Education, Faculty of
Educational Studies (EDST), Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Markin, Gail Marie
Doctor of Education - EdD
University of British Columbia
Institutional practices and social relations are impacting the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia (BC). Psychological safety is the belief that the environment is safe for people to share their perspectives or to ask questions without fear of being rejected, shamed, or punished in some way for doing so. Despite communication with district leaders being essential to driving school change, BC principals and vice principals are experiencing relatively low levels of psychological safety in their communication with district leaders. This inquiry set out to discover under what circumstances principals and vice principals do and do not speak up, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders. This research looks particularly at institutional practices and social relations and how they impact the psychological safety of principals and vice principals, because little is known about the impact of these practices. The findings of this research suggest what supports, services, or practices would increase psychological safety for principals and vice principals. Institutional ethnography was used as a methodology to explore how principals’ and vice principals’ experiences of psychological safety are being socially constructed. Research methods included interviews with nine principals and vice principals, the exploration of texts that impact their work, researcher reflections, and subsequent interviews with four superintendents. The institutional practices and social relations that were found to be impacting psychological safety included meeting structures and practices, hierarchical power differences, the understanding of principals’ and vice principals’ fiduciary duty, and unwritten and often unexamined workplace rules. This research found a disjuncture between the role and responsibility of school administrators—to be a connection between schools and the district office—and what is actually iv playing out in their day-to-day work. Embedding institutional factors that promote psychological safety will open up this vital communication between schools and district offices. When principals and vice principals feel safe to share ideas and ask questions at a district level, it is possible to open up creativity, learning, and success for school administrators themselves, their teams, and the school district as a whole.
PRINCIPAL AND VICE PRINCIPAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AN INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY by Gail Marie Markin B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1988 M.Sc., Western Washington University, 1990 M. Ed., The University of British Columbia, 1999 B. Ed., The University of British Columbia, 2007 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF EDUCATION in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Educational Leadership and Policy) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) June 2025 © Gail Marie Markin, 2025 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: PRINCIPAL AND VICE PRINCIPAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: AN INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY submitted by Gail Marie Markin in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education In Educational Leadership and Policy Examining Committee: Fei Wang, Associate Professor, Educational Studies, UBC Supervisor Shauna Butterwick, Professor Emeritus, Educational Studies, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Sabre Cherkowski, Professor, Okanagan School of Education, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Guofang, Li, Professor, Language and Literacy Education, UBC University Examiner Alison Taylor, Professor, Educational Studies, UBC University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Chris Kennedy, Superintendent of Schools, West Vancouver School District Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Institutional practices and social relations are impacting the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia (BC). Psychological safety is the belief that the environment is safe for people to share their perspectives or to ask questions without fear of being rejected, shamed, or punished in some way for doing so. Despite communication with district leaders being essential to driving school change, BC principals and vice principals are experiencing relatively low levels of psychological safety in their communication with district leaders. This inquiry set out to discover under what circumstances principals and vice principals do and do not speak up, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders. This research looks particularly at institutional practices and social relations and how they impact the psychological safety of principals and vice principals, because little is known about the impact of these practices. The findings of this research suggest what supports, services, or practices would increase psychological safety for principals and vice principals. Institutional ethnography was used as a methodology to explore how principals’ and vice principals’ experiences of psychological safety are being socially constructed. Research methods included interviews with nine principals and vice principals, the exploration of texts that impact their work, researcher reflections, and subsequent interviews with four superintendents. The institutional practices and social relations that were found to be impacting psychological safety included meeting structures and practices, hierarchical power differences, the understanding of principals’ and vice principals’ fiduciary duty, and unwritten and often unexamined workplace rules. This research found a disjuncture between the role and responsibility of school administrators—to be a connection between schools and the district office—and what is actually iv playing out in their day-to-day work. Embedding institutional factors that promote psychological safety will open up this vital communication between schools and district offices. When principals and vice principals feel safe to share ideas and ask questions at a district level, it is possible to open up creativity, learning, and success for school administrators themselves, their teams, and the school district as a whole. v Lay Summary Principals and vice principals have an important communication and liaison role between schools and the district office, but many principals and vice principals are not feeling psychologically safe enough to ask questions and share ideas with district leaders. This dissertation explores the circumstances under which administrators speak up with questions or ideas and under what circumstances they choose not to speak up. This inquiry was particularly interested in institutional practices that impact psychological safety and found that there are relatively simple practices and ways of working together that can increase psychological safety for principals and vice principals. The hope is that by making the barriers to psychological safety visible, and by embedding practices that support psychological safety, communication will be opened up, leading to the creation of more collaborative, creative, and healthy workplaces. vi Preface This dissertation is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Gail Markin. I designed and conducted this research study under the supervision of Dr. Fei Wang and with input from my committee members, Dr. Shauna Butterwick, Dr. Sabre Cherkowski, and Dr. Chris Kennedy. I completed all analyses for this thesis and wrote all thesis chapters, unassisted by GenAI. I obtained approval from the UBC Research Ethics Board, Certificate # H23-00832-A002, May 22, 2024, under the project title: Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography. vii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................. iii LAY SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... v PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................ .vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................ .vii LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................................................... x LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................................... xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................................ xii DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................................................ xiii CHAPTER 1: UNCOVERING WHAT IS PREVENTING PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS FROM SPEAKING UP: THE PROBLEMATIC AND CONTEXT OF THE INQUIRY ...................................................................................................... 1 BUILDING ON EXISTING STUDIES ........................................................................................................................................ 2 BRITISH COLUMBIA CONTEXT............................................................................................................................................ 5 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY AND WHY IT MATTERS ................................................................................................................... 7 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................................................................ 8 DISSERTATION STRUCTURE ............................................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE .......................................................................................................... 11 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY ................................................................................................................................................ 11 AN EVOLVING CONCEPT: INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, ORGANIZATIONAL .......................................................................................... 12 Psychological Safety at the Individual Level ........................................................................................................ 14 Psychological Safety at the Group Level ............................................................................................................. 16 Psychological Safety at the Organizational Level ................................................................................................ 17 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................ 19 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY OF PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS ............................................................................................... 22 The Impact of Role on Psychological Safety ........................................................................................................ 24 VOICE AND SILENCE ...................................................................................................................................................... 26 Outcomes and Implications of Voice and Silence ................................................................................................ 27 RULING RELATIONS AND POWER ..................................................................................................................................... 29 BELONGING ................................................................................................................................................................. 31 viii SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................................................. 36 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 38 RESEARCH PARADIGM ................................................................................................................................................... 38 INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................... 39 Problematic ......................................................................................................................................................... 42 Ruling Relations .................................................................................................................................................. 42 Role of the Researcher ........................................................................................................................................ 44 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES ...................................................................................................................................... 46 Participants ......................................................................................................................................................... 48 First-Level Individual Interviews .......................................................................................................................... 50 Texts .................................................................................................................................................................... 51 Second-Level Individual Interviews ..................................................................................................................... 54 Reflection ............................................................................................................................................................ 57 DATA ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................................ 58 TRUSTWORTHINESS ...................................................................................................................................................... 60 ANALYSIS TO ACTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 61 CHAPTER 4: TENSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS: EXPLICATING RULING KNOWLEDGE AND RELATIONS ........................................................................................... 62 FIRST-LEVEL INTERVIEWS: PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS ................................................................................................. 62 Choosing Voice and the Outcomes of This Choice ............................................................................................... 