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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Reframing Organizations and the Professional Development System  

Oakland University 

Fall 2017 

Lindsie Boykin 

 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
 

Abstract 

At MacDowell Preparatory Academy (MPA), we have a particular 

framework for professional development that is followed. It is adopted 

from the framework that Uncommon Schools, a high performing charter 

school district on the East Coast, use for their professional development 

framework. Through the lens of Bolman and Deal’s Reframing 

Organizations, I will identify how each of the four frames relate to the 

professional development system at MPA. I will identify some strengths 

and weaknesses of the system, and offer suggestions of how to make the 

system more valuable.  

 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
 

Introduction 

MacDowell Preparatory Academy (MPA) is a single building district. MPA is 

a part of a larger network of schools. This particular management network 

has a total of five schools within its portfolio. MPA is in its second year of 

turnaround. The major foci for the turnaround are academic readiness 

and positive school culture. Though MPA has existed as a community 

school for over 40 years, this is the second time it has been taken over by 

a charter management organization. The implementation of a 

professional development structure that focuses on the above mentioned 

items is new to MPA. Also, approximately 95% of the teaching staff is new 

to MPA. This presents its own set of challenges, and also, its own set of 

successes.  

MPA believes that Professional Development (PD) is a key lever in moving 

the needle north for scholar achievement and school culture. In order to 

adequately prepare teachers to do the most important work of instructing 

scholars each day, there is a certain amount of development that is 

needed professionally in order to fulfill the ambitious goals that exist.   

 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
Frame One: The Structural Frame 

Professional development for teachers is one of the most important items 

in a network or district of schools. It is the obligation of the school to 

provide quality professional development in house and also provide 

opportunities for teachers to attend external professional development 

experiences that will enhance their practice as an educator. One of the 

six structural assumptions that Bolman and Deal (2008) cover on page 45 

is, “organizations exist to achieve established goals and objectives”. 

Therefore, a system to develop teacher practice is being implemented in 

order for the larger goals and objectives to be realized.  

All school districts or networks have established a way that professional 

development runs within their group of schools. As Bolman and Deal 

(2008) mention, 

“A standard is a benchmark to ensure that goods and services 

maintain a specified level of quality. Measurement against the 

standard makes it possible to identify and fix problems.” (p. 52) 

The standards for professional development at MPA come from our 

Network, American Promise Schools (APS). Their role is to ensure that the 

particular system for professional development is executed at each 

campus effectively. Structurally, each APS school has early release days 

each Friday at 1:00pm and select 12:00pm dismissals throughout the 

school year in order to keep time for professional development sacred. As 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
the principal, I am responsible for creating a professional development 

calendar for the entire year during the first semester. In some cases, the 

professional development days are spent with the entire network of APS 

schools, or at each individual campus. Specific schools are encouraged 

to collaborate on professional development sessions, but this is not 

mandated.  

The American Promise Schools network is a divisionalized organization 

(2008, p. 80). The schools within the network function as quasi-autonomous 

units. Though the schools do not all have a unique function, each campus 

is designed for the principal to be the leader and utilize their particular skill 

sets in order to run the particular campus. This specific structural form 

makes it challenging to measure the effectiveness of the professional 

development framework due to the autonomy that exists on the campus 

level.   

Frame Two: The Human Resource Frame 

“motivating people requires understanding and responding to the range 

of needs they bring to the workplace.” (p. 120) In schools, there is a 

common need that unites all teachers and all staff. That is the need to be 

an effective educator for the students in our seats. There are a variety of 

needs that teachers bring on top of this, however, at the core, being a 

great teacher for students reigns supreme. The professional development 

system was put in place to enhance the development of teachers in 

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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
various key areas that directly influence instruction in the classroom. The 

professional development cycle identifies key areas of development 

based on classroom observations and measurement against the provided 

standards of teacher evaluation.   

Bolman and Deal discuss the assumptions of HR on p. 117-119. “People 

and organizations need each other. Organizations need ideas, energy, 

and talent; people need careers, salaries, and opportunities.” (p. 117) At 

MPA, this assumption plays out in various ways.  

(1) The MPA leadership team values the ideas and talent that teachers 

bring to the school. Through items such as quarterly surveys 

regarding school leadership, instructional coaching and school 

culture, teachers have the opportunity to voice concerns and 

solutions in order to make MPA the best place for teachers to teach 

and scholars to learn.  

(2) MPA has a lucrative bonus structure that rewards teachers for 

displaying their talent at a high level. Teachers have the opportunity 

to earn incentive pay tied not only to scholar academic outcomes, 

but also to their relationships with scholars and their families. Also, 

there are stipends for participating in various teams across the 

network to improve the areas of discipline, family engagement and 

advisory.  
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
As a part of the PD structure is the important piece of planning. This entails 

determining specific session topics and content months in advance 

based on teacher observation data and school-wide trends and 

noticings. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo states in ​Leverage Leadership​ that, 

“Great professional development starts with knowledge about what 

teachers need.” (p. 132)The PD calendar is created by the school 

principal and the deans of instruction. “Katzenbach and Smith (1993) 

discovered that a key characteristic of high-performance teams was 

mutual accountability, fostered when leaders were willing to step back 

and team members were prepared to share the leadership.” (p. 181) The 

creation of all things PD related is a collaboration where each member of 

the team is able to lead in the areas that they are most strong.  

Where this process falls short is on the teacher input piece. While the data 

is analyzed and teachers are able to provide feedback at every session, 

there is a lack of teacher presence in creating the PD calendar itself. This 

causes for there to at times be a lack of buy-in from teachers into the 

content that is presented to them. For example, the elementary dance 

teacher often struggles to find her place within sessions that focus on 

scholar mastery and assessment data. By looping her into the planning 

process, this would set her up for success to use the PD time allotted for 

items that will move her practice forward.  

