaluation and the place of training.
Evaluation and the place of training
As community educators and leaders, evaluation is something you cannot escape yet the experience is often seen as a burden and an unnecessary intrusion. Many of us are suspicious of evaluation because it is seen as something that is imposed from outside, in other words, it is something someone asks us to do. Because of this, we can often overlook its importance.
As Gitlin and Smyth (1989) comment, from its Latin origin meaning ‘to strengthen’ or to empower, the term evaluation has been taken a numerical turn – it is now largely about the measurement of things – and within the process the focus can shift to become an end rather than a means. For the remainder of this unit we will be focussing on how Hutchinson managed to bring questions of value (rather than numerical worth) into the centre of the process with the community in Mount Vernon. But before doing so, let us explore evaluation in more depth.
Programme or Practice Evaluation?
First, it is helpful to look at the difference between programme and project evaluation, and practice evaluation.
Programme and project evaluation
This form of evaluation is typically concerned with making judgements about the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of pieces of work. Here evaluation is essentially a management tool. Judgements are made to provide feedback so that future work can be improved or altered. In this respect, evaluation for the development of current or future pieces of work, may relate to the setting of specific goals and objectives and whether or not these have been achieved. In this then you can see that evaluation is important and necessary for the overall development of the work.
Practice evaluation
This form of evaluation is directed at the enhancement of work undertaken with particular individuals and groups, and to the development of participants, including ourselves as community educators and leaders. It tends to be an integral part of the process as opposed to being specifically related to one-off pieces of work. In order to respond to a situation workers have to make sense of what is going on, and how they can best intervene (or not intervene). Similarly, other participants may also be encouraged or take it upon themselves to make judgements about the situation and their part in it. Such evaluation is sometimes described as educative or pedagogical as it seeks to foster learning. But this is only part of the process. The learning involved is oriented to future or further action. It is also informed by the core values and commitments we bring as workers who are concerned with human flourishing. For this reason we can say the approach is concerned with PRAXIS – action that is informed and committed.
Summative or Formative
Both programme/project evaluation and practice evaluation can be summative or formative. To enable people and agencies to make judgements about the work undertaken such as making sense of the changes that have occurred so as to assess their learning performance, can be said to be formative. To enable people and agencies to demonstrate that they have fulfilled the objectives of the programme or project, can be said to be summative.
Either, or both, can be applied to a programme or to the work of an individual and can be likened to the process of reflecting-in-action and reflecting-on-action. For example, formative evaluation, similarly, to reflecting-in-action may be conducted while the work is in progress. This can help identify appropriated interventions to learn from or move the work on that is beneficial and developmental to the participants involved. Summative evaluation, similarly to reflecting-on-action is something that is conducted after the event. You can see then how this type of evaluation is often used to demonstrated outcomes for others. For example, the funder who wants to know did you achieve what you said you would in your application when one of your outcomes was successfully gaining employment for 20 school-leavers.
Formative or summative, the nature of evaluation means it can be an uncomfortable process. If it is to provide feedback that aids the development of us as workers and those we work with, during the process, therefore it is formative, then it requires an honesty about our ability, skill and knowledge that means we should not be defensive. On the other hand, often a lot more is riding on summative evaluation, especially if it is imposed on us, (by funders, managers etc.), then it could mean the difference between being in a job or being out of one. In practice, both forms of evaluation can run together such as a summative judgement being used to plan new pieces of work.
Last, I want to focus on how evaluation can be seen to be dialogical. This approach places the responsibility for evaluation on educators/leaders and participants, something that Hutchinson argues is essential to the community as a place of training. Its purpose is to enrich practice by making it an essential part of practice. This can be achieved by seeking out those conversations that are issue-based and are concerned with the experiences and learning of those we participate with. Listening and reflecting upon the experiences of all, through dialogue, so that judgements can be made that places value on people as subjects, as opposed to objects, is at the core of dialogical evaluation.