63 Choosing Silence ................................................................................................................................................. 75 Outcomes of Silence ............................................................................................................................................ 85 REFLECTIONS ON THE INTERVIEWS ................................................................................................................................... 91 SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................................................. 94 CHAPTER 5: INSTITUTIONAL PROCESSES AND DISCOURSES: A BIFURCATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS ....................... 95 TEXTS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 95 The BC School Act ................................................................................................................................................ 96 Code of Professional Practice .............................................................................................................................. 98 Leadership Standards .......................................................................................................................................... 99 Reflections on the Texts ..................................................................................................................................... 100 SECOND-LEVEL INTERVIEWS: SUPERINTENDENTS AND ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENTS ............................................................... 101 Opportunities to Share Ideas and Ask Questions in the School Administrator Role .......................................... 102 The Impact of Relationships on Principals’ and Vice Principals’ Psychological Safety ...................................... 105 ix Learning About the Role .................................................................................................................................... 107 Fiduciary Duty and Being an Agent of the Board .............................................................................................. 108 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................................ 112 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................................................................... 113 MEETINGS AND RELATIONSHIPS .................................................................................................................................... 114 UNDERSTANDING FIDUCIARY DUTY ................................................................................................................................ 116 District Leaders’ Interpretations ........................................................................................................................ 117 Duty to Staff ...................................................................................................................................................... 119 POWER AND HIERARCHY .............................................................................................................................................. 119 UNWRITTEN AND UNEXAMINED WORKPLACE RULES ......................................................................................................... 120 Avoid Controversy ............................................................................................................................................. 121 Learning Culture From Existing Culture ............................................................................................................. 122 Unintended Consequences ................................................................................................................................ 123 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ............................................................................................................................. 130 RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................................................... 131 Create a District Culture of Psychological Safety .............................................................................................. 133 Design Psychologically Safe Meeting Structures and Practices ......................................................................... 134 Redistribute Social Power .................................................................................................................................. 136 Clarify Terms and Expectations ......................................................................................................................... 137 Design Open Communication Plans and Create Collective Accountability ........................................................ 139 Design Mentoring Programs That Model Psychological Safety ........................................................................ 140 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................. 141 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................................... 144 APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION AND CONSENT FORM (PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS) .............. 166 APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION AND CONSENT FORM (DISTRICT LEADERS) ...................................... 171 APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW SCRIPT AND QUESTIONS FOR PRINCIPALS AND VICE PRINCIPALS ............................... 176 APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW SCRIPT AND QUESTIONS FOR DISTRICT LEADERS ....................................................... 179 x List of Tables Table 1 Description of Participants ......................................................................................... 50 Table 2 Description of Second-Level Interview Participants ................................................. 57 Table 3 Recommendations From This Research................................................................... 133 xi List of Figures Figure 1 Psychological Safety: Literature Review Findings .................................................... 34 Figure 2 Psychological Safety: Recommendations From this Research ................................ 128 xii Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge with great respect and gratitude that UBC Vancouver is on the traditional and unceded land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional and unceded territory of the q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie) and q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen) people where I live and have done the majority of this dissertation work. My first thank you is to the participants. Thank you for sharing your stories and wisdom with me. I am grateful for this gift and hope I have served you well. I would also like to thank my committee members for their support. I am grateful to Dr. Sabre Cherkowski for her encouragement and unwavering support. Thanks to Dr. Chris Kennedy for his thoughtful questions and enthusiastic encouragement. Having someone embedded in both academic research and practice was so valuable. Thanks to Dr. Shauna Butterwick for so many bits of wisdom and for getting me across the finish line when I had trouble seeing it. Thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Fei Wang, for inspiring me to do this research, for making my work better, and for studying—but more importantly, practising—psychological safety. I didn’t make it easy, but I hope I made you proud. Thank you to my Ed. D. cohort, affectionately known as the Pandemic Peeps. It was a pleasure learning alongside every one of you. A special thank you to Genevieve McMahon, Mary DeMarinis, and Chas Desjarlais for all the Saturday morning writing sessions and beyond. Huge love and gratitude to my family and friends who have supported and lifted me up all along the way. Thanks for listening to more details than you probably ever needed and for encouraging and supporting this work. I couldn’t have done it without you. xiii Dedication To healing and hope 1 Chapter 1: Uncovering What is Preventing Principals and Vice Principals From Speaking Up: The Problematic and Context of the Inquiry My research explores the experiences of psychological safety of a small group of current and retired principals, vice principals, and district principals in British Columbia (BC). My curiosity emerged through my practice, first as a school counsellor, and then as a district support teacher for health and well-being. I currently work as an educational consultant and coach; I support school districts with well-being plans, initiatives, and professional development. In doing this work, I have heard from many principals and vice principals who told me they had ideas for school improvement, or else they were struggling with district or provincial practices or policies that they believed were not working well. They were reluctant to share these ideas, which surprised and concerned me. For example, I once asked a principal of the school I was working with what he thought of a new practice that was being introduced at our school. He said that it didn’t matter what he thought about it, and that he wouldn’t tell me what he thought, as he believed his job was only to implement the practice. I remember thinking that it was too bad we, as two professionals, couldn’t have a conversation about this practice. It certainly shut down the conversation and stopped my learning about the process and my understanding of the thinking behind it. This experience, among others, instigated this inquiry. I was curious about why sharing information and feedback up the system hierarchy seemed to be very controlled or avoided altogether. In my work with principals and vice principals, I was particularly surprised that many were reluctant to share ideas with district leaders, because I assumed that part of their role was to connect the ideas and concerns of school staff to district leadership and vice versa. This unique 2 and challenging middle management role of principals and vice principals makes their psychological safety particularly important because they are responsible for communicating between the staff they lead and district leadership (Reid, 2018). If these school leaders don’t feel safe about speaking up and sharing their ideas and/or the ideas of their teams, important communication is prevented, and creativity, learning, and growth are interfered with (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). As the school leaders, the role of principals and vice principals is both to lead initiatives through their own leadership skills and to be the person responsible for ensuring fidelity and compliance with district and provincially directed policies and practices (Flessa, 2012). Building on Existing Studies This inquiry has also been informed by research exploring the communication pathways between principals, vice principals, and school district superintendents, as these exchanges are central to driving school change (Flessa, 2012). The psychological safety of principals and vice principals builds on Wang’s (2022b) study Psychological Safety of School Administrators: Invisible Barriers to Speaking Out, in which the author noted “the criticality of psychological safety [revealing] the alarming reality of school administrators: a little over one quarter of principals (25.4%) and 20.5% of VPs in British Columbia felt their psychological safety is poor or very poor at work” (p. 65). Wang (2022b) also found that while principals and vice principals reported relatively high levels of psychological safety within their schools, they experienced relatively low levels of psychological safety in their communications at the district level due to the hierarchical nature of organizational culture and structure, which creates challenges to open communication. 3 Wang’s research (2022b) revealed that institutional structures like hierarchy are impacting psychological safety, but it is unclear if and how institutional practices and relations shape and are shaped by psychological safety. Most previous research on psychological safety does concentrate on how individual and team practices can increase or decrease psychological safety, but more recently, scholars have also pointed to the need to consider and investigate organizational or systems level factors as well (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). My research addresses this gap by exploring more deeply how institutional practices and relations shape and are shaped by psychological safety. Psychological safety is one of the key factors that promotes well-being in the workplace (Edmondson, 2019). Well-being has been defined in different ways, but most definitions include the combination of feeling good and functioning well (Keyes & Annas, 2009). Well-being “incorporates not only the positive emotions such as happiness and contentment but also the development of one’s potential, having some control over one’s life, having a sense of purpose, and experiencing positive relationships” (p. 3). With high levels of stress and burnout in education workplaces (Froese-Germaine, 2014; Hutchinson et al., 2021), there is a growing interest in systems level change towards well-being for everyone in the K-12 education workplace (Ellyatt, 2022), but there is a particular need to consider the well-being of school leaders (Kutsyuruba, 2024). Research reveals that principals and vice principals globally (Kelly, 2023) and specifically in British Columbia (Wang, 2022a) are reporting high levels of work-related stress as well, which is impacting their health and well-being (Kelly, 2023, Wang, 2022a). Although there are many factors that impact workplace well-being and principal and vice principal well-being specifically, psychological safety is considered an essential factor (Clarke et al., 2024). It is a 4 strong contributing factor for both the well-being of individuals (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2016; Lim et al., 2022) and for the success and well-being of work teams (Edmondson, 1999). If an employee feels like they are able to contribute and share their ideas, it increases their sense of well-being, which improves job satisfaction and leads to lower levels of burnout (Clarke et al., 2024). This is true of all employees, but the impact on leaders has added value because their well-being impacts the well-being of the people they lead as well (Kutsyuruba et al., 2024). When school leaders are not well, it impacts their quality of life, and the students and staff they lead are also negatively impacted (Wang et al., 2018). Other studies in this area of psychological safety and related concepts are outlined in the next chapter. For my inquiry, the problematic I sought to explore was how, even though principals and vice principals have key roles to play in understanding, communicating, and implementing provincial and district policies, they encounter institutional practices and social relations which make such endeavours difficult, thus preventing schools from functioning to their full potential. Institutional Ethnography and Research Questions In order to deepen and expand understanding of psychological safety, the approach taken in this inquiry is institutional ethnography (IE), a way to explicate and explore these tensions and how they are socially organized (Kearney et al., 2019). IE was selected as my methodology as it is particularly focused on exploring the institutional practices and social relations impacting the ways principals and vice principals communicate with school district leaders. IE research begins with identifying a problematic: in this case, the reluctance of principals and vice principals to share their ideas with the school district leaders because they feel psychologically unsafe to do so. From this lived experience, the researcher then explores “what is new and had not been known in advance” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 18). 