Principled Innovation in Systems of Teacher & Leader Prep
2020 - 2022
What is Principled Innovation and why is it necessary?
Principled Innovation offers a framework for moral and ethical change and innovation. The practice of Principled Innovation helps us meet the imperative of the ASU Charter to “take fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities” the university serves. At its core, Principled Innovation is a framework for decision making that can be applied at all scales: individual, organizational and systemic.
Principled Innovation can inform simple, everyday actions, and it can drive complex decisions and actions taken by leaders. Principled Innovation is animated by four dimensions of character.
Individual Context
When individuals practice Principled Innovation, their actions exhibit the empathy inherent in moral character; the desire to serve others that is part of civic character; the truth-seeking impulse of intellectual character; and the problem-solving commitment of performance character.
Organizational Context
At the organizational level, decisions driven by Principled Innovation can open up new possibilities for people to flourish. The practice of Principled Innovation can help organizations challenge and revise status-quo habits and processes in ways that assess and respond to human needs. At ASU, Principled Innovation is a powerful tool that we can use to make sure we are not just innovating for the sake of change but are driving innovation that helps us fulfill the ASU charter.
Systems Context
Systems change is the hardest kind of change to design and to execute. The practice of Principled Innovation offers practical techniques for perspective-taking and thinking through the possible consequences of even the most complex, systemic actions. It creates a kind of intellectual and ethical muscle memory that helps individuals, teams and institutions solicit and take deep account of input from all stakeholder groups. It helps us ask ourselves whether any given change is worth implementing and whether it fulfills our charter commitments to equity, inclusiveness and taking responsibility for the well-being and success of the communities we serve.
Since the inception of this work, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College has embraced Principled Innovation as our core value. It has informed how we ask faculty, staff and students to operate as individuals in our learning community. It has helped us make organizational decisions about supporting students and redesigning our teacher-preparation program. And it has been vital to how we work with schools and school districts in implementing the complex systems change of Next Education Workforce models, which involve changing how schools operate and how we prepare educators to work in them.
In all of this work, Principled Innovation has helped us to define our purpose so that we can innovate at the speed of trust.
For more information about the Principled Innovation framework as well as resources and tools to learn about and practice PI, please click the button below to visit our site.
During their summer training, the Principled Innovation team led AmeriCorps Student Mentors through the core elements of PI and introduced them to the Possibility Thinking Protocol. Student mentors were separated into facilitated breakout rooms to try using the Possibility Thinking Protocol process with what they have learned about PI in a sample demonstration. Groups later came together towards the end of the training to debreif their experiences and share the highlights of what they accomplised and learned.
The Ed Leadership faculty and staff met regularly from January to July to closely examine their beliefs and values focused on what they believe should be the domains of the ed leadership redesigned program for aspiring leaders. Together they carefully crafted five domains to guide the next phase of the redesign efforts - the structure and content of the Master’s degree Leadership program. The next step was to gather feedback on their work from Critical Friends in the K-12 world and other leaders within ASU.
The PI Steering Committee gathered for its first quarterly retreat of the 2020-2021 academic year to discuss the ongoing infusion of PI work across various departments and divisions in the college. The retreat's agenda mainly focused on gathering feedback on evolving PI tools and resources.
Dialogues for Principled Innovation (D4PI) is a first step towards imagining new concepts, catalyzing ideas, and forming new solutions, guided by principles that create positive change for humanity. The first session in our Dialogue for Principled Innovation Series brought together diverse experts to discuss the role of research universities in the post-truth era and the challenges of making scientific results policy relevant while avoiding the association of the scientific contribution to political and ideological perspectives.
In late 2020, multiple sessions were hosted to gather feedback on the "PI Jumpstart" website, which was an initial prototype for what resources a PI website could offer. The feedback gathered from faculty, students, and staff was invaluable as future iterations were completed in launching Principled Innovation's website.
The PI team led a workshop for TEL 101 course students similar to the Americorps Student Mentor training, where attendees were led through an overview of Principled Innovation then put into breakout groups to consider a scenario where they would use PI. The students reconvened for a large group reflection and discussed their most powerful moments and the insight they gained from the breakout sessions.
The PI team brought a diverse group of people together from various units in the college to begin brainstorming what spring convening could look like to share completed work to date with other colleges of education and stakeholders.
The PI team led a self-reflection based session on the power of pausing during the Conference on the Status of Women at ASU in October 2020. This session encouraged attendees to reflect critically and comapssionately by using a growth mindset to make meaning of experiences through contemplation and consideration of one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions and how they affect the growth, development, and identity of the individual, team, community, and learning environment. Attendees were led through two more reflection components for process improvement and personal and profesional growth, which both included time for reflection and a few deep questions to consider such as "Is there a more human-centered approach you could take?" and "What are your gifts and strengths and how can you more fully utilize them?" The session ended with an open debrief for attendees to share their main takeaways and highlights of what they learned during their reflections.