Because it allows an informal approach, based on dialogue, this form of evaluation exercises the use of democracy by placing responsibility both on educators and the participants involved. This results in decision making being in the hands of those who are most important to the consequences – the community.
Having been introduced to some main concepts of evaluation let us look further at the Mount Vernon example.
Action Learning
The approach Hutchinson adopted in relating evaluation to the community as a place of training he refers to as action learning. Once more, there are echoes of Freire in his attempts to help participants transform their community and themselves. This is to be found in his comment I’m not here to do it for them. In this he is referring to the social aspect of their learning whereby the participants’ contribution to the environment means that they influence and are influenced by the interaction with others. Again, this reminds as of Freire’s theory that we learn with and from others, we do not learn for them nor they for us.
The use of evaluation in an active training environment was introduced by Hutchinson in the form of active research. He alludes to the method being applied to almost any setting where a solution is sought for problems and issues involving people and tasks that results in a better outcome. The use of action research as a learning method is well supported. Cohern, Marion and Morrison (2004:226) highlight how action research can be used in a variety of ways, two of which are relevant to Mount Vernon:
- Learning Strategies – adopting an integrated approach to learning in preference to a single-subject style of teaching and learning.
- Evaluative procedures – improving one’s method of continuous assessment.
This integration of learning and evaluating to improve the lives of all who participate in the process is at the core of Hutchinson’s methods of working with this community. In simplified terms he talks about moving them on similarly to Rosseter (in Jeffs & Smith, 1987) who refers learning to the movement from point A to a point beyond A.
It is worth considering here, in more detail, how this relates to Hutchinson’s concept of collective or democratic leadership. Gold, (1999:285-291) presents Lewin’s theory of the Dynamics of group action which I want to introduce in relation to the Mount Vernon example. Lewin argues:
Those of us involved in education often overlook the relation between autocracy, democracy and individualistic freedom (laissez faire). We are accustomed to perceive problems of discipline or leadership as lying on one continuum with a lack of discipline and maximum individual freedom represented at one end and strict authoritarian leadership at the other. This concept is basically inaccurate and autocracy, democracy and laissez faire should be perceived as a triangle rather than a continuum.
In many respects autocracy and democracy are similar as they both mean leadership as against the lack of leadership in laissez-faire; they both mean discipline and organisation as opposed to chaos. Along other lines of comparison, democracy and laissez-faire are similar as they both give freedom to the group members to create a situation where the group members are acting on their own motivation rather than being moved by forces induced by an authority in which they have no part .
Hutchinson would argue that to impose outcomes on the community by setting unachievable targets is to be autocratic. Equally, to have no target is to be too laissez-faire. This relates, once more, to Lewin and his model of action represented in Figure 1 in relation to setting standards.
Lowering standards or relaxing the pressure to maintain them in an autocratic atmosphere means shifting to a softer form of autocracy. It means a shift from autocratic to laissez-faire it does not mean a shift to democracy. Such a shift requires a collective leadership approach, (such as that adopted by Hutchinson), that involves positive change of the type of motivation behind the action, a shift from imposed goals to goals which the group has set for itself.
A starting point for Hutchinson was to first identify what skills currently existed within the community and to utilise and build on these to develop the capacity of the participants. Along with others of similar experience, he facilitated a series of focus groups, in the community house, to help the community members identify for themselves what was required to implement the vision, set out in the strategy they had created.
This resulted in a series of training workshops in presentation skills, research design and analysis, management skills, capacity building, ICT, mediation skills, organisational skills and evaluation methods. Hutchinson worked with the participants alongside specific trainers to build on and develop more those skills already within the community members. Within a short space of time there developed, what Hutchinson refers to as an Action Learning Group – members of the community who would actively engage others in a learning environment for the greater good of all involved.