5 My goal in this inquiry is to contribute to the current research into principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. Given my orientation to supporting the well-being of staff and students in schools, this research has also deepened my understanding of well-being and improved my practice. As noted, I was keen to explore the circumstances within which administrators do and do not speak up, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders. Using an IE framework, my research began with the lived experiences of principals and vice principals and subsequently explored how their experiences of psychological safety are shaped by institutional practices and social relations. My research questions were the following: 1. Under what circumstances do principals and vice principals speak up or not, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders? 2. What institutional practices and social relations impact psychological safety for principals and vice principals? 3. What support, services, or practices are needed to create a psychologically safe and healthy environment for principals and vice principals? British Columbia Context The role of principals and vice principals and the work they do varies depending on the political and social context they are in (Winton & Pollack, 2013). This study explored the experiences of a small number of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. In Canada, education is a provincial responsibility, but there are significant variations between provinces. The governance structure in British Columbia is a hierarchical system, with the Ministry of Education at the top and school district boards below them. Boards of education in each of the 60 school districts are locally elected to four-year terms. The school board sets the overall direction 6 of the school district and local policy. Day-to-day operations of school districts are delegated to the superintendent, who in turn delegates to other school district staff. Schools are led by school principals and vice principals, depending on the size of the school and the practice in the district. In larger secondary schools, there is often more than one vice principal, but in smaller schools the principal is often the only administrator in the building. The term “administrators” is often used to describe school-based and district principals and vice principals so I will use that term here as well. British Columbia’s 60 school districts cover the wide geographic area of the province and range from large urban districts to much smaller rural and remote districts. BC teachers are part of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. Although principals and vice principals were originally part of this union, in 1988 they were removed from the union (Williams, 2022). This has significant implications for principals and vice principals, as they are not “considered employees under the Labour Relations Code” (BC School Act, 1996) and so are without the protections this Act provides. British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec are the only Canadian provinces where principals and vice principals are not part of the teachers’ union. Principals and vice principals sign separate employment contracts with school districts, which can make them more vulnerable to decisions of district leaders. Superintendents, and through them, assistant superintendents, are responsible for assigning administrators to schools and can move them from school to school based on the needs of the district. The BC School Act (1996) is the legal document that describes the role and responsibilities of the principal (and through the principal, the vice principal). Principals and vice principals did form a separate association, the BC Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association, when they were removed from the union. This 7 voluntary association provides school administrators with support, professional development, and advocacy. Psychological Safety and Why It Matters Psychological safety is the belief that the environment is safe for people to share their perspectives or to ask questions without fear of being rejected, shamed, or punished in some way for doing so (Edmondson, 2019). It is the belief that the space one is in, is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Psychological safety is a construct that has been explored much more in the business workplace but has been found to be a robust concept that is generalizable to many workplaces, including education (Edmondson et al., 2016). Psychological safety has also been linked to several desirable workplace outcomes, such as a) increased task performance, b) employee engagement, commitment, and satisfaction, and c) some important employee behaviours like information sharing, learning, citizenship behaviour, and creativity (Frazier et al., 2017; Gong et al., 2021; Premeaux and Bedeian, 2003). Psychological safety is generally considered a team or group level concept (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022), as it can vary considerably from team to team within an organization, but it can be “supported or hindered by the nested institutional structures that surround and support a given team unit (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022, p. 2291). Improvement in psychological safety leads to many workplace benefits such as increasing the psychological well-being of individuals, creating positive workplace cultures, and producing more successful and effective work teams (Edmondson, 2019). These positive outcomes make creating an environment with high psychological safety a goal for many organizations. Although increasing psychological safety of principals and vice principals would produce many of these positive outcomes, two findings that are of particular interest in today’s education context are that psychological safety increases 8 well-being (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2016) and contributes to organizational learning and success (Edmondson, 1999). Significance of the Study One of the main purposes of this study was to discover what the social relations or what IE calls ruling relations are, and the impact they have on psychological safety. This study seeks to make both the ruling relations themselves and the impacts they have visible. The hope is that by making these things visible, this research will provide new learning about ways to increase psychological safety of principals and vice principals. Although psychological safety has been well researched (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023), knowledge about how to create psychological safety is “one of the most glaring gaps in the literature” (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023, p. 71). Previous research tended to focus on psychological safety at an individual or group level (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023), so looking at institutional practices and social relations provides new opportunities for improvement. By learning how policies, practices, and ways of being are decreasing or increasing psychological safety, leaders can make thoughtful and intentional changes to these systems factors to increase psychological safety for school administrators. My hope is that by discovering what these institutional practices and social relations are, education leaders can use this knowledge to revise or create practices, policies, and ways of working together that create psychological safety and all of the benefits that entails. Dissertation Structure In the first chapter I introduce the problematic of the inquiry, that is, what institutional practices and social relations impact principals’ and vice principals’ experiences of a lack of psychological safety in speaking up with district leaders (Wang, 2022b), despite this communication being an important part of their role (Flessa, 2012) and an important element of 9 functioning schools. This chapter explores the circumstances in which principals and vice principals do or do not speak up. It also includes a brief overview of the existing research, a discussion of the methodology, information about the BC context in which principals and vice principals work, and a summary of the dissertation structure. Chapter 2 provides a definition and description of psychological safety and how it has evolved as a construct, outlining why psychological safety is important and why it is particularly important in the education workplace. This chapter also includes literature on topics connected to psychological safety, like voice behaviour, power, and belonging in the workplace. The review then looks at the unique role of principals and vice principals in the education system and their psychological safety. The chapter ends by identifying the research gaps this research seeks to address. Chapter 3 begins with a description of the paradigm that informs this research. I next provide a description of institutional ethnography as a research methodology, and a rationale for using this approach. The chapter describes the main premises and constructs of IE as well as the role of the researcher. The research methods used are discussed, including interviews, the exploration of texts, and researcher reflection. I describe the use of indexing and writing accounts as a form of data analysis. The matter of the trustworthiness of the study is also explored. Chapter 4 presents the findings from the initial interviews conducted with principals and vice principals. Non-identifying demographic information about the interview participants is given. This is followed by analysis of the interview findings, including the institutional practices and social relations that impacted administrators’ decisions to speak up, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders (voice), as well as the outcomes of these decisions. This chapter 10 concludes with my own reflections and observations of the interviews with principals and vice principals, and explains how these interviews shaped the rest of this evolving inquiry. Chapter 5 shifts the focus to an exploration of texts that were referenced by principals and vice principals as impacting their decision to speak or remain silent. In IE, texts are any kind of “material media that carry messages, images and sounds and displaces the presence of whoever made them” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 31). The understanding that district leaders have regarding the role of the school administrator and how school administrators learn about their role is also discussed. District leaders shared the significance of fiduciary duty and being an agent of the board, and how they saw these terms in relation to principals and vice principals. In the final chapter I review the research questions, summarize the findings, and make some recommendations and closing reflections. 