 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
Frame Three: The Political Frame 

There are various techniques to influence others at play at MPA when it 

comes to professional development. The most widely observed technique 

is Authority. Bolman and Deal define Authority as, “position power”. 

(p.197) This particular technique says that if a person holds a specific 

position or title, this influences how people respond and fulfill what is 

asked. The Leadership Team members hold specific positions where they 

manage and provide feedback to staff members. While the only member 

of the leadership team that holds the power to hire and fire is the school 

principal, the other members are directly connected to the principal and 

can provide information in the event that an issue would arise.  

“Viewed from the political frame, politics is the realistic process of making 

decisions and allocating resources in a context of scarcity and divergent 

interests.” (p. 183) In an ideal space, there would be ample financial 

resources that would be available for professional development for all 

teachers and staff. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the network that 

MPA is in. Each leader has the autonomy to create the professional 

development schedule for their campus. This allows for them to place 

resources into the PD line in the budget. However, in the case of MPA, the 

resources are limited and unfortunately, PD is not something that is funded 

abundantly. This forces the school leader to get creative with how to get 

staff PD on key components and levers for best practices.  

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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
In order for professional development to be developed in a thoughtful 

and meaningful way, the leader must convey the proper direction to the 

staff for buy in and engagement. “Many people think of politicians as 

arm-twisters, and that is, in part, true. But in order to be a successful 

arm-twister, one needs to know which arm to twist and how.” ( p. 209) This 

is an important point to illuminate when evaluating the PD structure and 

framework. Currently, everyone participates in the same PD sessions 

weekly. There is no consistent differentiation. This can make for some 

challenging PD sessions since staff have varying ideas of their ability levels 

and what is pertinent to them. The Leadership Team has to be strategic in 

conversations and has to sometimes “sell” the content and its 

importance.  

As Bolman and Deal discuss, “Managers often fail to get things done 

because they rely too much on reason and too little on relationships.” (p. 

212) At MPA, relationship building is extremely important and continues to 

be a way to connect with the team and produce adequate buy-in for 

specific structures, such as the one established for PD. 

Frame Four: The Symbolic Frame 

As an organization, the network of schools that MPA is in has begun the 

process of making a name for itself in the city of Detroit. There is a specific 

culture that exists within the organization and this is known to those that 

are on the outside. “Symbols are basic elements of culture that people 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
shape to fit unique circumstances.” (p. 247) One of the symbols used at 

MPA during all PD sessions is the delivery of “Shout Out’s and Thank You’s”. 

A “Shout Out” is the opportunity for one person to recognize another 

person for something that they may have done or said that had a positive 

impact on them or the scholars. A “Thank You” is an opportunity for one 

person to publicly acknowledge another for a meaningful service, act of 

kindness or job well done. The symbol itself is that it is a public 

acknowledgement, however it can be used for much more. This act that 

takes place at the beginning of each PD session communicates that we 

acknowledge those that go above and beyond to support their fellow 

team members. This also communicates to those that do not receive a 

“Shout Out” or a “Thank You” often, that they are not stepping above 

and beyond their role in order to show support to the team. As this is the 

way that we open our PD sessions, it is an important part of the culture. 

Both “Shout Outs” and “Thank You’s” are a ritual that we perform at MPA.  

“As a symbolic act, ritual is routine that ‘usually has a statable purpose, 

but one that invariably alludes to more than it says, and has many 

meanings at once’ (Moore and Meyerhoff, 1977, p.5).” (p. 256) 

As a standing part of the Professional Development sessions at MPA, we 

implement practice as a way to “take it live” and implement the content 

from the session immediately. In order for teachers to get better faster, we 

want to provide the opportunity to plan and practice new strategies and 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
techniques and receive feedback from peers and leaders. By adding this 

component into each session, this has created a very tangible team 

dynamic where one of trust and vulnerability is created. Being a part of 

this type of team requires a level of self-reflection and drive that will allow 

teachers to tweak their practice. “Symbolic forms and activities are the 

basic elements of culture, accumulated over time to shape an 

organization’s unique identity and character.” (p. 270) Reflecting on the 

use of practice as a way to develop teachers in the moment 

communicates the identity and character of MPA; we have a laser focus 

on growing our practice in order for teachers to teach at their optimal 

level and for scholars to learn at their optimal level as well. As Paul 

Bambrick- Santoyo explains in his book ​Leverage Leadership, “

​ Professional 

development only matters if it translates from paper to practice, driving 

real improvements to student learning.” (p. 130) 

Conclusion 

Through Bolman and Deal’s ​Reframing Organizations​, we can identify 

strengths and weaknesses of the professional development structure and 

plan. In order for the PD structure to be improved, there must be a more 

strategic effort to include teachers in planning and presentation. The PD 

plan and structure has evidence of being rooted in all four frames. In 

order for the PD structure to be taken to the next level, teachers need to 

be planning alongside leaders each year. Also, by building in 

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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
opportunities for teachers to lead PD sessions themselves, this creates an 

element of buy-in that does not exist if the PD comes directly from the 

leadership team. By implementing these items to make the PD structure 

more strong, this will inevitably make instruction better for scholars; and 

that is the goal when all is said and done.  

 
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Reframing Organizations- Professional Development  
 

References 

Bambrick-Santoyo, Paul. (2012) Leverage Leadership: A Practical Guide to 

Building Exceptional Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- Bass, A Wiley 

Imprint 

Bolman, Lee G. and Deal, Terrence E. (2008) Reframing Organizations: 

Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. Fourth Edition. San Francisco, CA: 

Jossey- Bass, A Wiley Imprint