Guest editorial: A journey of organizational theory and school improvement: the legacy of Karen Seashore Louis

Citation

Lee, M. (2022), "Guest editorial: A journey of organizational theory and school improvement: the legacy of Karen Seashore Louis", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 60 No. 3, pp. 225-227. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-06-2022-270

This special issue aims to shed light on the career-long scholarship of Karen Seashore Louis by mapping the main contours of her work over the last five decades. Louis is a towering figure in educational research of organizational theory and a leading scholar of school improvement. Many researchers in the field of educational administration, organizational studies and school improvement are directly or indirectly indebted to Louis's work. To honor and reflect on her scholarship and intellectual legacy, I have assembled nine papers for this special issue. The contributing authors are leading researchers who know Louis's work well and/or who have collaborated with her, as well as former students, who are now mid-career or established researchers.

I feel obliged to say that it is a daunting task to capture Louis's work through this short editorial, given that the breadth and caliber of her scholarship informs, guides and challenges us who work in the areas of school improvement and educational organization. In fact, Louis's work continues to command conversations in the field, even in a time of unprecedented change for schools and schooling. Nonetheless, I wish to provide a brief snapshot of Louis's work to situate this special issue into the context of her research.

Much of Louis's research has explored the intersection between organization's structure/culture and how they affect organizational members' experiences. In this line of research, Louis's initial focus was on teachers' work life, which was later developed into a bigger research theme that incorporates theories and ideas on professional and adult learning in various school settings. For example, this line of research is well reflected in her co-authored books – e.g. Improving the Urban High School (Louis and Miles, 1990) and Professionalism and Community (Louis et al., 1995). More details about this line of work are illuminated in Louis's own article, entitled String Theory and Knots, provided here in this special issue. Hargreaves's essay, entitled High School Change, also discusses key ideas (e.g. educational change, professional communities, innovation, knowledge utilization) in relation to high school reform drawn from Louis's work.

Regarding the research theme noted above, I also wish to note that Louis was one of the first scholars who explored the role of professional communities in schools. Indeed, several empirical studies that she conducted with colleagues (e.g. Bryk, Miles, Kruse) in the 1990s cemented the research foundation for the concept of the school as a “professional learning community” (PLC), one of the most blossoming research areas in school improvement over the last two decades. In this special issue, the influence of her work on PLC is presented in Lee et al.'s article – i.e. A Review of Professional Learning Community (PLC) Instruments.

Later, Louis's work on teachers' professional communities led her to focus on principal behavior, as demonstrated in her Wallace Foundation study, conducted with Leithwood (Louis et al., 2010). Although Louis's initial study interest was not in leadership per se, since then she has focused more on leadership themes (e.g. caring leadership) (Louis et al., 2016; Louis and Murphy, 2017). This is because Louis sees leadership as the primary cause of organizational change. Echoing Louis's recent work on school leadership, three articles in this special issue extend Louis's view of the role of leadership in school change: (1) How Strong Principals Succeed: Improving Student Achievement in High-Poverty Urban Schools (by Gordon and Hart); (2) Using Multiple Leadership Frames to Understand How Two School Principals are Influencing Teachers' Practices and Achievement of Hispanic English Learners (by Clark and Chrispeels); and (3) Exploring Trust: Culturally Responsive and Positive School Leadership (by Banwo, Khalifa and Louis).

I also wish to briefly touch upon two aspects of Louis's work that are relatively lesser known, when compared to Louis's established research contribution in the sphere of education. First, it may be that few educational researchers understand the degree to which Louis's work has impacted on academic scholarship outside of K-12 education, especially regarding organizations and the ways they discover and use knowledge. Specifically, Louis's work revealed how university–industry relationships impact knowledge generation and use. This line of research also reached into the scientific community with her writing included in leading scientific and medical journals, Sciences and the New England Journal of Medicine. Second, of note is Louis's work on the intersection between organizational research and policy. In fact, through several research projects, she explored in-depth how organizations adapt to changing policy environments. For example, she demonstrated how state-level policies in relation to accountability are translated into schools through sense-making activity (Louis et al., 2005). This aspect of Louis's work is thoughtfully reflected in Johansson and Arlestig's article in this special issue. Their research, entitled Democratic Governing Ideals and the Power of Intervening Spaces as Prerequisite for Student Learning, explores how an intervening space, referring to “a group of persons with the power and responsibility to interpret policy at their level in an organization,” can be links in the governing chain of public schools where collaborative learning and sense-making occur in relation to new policy.

In addition, I wish to recommend that readers take a look at Kruse and Walls's reflective essay, entitled Community, Learning and Leadership, in this issue. The essay concisely captures the development of Louis's work and contribution with a focus on professional community, organizational learning and school leadership. Readers would also benefit from looking at the commentary written by Riley that provides a nice wrap-up leaving us with some final thoughts on the significance of Louis's research work to date.

In conclusion, this special issue maps our knowledge of the research themes noted above through the lens of Louis's work. That is, it is a good time for us to consider what we have come to understand more clearly in recent decades, but also what we are yet to discover in a time of uncertainty and challenge for schools, and for education more broadly. Wide acknowledgement from academic communities should be paid in tribute to Louis's standing in these fields of school improvement and organizational research. The reflections and critiques on Louis's scholarly impact provided here by stellar research voices serve to further deepen our understanding of Louis's insights and to signpost future research directions that may be possible in school leadership and educational organization. Lastly, I greatly appreciate all contributing authors and their collegiality and willingness to write papers that suitably honor the scholarship and continuing legacy of Karen Seashore Louis.