11 Chapter 2: A Review of the Literature This review begins with a definition and description of psychological safety and how it has evolved as a construct. It then discusses psychological safety research done in the education workplace in particular. This chapter also includes literature about topics that are connected to psychological safety and emerged during this study. Voice behaviour, power, and belonging in the workplace were all mentioned by the participants as being related to their psychological safety, so research in all of these areas is included here. In addition, the review covers the unique role of principals and vice principals in the education system, and the importance of their psychological safety. The chapter ends by identifying the research gaps that this research seeks to address. Psychological Safety Psychological safety is a construct that has been widely researched (Edmondson & Lei, 2014) and is acknowledged as essential in today’s workplace, where we are facing more uncertainty, change, and need for innovation than ever before (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). This greater uncertainty and complexity has increased “the need to inspire and enable people to contribute their knowledge in a timely, candid way” (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023, p. 56). The understanding of the concept of psychological safety has evolved over time. The term “psychological safety” is credited to Schein and Bennis (1965), who wrote about psychological safety as reducing interpersonal risk and described it as essential for organizational change. Schein and Bennis believed that there was a certain amount of anxiety involved for everyone when they were learning new things. They saw creating psychological safety as a way to help the individual overcome their learning anxiety when they were faced with new 12 information (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). In the 1990s, William Kahn (1990) used the term “psychological safety” to describe “role engagement,” meaning the circumstances under which people were more likely to engage instead of withdrawing in groups. He found more engagement in groups where there was trust and respect (Kahn, 1990). He differentiated between conditions where people were willing to express themselves and engage fully in their role, and conditions where they withdrew to protect themselves (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). Amy Edmondson (1999) furthered the understanding of psychological safety and defined it as a perception related to the consequences of taking interpersonal risks at work (Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). Psychological safety research has grown and evolved exponentially since the 1990s, and is now considered to be a “mature theory that presents high agreement about construct definition and measurement” (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023, p. 56). Despite psychological safety being considered a mature theory, there are critiques and limitations to consider. Psychological safety is an interpersonal construct that exists in a social system, but studies of psychological safety often examine individual outcomes of group level psychological safety. Edmondson and Bransby (2023) suggest that on stable teams, a team level measure may be more appropriate, but for groups that collaborate with different people at different times, individual measure of psychological safety may make more sense. An Evolving Concept: Individual, Group, Organizational The concept of psychological safety has been researched and understood at all three levels of influence: individual, group, and organizational. The early versions of this concept (Kahn, 1990; Schein & Bennis, 1965) focused on individuals. Schein and Bennis wrote about psychological safety as an individual’s perception of the situation they were in as safe, and that the individual’s perception was “a critical part of the unfreezing process required for 13 organizational learning and change” (Frazier et al., 2017, p. 115). Kahn described psychological safety as a necessary condition for people to feel attachment to and engagement in their work roles. He said that people were psychologically safe when they were “able to show and employ oneself without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career” (Kahn, 1990, p. 708). This focus on the individual assumes that safety is mainly the responsibility of the individual. This misses the complexity and impact of the social systems of the workplace (Frazier et al., 2017). More recently, the concept of psychological safety has evolved from Kahn’s (1990) focus on the perceptions of the individual to more of a group level construct, because individual personality traits alone did not account for levels of perceived safety (Frazier et al., 2017). Psychological safety has become more of a group level construct, as its complexity moves beyond a single individual’s perception and includes a shared understanding and experience of safety (Edmondson, 1999). The study of psychological safety as a group construct “originated with research by Edmondson (1999) which found significant differences in the interpersonal climate of psychological safety between groups within the same organization” (Edmondson & Lei, 2014, p. 29). Psychological safety is now seen as a group construct and most research has been done at that level (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023), but research is increasingly considering systemic factors like rules, practices, and policies (Frazier et al., 2017) and how these organizational factors are impacting the work of teams. Although the focus has changed, these different viewpoints are more “complementary views of the same construct” (Frazier et al., 2017, p. 116), and therefore it is valuable to consider psychological safety at all levels of analysis (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). 14 Psychological Safety at the Individual Level Although psychological safety is now commonly considered a group construct (Edmondson & Lei, 2014), earlier research looking at individual factors did contribute to the understanding of psychological safety. Three personality traits—proactive personality, emotional stability, and learning orientation—have been found to be positively correlated with psychological safety (Frazier et al., 2017). For example, people with proactive personalities, who tend to engage in take-charge, forge-ahead behaviours, report high levels of psychological safety across different contexts. Another personality trait that has been linked to one’s perception of psychological safety is emotional stability (Frazier et al., 2017; Judge et al., 2000). People who are calmer and more relaxed are more likely to perceive the environment as safe than someone who is already feeling anxious. The third personality trait mentioned describes someone who has what is called a “learning orientation.” This trait is described as “a stable disposition or trait that is characterized by a focus on increasing competence and developing new skills” (Frazier et al., 2017, p. 118). People with a learning orientation see mistakes as essential to learning, so they are more open to making mistakes and learning from them. This view of learning is positively correlated with psychological safety (Drinka, 2018). The other individual differences that are worth considering are demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, work experience, and position within the organization. Although research on psychological safety and diversity is limited, the existing research indicates diversity impacts individual experiences of psychological safety (Edmondson & Roloff, 2008). For example, older employees often experience more psychological safety than younger employees, as they tend to have more experience and often have higher positions in the organization (Edmondson et al., 2016). 15 Some research indicates that men and woman experience psychological safety differently (Dwivedi et al., 2022). For example, female executives experienced more psychological safety and were more likely to stay in their positions when they perceived that the organization’s CEO valued gender, cultural, and religious differences among their employees (Dwivedi et al., 2022). There was no similar effect for males (Dwivedi et al., 2022). Research on racial diversity and psychological safety by Singh et al. (2013) demonstrated that an organization’s diversity climate, or “the extent to which the organization values and integrates diversity and supports it through fair employment practices” (p. 243), was positively correlated with employees’ level of psychological safety. This positive relationship between a supportive diversity climate and psychological safety was stronger for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) employees than for Whites (Singh et al., 2013). More specifically to principals and vice principals, BIPOC administrators reported lower levels of psychological safety than White principals and vice principals (Wang, 2022b). Although individual factors impact psychological safety, the individual cannot be taken out of the relationships and contexts of which they are a part (Frazier et al., 2017). Individual factors alone are not enough to fully explain whether people choose to speak up or not (Frazier et al., 2017). For example, even people with the protective personality traits listed above will not feel safe to speak up if their supervisor doesn’t show an openness to change or doesn’t listen to input from their team (Detert & Burris, 2007). Protective personality traits are not enough to ensure psychological safety because it is also impacted by social relations and organizational practices. 16 Psychological Safety at the Group Level The majority of research on psychological safety has been done at the group level (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023), which is “indicative of the essential nature of the construct as an emergent property of a social system” (p. 69). In their review of psychological safety research, Edmondson and Bransby discussed the collaborative nature of work and the growth of teams. Both depend on “the timely and candid sharing of information, opinions, questions, and concerns” (p. 56). Psychological safety on teams has been credited with many positive workplace outcomes like team effort, team performance, and work efficiency (Edmondson, 1999). When people feel they can be themselves and share their ideas, they are more likely to engage in their work in creative ways (May et al., 2004). Learning and creativity cannot occur when people’s brains are in a fear response state (Whiting et al., 2021). In a psychologically safe environment, energy is not needed for self-preservation and can be directed more to the task or project the group is working on together (Edmondson, 1999). People are more likely to stay engaged and report feelings of well-being and work satisfaction when they work on teams where they experience psychological safety (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2016). Relationship experiences such as levels of interaction and familiarity between team members are also contributors to team members’ perceptions of psychological safety (Newman et al., 2017), a finding that highlights the interpersonal nature of psychological safety. For example, when people have worked together previously and are familiar with each other, it increases their levels of psychological safety on teams (Roberto, 2002). Similarly, having social network ties with people they trust and respect on their teams increases people’s perceptions of psychological safety (Schulte et al., 2012). These “relationship networks, and the social support 17 and resources inherent in such networks, promote psychological safety and contribute to team learning, performance and innovation” (Newman et al., 2017, p. 525). Psychological Safety at the Organizational Level Psychological safety is considered important at the larger system or organizational level as well, as it impacts organizational performance and learning (Edmondson, 2004). Although there is not as much research at the organization level, in a recent review of psychological safety research (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023) the researchers pointed out that “increasingly, diverse expertise across disciplinary boundaries must be combined effectively to accomplish organizational goals” (p. 56), and that this is difficult to do when people are reluctant to speak up. If the organization, or in this case, school districts, do not create a culture of psychological safety where people and teams of people are safe to be creative, share ideas, and ask questions, then learning and organizational change and growth is difficult (Edmondson, 2004). Organizational context impacts employees’ willingness to speak up (Detert & Burris, 2007), because “even the most proactive or satisfied employees are likely to ‘read the wind’ as to whether it is safe and/or worthwhile to speak up in their particular context” (p. 869). This research on institutional context also included studies about leadership practices that encouraged voice or speaking up (Detert & Burris, 2007). For example, Detert and Burris, in a study that looked at leadership behaviour’s impact on voice, found that “very specific leadership behaviors were needed rather than generically positive or personalized leadership” (p. 881). The specific leadership behaviours that encouraged employees to speak up were being open to change, being clear that voice behaviour was wanted, and a proven willingness to act on input from people below them in the hierarchy. Relationship and behaviour cues from colleagues also added to psychological safety, because if people felt supported by colleagues (Xie et al., 2015) or if they 18 saw their colleagues speak up (Subhakaran & Dyaram, 2018), they were more likely to do the same. These behaviours of leaders and colleagues are group factors as well, but they also contribute to the overall climate of psychological safety in the organization, especially if they become common practice and are embedded in the way things are done within the organization. There are other organizational structures and practices that are also impacting people’s decisions to speak up or not (Morrison, 2023). In their book about understanding voice and silence at work, Mark Cole and John Higgins (2023) described the need to look at the organization environment. They wrote: [Workplaces have] developed an obsession with making sure that people feel able to speak up—but have failed to acknowledge that this is meaningless without careful and meaningful attention to the organisational environment, its communicative climate, and the delicate issue of psychological safety, despite this linkage being clearly acknowledged. (Cole & Higgins, 2023, p. 139) When making decisions about when to speak up or remain silent, employees are looking at multiple aspects of organizational environment (Milliken et al., 2003). Employees use their perception of the organizational rules and practices to “develop a cognitive map of the organization’s communication norms, a map of what one can and cannot say, and of what may happen as a result” (p. 1456). One of the concerns about looking at psychological safety at an institutional level is that it is difficult to measure organizational psychological safety, because across large numbers of teams there will be many different experiences (Newman et al., 2017). Despite the fact that different teams will have different experiences of psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999), there is support for organizational or systems level practices that can promote psychological safety 19 across organizations (Andersson et al., 2020). For example, if employees believe that the organization provides support programs like diversity practices (Singh et al., 2013) and access to mentoring (Chen et al., 2013), psychological safety of employees is increased (Newman et al., 2017). Just having these practices in place signals that the organization cares about employees, which increases their sense of belonging, their commitment to the organization, and their perception of psychological safety, whether they are involved in these programs directly or not (Newman et al., 2017). Looking at the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia at the organization level seemed to be a valuable area of inquiry, as administrators themselves report that systems level structures and practices are impacting them (Wang, 2022a). For example, research on job demands and