Five members of this group, in partnership with a number of other experienced in research, designed, implemented and analysed a household research survey to build on and collect data relevant to the issues already identified in the strategy process. In addition to collecting data such as the employment status, demographics, accommodation, health conditions, education, community perceptions and services available, this was also another opportunity for members within the community to engage the wider community. The production of a detailed community audit was seen as being valuable to begin some relevant programmes within the sub-themes of the overall strategy.
One major outcome, identified from the data, was that there was low parental aspirations within the community for their children’s educational attainment. This finding was the focus for further workshops and meetings around the theme of ‘value in education’ – what is it? How would it look? How could it be achieved? Having asked these questions in an open co-learning environment, it was agreed that the schools alone could not change the culture within the community of low level educational attainment but that a partnership with the wider community might. This related in a dedicated worker being recruited to co-ordinate engagement between the school and the community in a whole-community approach to education.
This is one example, from the Mount Vernon experience, that highlights the community as a place of training based on the utilisation and development of the skills of those people that make up the community as apposed to the employment of consultants and ‘outsiders’. The importance of evaluation, within this process, is once more in the hands of the participants. The 8 themed sub-groups that constitute the overall strategy are co-ordinate by a participant from the community and a member of a statutory body. Each theme, (education, health etc), is driven by the group and feeds back to the overall strategy group, facilitated by Hutchinson, in his role, as a community development co-ordinator.
Members of the sub-groups meet for evaluation every 6 weeks. Building on their introduction to training skills they are encouraged to think strategically by setting short, medium and long-term goals. For example, if we use the educational theme that you have already been introduced to, the short term goal was to engage the community in ways to highlight low educational achievement. The long-term goal, with the recruitment of a worker, was to improve the education of children within the community. It follows then, looking at Figure 2, that the directive to the education sub-group was to create action, based on the issue. Being tasked, the education group are active with producing something that fits the overall strategy of the community and they periodically feed back the progress to the main strategy group. This is replicated simultaneously by the other themed groups to the extent that a once dormant community has evolved into an active, thriving neighbourhood.
The Mount Vernon example is demonstration of how collective leadership can be used to promote active participation within a community with people who would otherwise be passive. And whilst, in the short period of three years, it is a major success story, Hutchinson would be the first to say there have been problems. He maintains that the physical transformation of Mount Vernon could be relatively easy. By this he means that regeneration of land and housing can be achieved with the right finances. However, he points out that all the money in the world may never change peoples perceptions, opinions and how they think. These ‘non-physical’ things may take considerably longer. Hutchinson believes communities can stagnate, (as Mount Vernon was prior to his employment there), because they believe large numbers have to be involved in change. Mount Vernon, he argues, shows that with a strong core of people who are committed, a process can evolve that others will get involved in.
The perceptions that the skills capacity of residents was low were inherent. Community members felt they were ‘unqualified’ or lacked the appropriate skills and experience to deliver a strategy. The dialogical process of training involved in collective leadership and evaluation, Hutchinson says, highlighted that people who thought they did not have skills, knew nothing and had no confidence discovered this was inaccurate. He maintains if you tell someone they are stupid for long enough they will begin to believe it. Some people had creative skills, some had organisational skills and others displayed leadership. This collection of variety was identified through dialogue and focus groups and helped address the problem of community perception about their capabilities.
Whilst finance for the respective projects/programmes could have speeded up the transformation, had it been secured fully prior to commencement, Hutchinson believes this problem has helped build the capacity of the participants. He argues that though a project of this size takes considerable time and money the process of applying for and securing funds as the work develops strategically, translates into sustainability because the residents own their own strategy because they were given time to grow as the project developed. This has helped make people proud once more to live in Mount Vernon, as one participant said: it’s alright statutory agencies saying you need to do this and do that. If people’s self-esteem and confidence isn’t there it’s very hard to reach the people that need the services. The likes of our strategy project makes a difference. We’ve involved all the age groups – from the cradle to the grave – and everyone’s needs are covered. Now we know our community’s wants and needs, and how to address them, a lot of the providers will have to sit up and listen.
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