The Ed Leadership faculty and staff met regularly to closely examine their beliefs and values focused on what they believe should be the domains of the ed leadership redesigned program for aspiring leaders. Together, they carefully crafted five domains to guide the next phase of the redesign efforts - the structure and content of the Master’s degree Leadership program. The redesign efforts then paused for a semester to gather feedback on the implemented ideas being piloted to inform future work.
Champions of Hope, a newly developed student organization based on the PI framework, leadership team met with the PI team in late 2020 to share updates on their evolving organization and to gather feedback on their current ideas and plans.
The first training of the Student Leadership Innovation Program was held in early December 2020. The program was developed in collaboration between the Principled Innovation and Student Success teams. The program provided student leaders the opportunity learn and apply PI while also learning from others in the creativity and innovation space. The program met regularly throughout the Spring 2021 semester and culminated with a PI-design project.
The PI team attended a virtual convening in December 2020 hosted by the Kern Family Foundation on embedding character into coaching. This was an opportunity to hear from others in the field and think about what a character-driven coaching model could look like.
Principled Innovation participated in ASU's Innovation Day in December 2020 facilitating another iteration of The Power of Pausing virtual workshop focused on developing reflective practices to engage in our daily work and personal lives as a way to integrate PI.
In December 2020, members from the Office of Scholarship and Innovation and Principled Innovation teams gathered virtually for an end of year retreat to share and celebrate the work of each team completed throughout the year. Outside facilitators led portions of the day to build community by engaging in creative, collective activities.
The PI Steering Committee gathered for its final retreat of the year in late December 2020. This retreat looked and felt different than many others as the first year of the pandemic came to a close. We engaged this group in various reflective practices both before and during the retreat to collectively think about the uncertainty of the year and the moments of positivity and joy that still persisted.
At the start of 2021, the PI team hosted various feedback sessions to gather thoughts and ideas from users of the PI card deck. This included faculty, staff, students and community partners who were utilizing the card decks in their work. We gathered a variety of feedback including content, design and use cases. This feedback was invaluable in our redesign efforts for future iterations of the card decks.
Early 2021 also provided the opportunity for the PI team to share at the Next Education Workforce convening. This was an opportunity to connect with current educators in the field and share PI more widely. These sessions focused on informed decision making and reflective practices that educators could start utilizing right away.
In March 2021, the Kern Family Foundation hosted a virtual gathering for members of the KPCEL group from universities across the country to share updates and promising practices with each other.
The PI team hosted a Steering Committee retreat at the end of March 2021 where the topic of discussion was the relationship between Principled Innovation and equity. The group reviewed MLFTC's evolving equity framework alongside the PI framework to find connections between them.
In late April 2021, the PI team worked with a group of faculty members interested in contributing to a conversation around faculty wellness and development at the college. The session was facilitated by Michael Rohd, ASU Institute professor and regular contributor to the PI work. The goal of the session was to think about new ideas related to faculty support with the mission of developing a committee moving forward.
The Next Education Workforce hosted a session within their networked cohort facilitated by Liz Lerman and the PI team. The sessions introduced the Atlas of Creative Tools to the group to prompt imaginative thinking and unlock new ideas to support all learners.
Most of summer 2021 was dedicated to a redesign of the Principled Innovation website focused on creating pathways for users to learn about PI in a structured, supportive way with the addition of a toolkit of resources to further support their learning and practice. This also included the launch of the "Building a Foundation for Principled Innovation" course, a self-paced, free course to learn about PI and the character assets in the context of decision-making.
In June 2021, planning meetings with ASU faculty and Mesa school district leadership occurred to discuss the launch of an Educational Leadership Cohort for Mesa teachers with financial support provided by the district. The cohort would be co-developed and taught by ASU faculty and Mesa district leadership. Seventy teachers attended the information session and 48 applied for the 20 openings. PI and Next Education Workforce will be at the core of the four semester master's degree/principal preparation program.
In late summer 2021, the PI team hosted support hours to meet with faculty engaged in program redesign to discuss ways to incorporate PI into their programs, curriculum and assignments.
Members of the Kern Family Foundation visited in late June 2021 to meet with MLFTC faculty and staff to share updates and engage in strategic planning work sessions about future work between the two groups.
In August 2021, discussions between the Atlas of Creative Tools team and the PI team occurred to think about potential partnership projects and the work of both groups could support the other. This partnership would take many forms throughout its time.