work intensity indicates that political and organizational constraints are impacting principals’ and vice principals’ work and well-being (Wang, 2022a). Wang found that a “significant autonomy gap exists between the authority that principals say they need and the amount they have” (p. 1024). Another study (Wang, 2022b) revealed that principals and vice principals often chose to work around or implement policies selectively to meet the needs of their schools (p. 24), but worried about the risks and impact this might have on their career prospects and their relationships, “demonstrating the psychological unsafety that principals and VPs experience when considering whether to provide input into the policy making process” (p. 25). Psychological Safety in Education Although most psychological safety research has been done in business settings, a review of psychological safety research indicated that research across many different workplaces shows “a surprising level of generalizability” (Edmondson & Lei, 2014, p. 36). Psychological safety is 20 particularly important for educational institutions as learning organizations; psychological safety appears to be “particularly relevant for organizational learning—a statement that holds true across levels of analysis (individual, group, and organization)” (Edmondson & Lei, 2014, p. 36). There has been some psychological safety research that looked at education workplaces in particular. For example, a comparative study looked at psychological safety in both health care and education (Edmondson et al., 2016). The authors chose these contexts because both education and health care are “high stakes and challenging contexts” (p. 65). Psychological safety is especially important for organizational change and learning in these complex, “interpersonally challenging work environments” (p. 65). These researchers discussed the increasing pressure of multiple mandates and stressors that are facing educators. The pressure of multiple mandates is also experienced by BC administrators, as they reported having to constantly adapt to new policies and initiatives (Wang, 2022a). Education and health care share other similarities. Edmondson et al. (2016) reported that some of the cultural norms in both health and education have also been a barrier to change. For example, in their survey study, Edmondson et al. looked at hierarchy, leadership, and work context to see how they impacted psychological safety. In both health care and education, the higher up a person was in the system hierarchy, the higher their level of psychological safety. In the discussion of these findings, the authors highlighted the importance of the structures and systems in the organization to psychological safety. They found that the hierarchical structures and the norms in education (such as valuing autonomy over feedback giving or seeking, for example) can limit things like seeking help and creativity. This limits the organization’s ability to change and adapt to new circumstances (Edmondson et al., 2016). The authors proposed that 21 because of these complexities in the work environment, having a climate of psychological safety where people speak up and ask questions would have a particularly strong impact in education. Another education-focused study (Weiner et al., 2021) looked at psychological safety and principal leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to the study referenced above (Edmondson et al., 2016), Weiner et al. acknowledged the complexity and stress in the system, and how important it is for education to be a learning organization that adapts to change. Using principal interviews and thematic analysis, the primary question the researchers set out to study was “how principals experienced and engaged in behaviors to create psychological safety during the Covid-19 pandemic and how their varied environmental and organizational context may have influenced these conditions” (p. 7). Environmental factors like city/rural, socioeconomic status levels, and high or low academic needs did not seem to impact levels of psychological safety. This led the authors to suggest that “the answers regarding differences in their degree of psychological safety may be rooted more in organizational than environmental features” (Weiner et al., 2021, p. 14). Weiner et al. (2021) were interested in what made the difference between schools with low psychological safety ratings and schools with high psychological safety ratings. In both types of schools, principals reported a sense of caring and empathy for their staff, but the difference was the addition of collective accountability and collaboration. In the high psychological safety schools the whole team was responsible for the outcomes and the goal of getting each other and the students through the move to online learning. Similar results were also found between the principal and the district office (Weiner et al., 2021). Principals in high psychological safety schools felt they had a level of autonomy that enabled them to make decisions and create a plan that would be best for their school community after the district 22 leaders provided the government-mandated safety protocols. However, in schools where psychological safety was low, principals reported that they had very little impact on or autonomy over district decisions that affected their schools. The authors of this research (Weiner et al., 2021) pointed out that although psychological safety is an underutilized term in education, it should perhaps be considered more often, since the level of psychological safety was either promoting or hindering organizational learning, growth, and change. Psychological Safety of Principals and Vice Principals Wang (2022b) recently examined psychological safety in education directly, and this research is the most applicable to this study because it is also about the experiences of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. Wang’s report on the psychological safety of these school administrators showed how critical psychological safety is, and revealed the alarming reality of school administrators’ perceptions: a little over 25% of principals and about 20% of vice principals in British Columbia felt their psychological safety was poor or very poor at work (p. 65). More importantly, when the survey asked more directly about speaking up to district leaders, “neither group [principals nor vice principals] felt very psychologically safe within their district, with 36.2% of respondents indicating that they sometimes felt safe to take a risk at their work in the district and 36.6% selecting never or rarely” (p. 42). While the survey research addressed the “what,” my research extends the existing research and looks at how organizational level policies, practices, and ways of working are impacting these experiences of psychological safety or lack of it. Prior to the above-mentioned report (Wang, 2022b), research that was focused on psychological safety for principals specifically was difficult to find, and there is little to no specific mention of vice principals’ psychological safety in the literature. There is some research about how principals and vice 23 principals create psychological safety for and with teachers (Bordovskaia & Baeva, 2015; Lyu, 2016), but what creates and promotes psychological safety for principals and vice principals is less clear. One study of South African principals (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018) revealed that principals found district support lacking in their school districts. Also, the practice of top-down decision-making resulted in a lack of engagement and efficacy among principals. Although psychological safety is not mentioned specifically, the principals in this study did mention that not being able to make decisions or do the work they want to do has created a “despondency and lack of enthusiasm in policy reform” (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018, p. 764). In Canada, the ways principals and vice principals are dealing with district and provincial directives indicates they may also be struggling with psychological safety. Research shows that in order to challenge and resist policies and practices that they believe are not in the interest of their students or their staff, school administrators tend to engage in subversive leadership (Wang, 2018). Subversive leadership is defined as “the exercise of subversiveness as a process of influence that strategically challenges and disrupts status quo and resists, redresses or bypasses policies and practices that are counterproductive and unjust through ethical decision-making (Wang, 2018, p. 531). School administrators give various and compelling reasons for subversion, such as work intensification, limited time and resources, and a sense of ethical responsibility to students and staff in their care (Wang, 2018). Principals and vice principals are aware of the risks associated with subversive leadership activities to their own sense of integrity, their relationships, and their careers (Wang, 2018), and yet they still choose to work around policies and practices that they think are unjust, instead of speaking up or asking questions. Engaging in such subversiveness may suggest that they are not feeling psychologically safe, but it may also suggest that there is 24 some level of safety. It is possible that they feel safe to work around the policies and practices that they think are unjust because they are aware that others, particularly district leaders, would agree with the reasoning behind the subversion. For example, if a union policy is not considered to be in the best interest of the school community, then working around this policy might be quietly condoned and subtly encouraged. In this situation, subversion is only safe if it stays quiet, so I would argue that it is not a true example of psychological safety. The research on principals’ and vice principals’ use of subversion (Wang, 2018) raises the question about how low levels of psychological safety may be contributing to this need to work around policies and directives instead of working to influence and co-create policies. Stephen Ball (2005) said that at the heart of education policy research is the political tension between efficiency and social justice. If principals and vice principals are subverting policies and directives to do what they believe is right, that may work in the short term and in the immediate situation, but it does not solve the underlying problem. If administrators were psychologically safe to ask questions and share ideas about which practices they thought were working and why, they could help create more effective practices, and there would be less need for subversive leadership. In choosing subversive leadership, principals and vice principals seem to have chosen both perceived efficiency (just need to get it done) and social justice (doing what is “right” for students and staff) over working to co-create or improve policy or practice. The Impact of Role on Psychological Safety The role of principals and vice principals within the organization impacts their level of psychological safety. Research on principals as middle managers (Flessa, 2012) acknowledged this often-difficult leadership role that school administrators play, as they are often tasked with implementing district or provincial mandates while at the same time setting up structures and 25 practices that make sense at the school level. Flessa (2012) pointed out that focusing on the work of principals is a way to integrate the macro world of policy-makers with the micro world of implementation at the school level. This middle management role is an important place for psychological safety because principals and vice principals are responsible for communicating between schools and the district office. They deliver, or don’t deliver, information both up and down the system hierarchy. If they don’t feel psychologically safe to ask questions or share their ideas (or the ideas of their staff) with district leaders, then important information is lost, and district leaders will not have the information they need to make effective decisions. This works in the other direction as well, because district and provincial initiatives are delivered to and directed through the school administrators. Principals and vice principals have a direct impact on whether these policies and practices are implemented at the school level. The Canadian Association of Principals (2014) reported that as the number of provincial and district initiatives increases, administrators are having to make decisions about which initiatives or parts of initiatives they will implement and which things they will ignore. This may be particularly important right now in British Columbia, where BC principals and vice principals report feeling constrained by rules and procedures imposed on them from district leadership (Wang, 2018). BC principals report that they sometimes have no choice but to resist or subvert some policies and directives when they think they would have trouble getting permission, if there is an urgency to the situation and they feel there is a moral urgency to act (Wang, 2018). This pivotal communication role of principals and vice principals makes their psychological safety essential to keep communication open and allow change and growth to occur. Edmondson and Lei (2014) argued that when there is psychological safety in a workplace, people are more likely to give feedback and information to people in roles of formal authority. Workplaces are complex 26 systems that are relying more and more on interpersonal interactions and relationships, so “upward communication can be a vital force in helping contemporary organizations learn and succeed” (Edmondson & Lei, 2014, p. 37). Having that ability and feeling of safety to communicate both up and down the hierarchy may be particularly valuable for school administrators and the systems they support. Voice and Silence Speaking up or voice behaviour, particularly speaking up to power, is a construct that is closely related to psychological safety (O’Donovan & McAuliffe, 2020). Speaking up and voice “are interpersonally risky behaviours which are facilitated by psychological safety” (p. 2). Similarly, lack of psychological safety has been associated with silence, because if someone does not feel psychologically safe, they often choose to remain silent even if they have something to contribute (Edmondson, 2003). Although there have been different definitions