Schools and districts invest a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources into improvement. Leadership teams analyze student achievement data, develop strategic plans, adopt evidence-based practices, and aim to improve outcomes for learners. Yet despite these efforts, meaningful changes in classroom instruction and student outcomes can remain elusive.
Why do some schools struggle to gain momentum even when they're doing so many of the right things?
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the concept of flow, a state of deep engagement in which people become so immersed in an activity that they may lose track of time. Flow is more likely to occur when we have a clear goal, the skills and confidence to meet the challenge, and feedback that helps us recognize and adjust our progress.
While flow describes an individual psychological experience, the conditions that support it offer an interesting parallel to school improvement.
Imagine a school where educators understand exactly what they're working toward, feel confident in the instructional practices they're implementing, have the time and support to develop proficiency, and see how their efforts connect to a larger vision for student success.
Now consider the opposite: competing initiatives, shifting priorities, disconnected professional learning, and improvement plans that don’t seem to gain traction.
Which environment is more likely to produce meaningful change?
Four essential elements can help school leaders create the conditions for more focused, effective school improvement: vision, efficacy, investment, and coherence.
These may be just the necessary ingredients for systems to achieve a state of transformative flow and get into a zone of optimal performance.
Vision
In education, we often struggle to develop a shared vision for what teaching and learning should look like in our schools.
We create and recreate mission and vision statements every three to five years. We wordsmith the statements with large committees to be sure that we include every possible outcome that our community wants us to achieve. Then typically we end up with mission and vision statements that are at best posted in boardrooms and offices, and at worst, filed into binders or only placed in grant applications.
A strong instructional vision goes beyond a statement of what we hope to accomplish. It creates a shared understanding of the learning experiences we want every student to have and the instructional practices that will make those experiences possible. When educators share a clear instructional vision, it guides decisions about professional learning, curriculum adoption, resource allocation, and instructional priorities. It also helps us identify the data we need to collect to determine whether we are making progress toward that vision, including academic outcomes, student engagement, belonging, and learner agency. Most importantly, a shared instructional vision connects the decisions we make at the system level to the experiences students have in classrooms every day.
Efficacy
One of the conditions that makes flow possible is the balance between challenge and skill. When a task feels too easy, we may lose interest. When it feels too difficult, we may become overwhelmed. But when we believe we have the skills and support to meet a meaningful challenge, we are more likely to remain engaged. This connects to the concept of teacher efficacy, which refers to educators' beliefs in their ability to positively influence student learning. Research suggests that teachers with a stronger sense of efficacy are more likely to persist when students struggle, adapt their instructional practices, and remain committed to improving outcomes.
Efficacy doesn't mean believing we can do everything or that every strategy will work. It means recognizing that our actions can make a difference and developing the knowledge, skills, and support needed to increase the outcomes of all learners. When educators have opportunities to learn, collaborate, try new approaches, and examine evidence of their impact, they can strengthen their sense of efficacy and their capacity to improve student learning.
While individual teacher efficacy matters, collective teacher efficacy matters even more: the shared belief that, by working together, educators can positively influence student learning and outcomes. A shared instructional vision provides a common purpose and a clear picture of what success looks like, while collective efficacy reflects educators' shared belief in their ability to make that vision a reality. When teams collaboratively examine student learning data, identify barriers, implement evidence-based practices, and evaluate their effectiveness, they can see how their collective actions contribute to the student experiences and outcomes they are working toward. Over time, these shared experiences of success can strengthen collective efficacy because educators aren't simply hoping their efforts will make a difference. They have evidence that they do.
Commitment
A shared instructional vision gives us a clear picture of what we are working toward, and collective efficacy strengthens our belief that we can achieve it. But neither is enough without commitment. Developing the knowledge and skills to meet meaningful challenges takes time, practice, feedback, and persistence. The same is true of improving teaching and learning across an entire school or district.
As Glenn Latham in The Birth and Death Cycles of Educational Innovations explains, innovations in education come and go in about 18 to 48 months. We don’t stay committed to anything long enough to really achieve systemic change, let alone systemic flow. When we continually shift priorities, educators have fewer opportunities to develop proficiency, see evidence of their impact, and strengthen their collective efficacy.
Commitment means staying focused on our instructional vision long enough to make meaningful progress, while remaining flexible about the strategies we use to achieve it. It doesn't mean continuing practices that aren't working. It means using evidence to refine our approach rather than abandoning our shared goals. When educators have the time, support, and opportunities to improve their practice, they are better positioned to meet increasingly complex challenges and experience deep engagement.
Coherence
Michael Fullan has been talking about coherence for decades. Back in 1991, he and Suzanne Stiegelbauer wrote The New Meaning of Educational Change. Together they wrote that “One of the most critical problems our schools face is…fragmentation, overload, and incoherence resulting from the uncritical and uncoordinated acceptance of too many different innovations.” When we spread our time and energy across too many competing priorities, it becomes difficult to develop the skills and sustained focus needed to make meaningful progress.
To avoid fragmentation, we need to be discerning about the initiatives, tools, and practices we adopt and intentional about how they work together. This is where instructional leadership becomes essential. A shared instructional vision establishes what we are working toward, collective efficacy strengthens our belief that we can achieve it, and commitment keeps us focused on continuous improvement. Coherence brings these elements together by ensuring that curriculum, professional learning, assessment, and instructional practices are aligned to the same vision.
When educators understand how the different parts of the system connect, they can focus their time and energy on improving student experiences and outcomes rather than navigating competing initiatives. This alignment creates conditions that can support flow by providing clear goals, reducing unnecessary distractions, and allowing educators to develop their skills through sustained practice and feedback.
Frameworks to Support School Improvement
We believe wholeheartedly that our historical lack of vision, efficacy, commitment, and coherence can be addressed by focusing on the implementation of two fundamental frameworks – MTSS and UDL.
MTSS and UDL are research-based frameworks that help us see our systems differently, see our practices differently, and, most importantly, see our learners differently, as inherently capable, beautifully diverse, and worthy of our best efforts. They help us consider our beliefs and principles, as well as our practices and processes. They aren’t initiatives. They aren’t canned programs. They aren’t resources that suddenly become outdated.
Like all effective frameworks, they improve how we see and respond to the world.
MTSS and UDL provide lenses that help us bring our instructional vision to life. They help us create coherence across our systems, strengthen collective efficacy by focusing on evidence of our impact, and sustain our commitment to improving teaching and learning over time. Together they provide us with the necessary tools, research, and guideposts for creating both systems and learning experiences that are inclusive of all students and families, and that produce equitable outcomes.
When these elements come together, we create the conditions for educators to engage deeply in the work of school improvement, developing their skills, responding to feedback, and making meaningful progress toward shared goals. Just as flow becomes possible when we have clear goals, the skills to meet meaningful challenges, and feedback that helps us grow, educators are better positioned to experience that same sense of purpose, engagement, and progress when our systems are designed to support them. And ultimately, that is what matters most: creating schools where every learner belongs, participates, learns at high levels, and develops the agency to shape their own future.