Throughout the Fall 2021 semester, the PI team facilitated TEL 101 sessions for MLFTC freshmen to be introduced to the Principled Innovation framework that would be further reinforced in their program courses and curriculum.
Another recurring project throughout Fall 2021 was the meeting of a PI Technical Assistance Team, a group of external partners formed to provide feedback on PI tools and resources to be utilized on the toolkit website. This group was instrumental in providing their feedback and input on the evolving collection of resources.
Various planning meetings were held in Fall 2021 to discuss the creation and designing of PI powerups, shorter learning experiences focused on aspects of the PI framework with reflection and activities embedded. These would be used with the educator prep programs as well as with outside partners in the community and professional educators work.
In late October 2021, partners from the Kern Family Foundation visited to learn more about the current work happening within PI including updates from faculty, website development, foundations course and more.
In early November 2021, a project partnership between the Atlas of Creative Tools and PI teams launched called Scent of Character. This would be over a year long project to create more than 70 videos of authentic, human stories that highlight various aspects of PI. In addition, new tools would be created to support the videos along with the design of website pages to create a platform for the videos.
Kern Family Foundation members visited again in early December 2021 to meet with various groups including some site visits to schools and districts.
Two team retreats were held at the end of 2021 to celebrate accomplished work, engage in team building and complete strategic planning for the work ahead in the coming year.
In February 2022, colleagues from North Central College visited to discuss the ongoing work around Principled Innovation at MLFTC. North Central College was embarking on their own character formation work and looking to learn more about best practices from MLFTC.
The final Steering Committee retreat was hosted in late February 2022. The session was a time to celebrate the large body of work this group engaged in over the years. Additionally, a facilitator led the group through a Critical Response Process (CRP) session to gather feedback and thoughts on the recently redesigned website.
In March 2022, the PI team began creating new editions of the reflective card deck. The two new card decks would be focused on youth with one designed for grades K-5 and the other 6-12. Both decks included updated definitions and terms that were more kid friendly as well as activities and questions.
Throughout 2022, various groups were coming together to engage in Communities of Practice around certain topics of interest. These included student recruitment, hiring practices, graduate and undergraduate programs. Each of these communities was utilizing the evolving guide to communities of practice using a Principled Innovation approach.
In May 2022, conversations began on the PI team about hosting a large convening in Fall 2022 as a wrap-up of the grant to celebrate and share the work that had been developed over the last five years. This would be a convening of both internal and external partners to learn more about PI and engage in immersive experiences.
In May 2022, MLFTC hosted a training for faculty and staff members interested in learning more about the Critical Response Process and participate in a facilitation training. CRP would be utilized in various projects throughout the year to gather feedback and ideas.
The PI team facilitated multiple sessions for the Next Education Workforce Summer Institute in late June 2022. The sessions were focused on intentional decision-making and navigating dilemmas through collaborative decision-making.
Multiple sessions were hosted in summer 2022 with both MLFTC staff and faculty as well as external partners to engage in prototype course experiences for the Foundations of Principled Change course, a collaboration between Ashoka and MLFTC. The sessions were focused on engaging in course activities and then providing feedback to the course design team.
The first week of August 2022, members of the PI team facilitated a three-day, in-person session with the organization, Great MN Schools. Using PI practices and activities, the PI team worked with the group to identify their organizational values and the beginning work of building principles. A partnership between these two would continue through various conversations and projects.
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While we have accomplished more than we ever conceived at the beginning of our partnership with the Kern Family Foundation, we recognize that we still have a great deal of work to do as we continue to learn more about Principled Innovation and how it is applied and demonstrated in various contexts.
We will continue to explore these questions as we deepen our institutional commitment and practice of Principled Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College through our Communities of Practice and our personal and professional embodiment of the character assets and practices in our decision-making, communications, and pedagogy. Principled Innovation has become a part of the fabric of our college and will continue to strengthen and solidify as we nurture its application in everything we do, both at our college and with our K-12 and other partners in the field of education, teacher and leader preparation.
The next phase of our work will also include scaling Principled Innovation across Arizona State University as it serves the mission of our University Charter as a design principle. Our approach of using communities of practice as a vehicle for professional learning about PI will be expanded to provide space and opportunity for faculty, staff, students and community partners across the professions to both develop and demonstrate the character assets and practices in their own contexts as they make sense of the framework and how it applies to their own personal and professional practices.
The vision is for Principled Innovation to reach other institutions of higher education through our University Design Initiatives, professional communities through demonstration projects in the schools of business, engineering, healthcare and other colleges, our society through the preparation of ASU students to apply principled innovation to their thinking and decision making, and it will even find a home in the virtual universe through Dreamscapes Learning.