of voice behaviour, researchers “have come to regard voice as challenging yet constructive in intent and focused on change” (Morrison, 2023, p. 82). Silence is defined as the failure to voice, but is further described as occurring when “employees withhold ideas, information about problems, or opinions on work-related issues” (Morrison, 2023, p. 81). Most researchers have assumed that what increases voice also reduces silence (Morrison, 2014), but recent research (Sherf et al., 2021) challenged that assumption with the finding that perceived influence (a belief that one’s voice will matter) had a stronger impact on voice behaviour and lack of psychological safety had a stronger impact on silence (Sherf et al., 2021). This finding suggests that just removing interpersonal risks may not be enough to encourage voice; it may require opportunities for impact as well. If someone feels like they are psychologically safe to speak but that what they say will probably have no impact, they will still remain silent. This is also true the other way 27 around, as leaders who focus only on creating opportunities for impact will not curtail silence in situations that are considered sensitive or risky (Sherf et al., 2021). Most voice and silence research has been done on predictors of voice and silence. Some of the research on the institutional factors that predict voice and silence have been reviewed earlier in this chapter, but more recent research also includes the outcomes of voice decisions (Morrison, 2023). These outcomes are worth reviewing here as they also impact psychological safety. Outcomes and Implications of Voice and Silence Although psychological safety is the perception of whether the situation is a safe place to take risks, ask questions, and share ideas (Edmondson, 1999), individuals who are making these assessments of whether it is safe or unsafe are often making assumptions based on previous experiences. Individuals, in this case principals and vice principals, are assessing the situation based on what is happening currently, but they are also considering what they or others have experienced in similar situations in the past. They are also making predictions of what the outcome of voice behaviour will be and how that could impact them in the future. For example, if they or a colleague asked a question in a previous meeting that was not well received, or even perceived to be not well received, that would factor into decisions about whether to ask a question in a current meeting. They might determine that not asking the question or saving it for a later time might be better options. Research confirms the complexity of decisions around whether to speak up or not, as the outcomes of voice behaviour are complex and include many interrelated factors (Morrison, 2023). Being concerned about leadership reaction to voice behaviour is a valid concern, since in all relational interactions there is the added complexity of another individual and their assumptions as well. For example, leadership reaction to voice behaviour includes the individual disposition or motives of the leader as well as the leader’s 28 perception of the intentions of the employee (Urbach & Fay, 2018). The fear that voice behaviour may be threatening to leaders is not unreasonable because leaders can react positively or negatively to voice (Morrison et al., 2015). Many leaders are receptive to voice behaviour (Fast et al., 2014), but “leaders who display lack of receptiveness to voice also have a reduced tendency to solicit voice, a tendency to denigrate employees who speak up, and a reduced willingness to implement voice” (Fast et al., 2014, p. 1028). The nature of the particular issue that is being considered also has an impact on both whether the employee will speak up or remain silent and what the outcome of this choice will be (Milliken et al., 2003). For example, employees are often reluctant to share any information that could be “interpreted as negative or threatening to those above them in the organizational hierarchy” (p. 1453), so they withhold information that could be helpful to organizational decision-making, particularly if their information is pointing out a problem or a concern about organizational practices, processes, or performance (Milliken et al., 2003). The outcome of withholding information about problems with organizational practices and processes is that less effective processes that are no longer serving the organization well remain in place, and new, creative ideas for organizational learning and growth are missed. There are two research findings about voice and silence outcomes that may be particularly important to consider in relation to education and for principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety specifically. The first one is that when supervisors are feeling depleted, they may benefit more from upward voice, but they are paradoxically less likely to appreciate or listen to employee voice (Li et al., 2019). Levels of stress and increased workload in education workplaces are impacting people at all levels of the organization, and district leaders are no exception. Increasing the awareness of this paradox and working on ways to address it could 29 have an impact on the outcomes of upwards voice behaviour for principals and vice principals. The other finding relates to the decision to remain silent. Frequent decisions to choose silence have been linked to increased burnout (Sherf et al., 2021) and “organizations can specifically target psychological safety in order to reduce withdrawal via silence” (p. 135). These findings about the impact of organizational stress on voice and silence behaviour (Li et al., 2019) and the reverse process as well (Sherf et al., 2021) show the important effects of institutional factors on psychological safety. Ruling Relations and Power Power relationships and hierarchy are institutional factors that impact psychological safety (Appelbaum et al., 2020). When asked what contributes to their feelings of being unsafe, principals and vice principals ranked the hierarchical nature of the organization as the top contributor (Wang, 2022b). Education workplaces are based on a hierarchical system of management, and employees are often reluctant to share information that could be interpreted as negative or threatening to those above them in the organizational hierarchy (Milliken et al., 2003). One of the most frequently mentioned reasons for silence when an employee has something to contribute is the fear of being seen as negative and damaging relationships with their supervisors (Milliken et al., 2003). Working in a hierarchical system does not have to create these power-related problems, though, if the impact of the power differences is acknowledged and intentional effort is made to increase psychological safety. For example, an employee’s perceived sense of their power in relation to others is a key factor when deciding to speak up or remain silent, but this effect is lowered when the person they are speaking to is perceived to be open to hearing the message (Morrison et al., 2015). 30 The level of power distance is also important for psychological safety (Appelbaum et al., 2020). A recent review on themes related to psychological safety (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023) found “that high power distance—the extent to which an individual perceives power to be unequally distributed is negatively associated with psychological safety” (p. 68). It is not always a simple association, though, as power differentials do not always have a negative effect on psychological safety (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). For example, when competition for positions of power is low and people within the organization accept the hierarchy, more autocratic leadership with centralized decision-making and directives actually increases psychological safety (De Hoogh et al., 2015). The study by De Hoogh et al. that revealed these results was done in retail businesses, a different context than the education system, but the researchers suggested that having “order and clear role division in the unchallenged chain of command” (p. 691) helped to improve psychological safety in this context, where employees had clarity about expectations and what was and wasn’t their role. De Hoogh et al. found that the hierarchy provided an environment of predictability and security. Predictability and security are not generally words that describe the education environment, but these results point to the importance of clarity, particularly around roles and responsibilities. The middle management role that principals and vice principals occupy within school districts may add another layer of complexity. There is extensive research (Anicich & Hirsh, 2017) showing that employees who have to switch between high power and low power roles are more likely to experience role conflict. Anicich and Hirsh reported that people with middle power [alternating between high and low] are particularly likely to adhere to informal group norms in an attempt to reduce this role conflict. The benefit of following these informal rules or norms is that it reduces uncertainty. “Uncertainty about one’s role and role-based identity is an extremely uncomfortable experience,” 31 according to Anicich and Hirsh (p. 672). Role clarity is not only about discomfort, it is foundational to psychological safety (Klenke-Borgmann et al., 2023). Leadership behaviour and perceived power differences within teams also have an effect on psychological safety. Hu et al. (2018) looked at collaboration and creativity in work teams and the effects of humble leadership on psychological safety. Humble leadership, which is characterized by admitting to limitations and mistakes and giving credit to followers (Vergiansyah et al., 2024), increased information sharing and psychological safety but only when the power difference was low (Hu et al., 2018). When the power differential was high, having a humble leader actually decreased psychological safety, as employees worried that the leaders in charge didn’t know what they were doing (Hu et al., 2018). Power differentials and concerns about status and control have been found to undermine collaborative work on teams and decrease their effectiveness (Appelbaum et al., 2020). Individual leaders’ intentions and practices designed to decrease power differentials can help increase psychological safety to an extent, but the institution needs to reward and support these practices if they are to create broader and more long-term change (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022). Implementing organizational practices intentionally designed to support psychological safety, and “reconceptualizing the role of hierarchy in education will require broader culture change that will need to start from the institutional level” (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022, p. 2293). Belonging Another construct that emerged from the literature and has been found to have a strong interconnection with psychological safety is the innate human need for belonging (Filstad et al., 2019). Human beings are biologically wired to connect and to work together (Waller, 2021). There is a physiological response in the body; social connection releases dopamine, which is the 32 hormone associated with reward and reinforcement (Berridge et al., 2009). The opposite is true for the experience of social rejection. Neuroscience research shows that the social pain of exclusion activates the same parts of the brain as physical pain (Eisenberger et al., 2003). People are strongly motivated to avoid this pain by staying connected to the group. These physiological responses were adaptive to humans’ survival as a species, and similar responses occur in the workplace today when people experience belonging, disconnection, or even the threat of disconnection from others (Waller, 2021). This strong biological basis for belonging means it is no surprise that a sense of belonging in the workplace supports the well-being and performance of individuals and teams (Waller, 2021). Relationship networks and social support systems at work promote psychological safety and increase team learning, performance, and innovation (Newman et al., 2017). Although belonging in the workplace is an interpersonal construct, research suggests that organizational practices can have an influence on the sense of belonging. Therefore, the organization has a role to play in promoting belonging in the workplace (Waller, 2021). One aspect of organizational culture that is particularly critical to belonging in the workplace is psychological safety, because if someone doesn’t feel like they are able to speak up and add value to the group, it is not likely they will feel they belong (Waller, 2021). The interconnectedness of belonging and psychological safety means that by addressing one of them, the other is often improved (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). Factors that contribute to someone feeling they belong at work are quality relationships, feeling valued, and having connections with others (Waller, 2020). If someone feels that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being, it increases their sense of belonging at work (Scott et al., 2014). 33 Another factor that impacts belonging and psychological safety is the existence of “in-groups” and “out-groups.” Group members who felt they belonged to an inner circle with colleagues and the team leader tended to feel more psychologically safe than people who felt like they were not included in this circle (Burris et al., 2009). Being included in the leaders’ in-group was particularly important to success in times of crisis (Meyer et al., 2015), when resources and time to access them were scarce. Although there were no studies that looked at principals’ and vice principals’ in- and out-groups directly, a study done with teachers (Gerlach & Gockel, 2018) may provide some insights from a different but education-related context. These researchers found that although being part of the principal’s in-group did not always predict psychological safety for teachers, it did reduce the negative effect of task conflict in comparison to out-group members. Task conflict is tension regarding task-related things like resources, procedures, judgments, and facts. Both high and low task conflict situations did lower psychological safety for the members of the out-group, suggesting a different level of perceived risk in conflict situations (Gerlach & Gockel, 2018). If there is a task conflict, then being part of the leader’s in-group makes people feel safer about asking questions and sharing their thoughts and ideas. Figure 1 on the next page depicts the key themes, constructs, and gaps in the literature review and shows psychological safety research findings at the individual, group, and organizational level. It focuses on what is known about psychological safety in education and for principals and vice principals in particular. The arrows show communication up and down the system hierarchy and how the principals and vice principals occupy the role in the middle of this system. The fulcrum is there to visually represent the question about whether organizational practices can work as leverage to increase psychological safety of administrators. A detailed explanation of the features of Figure 1 follows the diagram. 34 Figure 1 Psychological Safety: Literature Review Findings 35 The literature review showed that principals and vice principals (administrators) report low levels of psychological safety at the district level. Figure 1 represents this by showing a small ellipse within the larger ellipse of the Administrators’ Group. These low levels of psychological safety affect communication, particularly communication upwards in the hierarchy from administrators to the District Office. The arrows in Figure 1 represent the amount and types of communication up and down the hierarchy. • The blue arrows going down from the District Office to the Administrators’ Group are much wider than the green arrows going up, indicating that communication is mostly top-down. Administrators who feel low levels of psychological safety choose to remain silent or use voice only for positive messages (narrow green arrow). • The administrators who do feel psychologically safe are able to convey all types of messages to the district leaders, as shown by the wider green arrow that originates in the shaded area within the Administrators’ Group. • The truncated green arrow going up represents messages from administrators that may not be reaching district leaders or are perceived as not being heard. • The narrow blue arrow originating in the Administrators’ Group that goes down to the school represents a situation where administrators pass on to their schools some, but not all, of the messages from the district office. • The wide arrows between the administrators’ group and the school simply show the communication up and down between administrators and their staff. This 36 communication was not the focus of this research, but some findings about it emerged from the research, as Figure 2 will show. The individual level characteristics shown to the left of the Administrators’ Group have only a small impact on psychological safety. Summary Psychological safety has evolved as a construct from an individual construct to a group construct that is impacted by the organizational systems and structures that surround work teams (Frazier et al., 2017). Psychological safety is one of the most essential components of workplace well-being and organizational learning and change. It has been studied extensively in business organizations and other workplaces such as health care but less so in education. The education- focused research was mostly about psychological safety for students and teachers (Weiner et al., 2021), but more recent research (Wang, 2022b) has found psychological safety to be having an impact on the behaviour and well-being of principals and vice principals as well. Principals and vice principals, in their middle management role, have an impact at both the school and district levels because they are counted on to move information, questions, and ideas up and down the system hierarchy (Flessa, 2012). Recent research with principals and vice principals in British Columbia tells us that they are often experiencing low levels of psychological safety at the district level (Wang, 2022b), which is impacting how much of this important information, questions, and ideas are being shared. This has led to questions about which organizational factors may be contributing to low levels of psychological safety. Several related factors—voice, silence, power, and belonging—are included in this review as they have been identified, in previous research, to contribute to psychological safety. This study seeks to add to previous 37 research by looking at organizational factors that are impacting principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. 38 Chapter 3: Research Methodology This chapter begins with a description of the paradigm that informs this research and provides a description of and rationale for using institutional ethnography as a research methodology. I also outline the research methods used, including information about the participants, the different levels of interviews, the exploration of texts, and a researcher reflection. The chapter explains the use of indexing and writing accounts as a form of data analysis and the importance of moving this data analysis to action. Research Paradigm This research is informed by social constructivism. This paradigm sees reality as being put together through our social interactions and therefore seen through our subjective reality (Andrews, 2012). Knowledge is created through the interactions of individuals and the society they are a part of (Schwandt, 2003). This fits with my own belief and experience around learning being relational and co-constructed. I believe that we develop our understanding of how the world works through our experiences with others and with the world around us, and from our interpretation of those experiences. This philosophy acknowledges that although the findings of research are situated in time, space, and context, they are not neutral, as they can generate ideas and real debate that can lead to change (Andrews, 2012). This base in social constructivism and my interest in looking at the impact of the system or organization on psychological safety led me to IE as a methodology. Although IE is considered “a critical qualitative theory/methodology” (Kearney, 2019, p. 18), it has a distinct difference from other research practices because it does not start or end in theory but instead 39 begins with a problematic or tension to explore (Kearney, 2019). IE is a way of revealing the social relations of people’s everyday lives, and it examines how their everyday work experiences shape and are shaped by institutional structures (Russell & Reid, 2019). Doing institutional ethnographic research is described as conducting a critical inquiry aimed at discovery (Kearney et al., 2019). This research approach provides a good fit with both my interest and the philosophy of social constructivism. My interest is in exploring what institutional practices and social relations are shaping a principal’s or a vice principal’s decision to speak up or not to speak up to leaders above them in the system hierarchy. I am interested in their everyday activities and the social relations that are impacting these work practices and decisions. Social constructivism as a philosophical paradigm underlies my research because it emphasizes “developing meaning from our activities together” (Williamson, 2006, p. 85). In IE, research evolves as it progresses. This fits with my belief that social relations systems are inherently complex and therefore research about them cannot be a linear process (Wright & Meadows, 2009). The research process in IE reflects these complexities and social relations as it is an evolving social exercise. Institutional Ethnography This research uses institutional ethnography as a methodology to explore the social and institutional relations that impact principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. IE is interested in “how things work and how they are actually put together” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 11). This methodology is very much situated in people’s everyday lives, with the belief that people are experts in their own experience. IE starts with what people know about their own work and then attempts to go beyond what people know. It seeks to uncover how what people are doing is connected to what others are doing in ways that people may not initially see (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Using IE as a research methodology allows the researcher to begin with the 40 participants’ everyday experiences and activities. It then looks at how these experiences are constructed socially and put together by ruling relations (Smith, 1996). Dorothy Smith, the originator of this research method, discussed ruling relations as complex social relations that organize and regulate our lives (Smith, 1996). She saw IE as a way to map out “how people are active in the objectified (or ruling) relations that exist independently of us and overpower our lives” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 23). IE as a method of inquiry “offers a practical agenda for change to guide the reform of institutional processes that do not work well for the people they are intended to serve” (Pence, 2021, p. 329). This methodology “allows for discovery of what may not be questioned or even apparent through other research modalities” (Kearney et al., 2019, p. 21). Looking at what influences people’s behaviours and how the complexities of social relations and institutional processes impact or shape these behaviours fits with studying psychological safety of principals and vice principals because the role of school administration is both inherently social and complex. The work of principals and vice principals is “increasingly done through social networks and in interaction with a large number of stakeholders inside as well as outside the school boundaries” (Moolenaar & Sleegers, 2015, p. 29). The principal and vice principal roles are also becoming increasingly complex (Wang, 2022a): while principals and vice principals are expected to shape school culture in ways that consider the local context, they are also being tasked to follow and implement district and provincial mandates that may sometimes be counterproductive (Flessa, 2012). IE as a method of inquiry acknowledges the complexity of the administrators’ roles by starting with their experience of work and then exploring and explicating how their work is coordinated with others in ways they may not initially even be aware of (Kearney et al., 2019). IE also moves the study of psychological safety beyond merely the individual administrator’s 41 experience to looking at the social and institutional factors that are impacting the experiences and actions of individuals. Because the research presented in this dissertation looks at psychological safety at an institutional or systems level, it is well suited to IE as a method of inquiry. This research is not examining the individual personalities or practices of the administrators, but rather is concerned with how their individual experiences of work coordinate with the work of others and are shaped by institutional practices. The goal is to see how things are connected, and discover or map out the ruling relations that exist independently of individuals, yet have the power to affect their experiences (Smith & Giffith, 2022). Dorothy Smith was very clear that IE is not a theory, and the concepts that can be used during the research process should not be used to interpret or formulate what is being learned in interviews or observations (Smith & Griffith, 2022). She advised against using theories and conceptual frameworks because she believed that they ensure that the analysis of the resulting data will conform to the conceptual frame that the data collection has been designed to fit (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Although not required, IE often uses the concepts of work, discourse, and texts as ways to bring aspects of people’s work that might otherwise not have been noticed into focus as contributing to or coordinating the work that is being done. These concepts are useful as ways to open up the inquiry. Smith and Griffith (2022) described them as “doors opening up to what actual people are doing in coordination with others” (p. 41). Work, for example, can be defined broadly as what people do intentionally that takes time and effort. This broad concept of work opens up aspects of what people do that might otherwise be missed. Discourse refers to the organization of relations among people and includes talking, writing, reading, speaking, and all the ways people communicate and coordinate with each other (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Workplaces develop their own discourses where there is often specialization of language or a 42 “known in common social context” (p. 34) that coordinates the work. Texts are looked at in IE to see how they coordinate the work being done (Smith & Griffith, 2022). The concepts of discourse, work, and texts have been found to help in organizing and directing dialogic attention without imposing interpretations (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 30). I will discuss these and other institutional ethnographic concepts that have helped to organize my attention throughout this research. Problematic Institutional ethnography is a project of a discovery and begins with a problematic that needs exploring. The problematic is a direction to draw attention to possible tensions or questions to investigate, but the questions and discussion will evolve in the process of discovery (Kearney et al., 2019). The problematic this research began with was a project to discover what is getting in the way of principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety when they are working with district leaders, given that the communication of principals and vice principals with district leaders impacts the functioning of schools. Are there institutional practices, policies, or ways of working that are getting in the way of psychological safety? After the initial interviews with principals and vice principals, other questions emerged and led to the second-level interviews and the exploration of texts. This process of discovery is detailed in the research method. Ruling Relations Institutional ethnography is interested in explicating ruling relations. The concept of ruling relations in IE focuses on the way people, institutions, and practices exist in relation to each other (Giritli Nygren & Nyhlén, 2017). Dorothy Smith talked about ruling relations as being complex social relations that organize and regulate our lives (Smith, 1999). Ruling relations have 43 also been described as “practices occurring in a local setting that infuses the interests of the institution into that setting” (Rankin et. al., 2010, p. 335). Although there is a focus on explicating institutional practices, IE does not consider individuals as passive bystanders in their work but as active participants in these ruling relations (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). IE is a critical mode of inquiry requiring the researcher to watch for and question power dynamics and to look for instances where the official explanation of what is happening is at odds with the explanation provided by the people who are actually experiencing it (Rankin et al., 2010). Questioning power dynamics is important in this research because a recent survey of principals and vice principals in British Columbia (Wang, 2022b) showed that neither principals nor vice principals “felt very psychologically safe within their district” (p. 42). My research aims to further explicate the ruling relations that impact psychological safety, in order to find out why principals and vice principals are feeling psychologically unsafe to communicate with district leaders. Work is often shaped by social relations and institutional practices that are so familiar to the people doing the work that they continue to work without question (Pence, 2021). By looking at the institutional discourse (Pence, 2021), and explicating points of disjuncture or what are sometimes referred to as fault lines (DeVault & McCoy, 2006) in participants’ descriptions of their work, the researcher is able to question and examine aspects of the work that may usually remain unseen. Using this critical inquiry and explicating the ruling relations that are impacting psychological safety allows the researcher to go beyond what the principals and vice principals are describing to reveal the embedded social relations and practices that can sometimes go unseen. 44 Role of the Researcher I come into this work as a researcher who has worked in K-12 education and whose questions and learning are shaped by this experience. I am a counsellor who worked outside of the school system for many years before completing a Bachelor of Education degree to become a school counsellor. I worked in 15 schools in two BC school districts as a school counsellor before moving to a district office to support the health and well-being of both students and staff. I have worked with and for many principals and vice principals and have seen and experienced situations of psychological safety and unsafety. Although I began my doctoral journey while I was employed directly in the K-12 education system, I am now a consultant working alongside the K-12 system in the larger health-promotion system. I am currently working as a Practice Support Coach with BC Children’s Hospital on their Health Promotion in Schools team. I am also working as an independent educational consultant for educators with a focus on staff well-being. In both positions, I am working with district leaders in BC school districts, so I am closely connected with the BC K-12 system that I am studying. IE began as a method of investigating and exploring issues and problems that arose in researchers’ own lives (Smith & Griffith, 2022), and this practical learning that is designed to improve practice on the ground appeals to me. IE acknowledges the involvement of the researcher in the process, but requires the researcher to always be learning from the perspective of the respondent and their work. The researcher’s role is to organize the learning “without dominating and imposing pre-set interpretations” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 18). There is a tension here, because my focus on and interest in psychological safety does impose a direction to the conversation before the inquiry even begins. As a researcher, I acknowledge that tension, and from that starting point I can be open to learning from the participants’ perspective. There is 45 another tension in the use of the term “psychological safety” alongside Smith’s notion of ruling social relations. Although I did not use a conceptual framework for the study of psychological safety in the way that IE would encourage, starting with the concept itself provides a framework. I am aware of this tension and did my best to reflect on whether this framing did or did not capture the lived experience of my participants throughout the inquiry. Acknowledging my own biases and positionality and reflecting on my experiences after each interview and throughout the process have been part of the learning and discovery of this research. One particular positionality that is worth noting is that my work primarily involves writing, speaking, and teaching about well-being in education. Well-being is a topic I am very passionate about. My research will become part of this work. This was true when I worked in my previous school district and it remains true now when I am an educational consultant. These roles, and even my transition between the two roles, have shaped my research and analysis. My own experiences of psychological safety and the experiences of my friends and colleagues made me curious about this topic and helped me frame the problematic and the research questions. I am also aware that this research is reported from the standpoint of principals and vice principals. I believe that not ever having worked directly in that role helped me to stay open to learning from the perspective of the people I was interviewing. This thought is supported by Smith and Griffith (2022), as they warned that institutional ethnographic researchers who work in the same professional area as their research participants have to be aware of how easy it is to take your own knowledge for granted. They say that “ignorance is a great advantage in institutional ethnographic research” (Smith & Griffith, 2022., p. 27). Of course, being outside of the role of my participants might mean I missed some opportunities to probe their experiences more deeply. 46 A social constructivism philosophy which informs this study calls on the researcher to engage in methodological self-consciousness through reflexivity throughout the research process (Charmaz, 2017). As a researcher, I began with experiences, and developed questions that directed and impacted the responses and learning that I have compiled, reported, and shared. I am not separated from the process but involved in it. As I did this research, I kept a journal where I wrote reflections following each interview in an effort to watch for and acknowledge my biases. Although I acknowledge my involvement in the process, I want to hear the standpoint of my participants, so I structured my questions to be open-ended. Open-ended questions allow more opportunity for the participant to tell their story from their standpoint. Of course, simply by asking the question the researcher has already set an initial direction. Data Collection Procedures Principals and vice principals were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling from my own professional network. Both principals and vice principals were recruited as the experiences in these two roles are quite different (Wang et al., 2021), and their experiences of psychological safety are also different (Wang, 2022b). Wang found that “while most of the respondents’ comfort levels were fairly low, principals generally felt safer than vice principals in their interactions with the district and senior management” (p. 41). As psychological safety can be a sensitive and vulnerable topic to discuss, it was hoped that convenience sampling would allow participants to speak more candidly (Cohen et al., 2017) than if participants were recruited through their school districts or their professional association. Convenience and snowball sampling is a form of relationship-based social sampling (Cohen et al., 2017) that fits well with the philosophy of IE, which is based on explicating social relations (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). Because this type of sampling uses social networks, where the researcher is already known to the 47 participant directly or indirectly, “it reduces or even dissolves asymmetrical power relations between researcher and participants” (Cohen et al., 2017, p. 221). This lowering of power relations can happen because there is already some level of relationship or connection. One of the criticisms of convenience and snowball sampling is the possible bias and lack of diversity that can come from the influence of the first contact (Cohen et al., 2017). To address this, care was taken to include people of different race, gender, and years of experience to ensure a “full range of participants who are integral to providing the answer” (Gerson, 2021, p. 46). This was done intentionally by the researcher as the participant list grew. For example, if there were several experienced administrators, I would ask at the end of the interview if the person I was interviewing could recommend someone who was newer to the position who might be willing to participate. Or, if I had interviewed more female-identifying participants than male-identifying, I would intentionally ask the person I was interviewing for suggestions of male administrators who might be willing to participate in the study. Although there were no formal interview questions about gender, ethnicity, or years of experience, the first interview question asked participants to talk about themselves, so these factors were often included in their descriptions of themselves. Although there was ethnic diversity among the participants, ethnicity is not included in the participant chart (see Table 1 on p. 50) as it was not always known and could also make some participants identifiable. Participants included people from both rural and urban school districts in British Columbia, as administrators’ experiences in small rural districts can be quite different from the experiences of administrators in the larger urban districts (Hardwick-Franco, 2019). For example, in a small rural district, administrators may have more direct access to district leaders as there are fewer levels of reporting, but they also may have less access to district leaders due to geographic isolation. For the purposes of this study, urban school districts 48 were those located in the Greater Victoria area, the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, and the Kelowna area; mid-sized districts had both city and rural schools, and rural districts were smaller districts with only rural schools. Including this complexity allows multiple situations to be reflected in the findings, which is important in the geographically diverse province of British Columbia. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to comment on how these diversity factors impact levels of psychological safety, previous research shows that it does have an impact (Singh et al., 2013), specifically among BIPOC school administrators who report experiencing psychological safety differently than their White peers (Wang, 2022a). The intention of this study is not to comment on the specific experiences of any particular group but to look at institutional practices through the experiences of BC principals and vice principals as a group. Participants Initial interviews were conducted with six principals and three vice principals from public elementary, middle, and secondary schools in British Columbia, Canada. Participants were from nine different school districts within British Columbia. Five of the districts were large urban districts, three were mid-sized districts with both urban and rural schools, and one was a small rural district. The provincial context in which principals and vice principals work (see Chapter 1) is a unique context from other jurisdictions across Canada, particularly because the principals and vice principals are not part of the teachers’ union in British Columbia and are considered management. This distinction makes it important to stay within this provincial context. Research in general, and psychological safety research in particular, requires complete confidentiality for research participants as people can be made vulnerable by the topics researchers investigate (Busher & Fox, 2019). Since I was asking about when participants experienced psychological safety but also about when they didn’t, I had a duty of care to share 49 their stories but maintain their confidentiality. It was important to make sure they could not be identified by connecting individuals to too much demographic information. This is particularly important as I used convenience and snowball sampling where participants are often connected both to each other and directly or indirectly to the researcher. To maintain confidentiality, participants are identified only by role, gender, general size of school district, and years of experience using over or under five or ten years as categories. Pseudonyms are used in place of actual names (see Table 1). The participants were not intended to represent any of these groups in particular, but I did intend to include these various demographics in the study to reflect the diversity of BC’s education system. Two of the participants are district level administrators, seven are school-based, and one had recently retired at the time of the interviews. The retired principal had been retired less than two years and was still working in the education field, so their experiences were considered current enough for them to be included in this group of administrators. As is common in British Columbia, I refer to all of these participants as principals and vice principals or administrators. These role details are not connected to other factors in the table to protect the confidentiality of the participants. I sometimes chose to use the gender neutral they/their pronouns in some of my descriptions if using a gender-specific pronoun could potentially identify the participant. All participants were given a copy of the parts of this draft report they are quoted in and have confirmed that they feel they are non-identifiable in this report. Table 1 below summarizes the details about the participants. Table 1 Descriptions of Participants Participant (Pseudonym) Role Size and Type of District Gender Years in Administrator Role 50 Michael Principal Large urban district Male Over 10 years Lenore Principal Mid-size district including both rural and urban schools Female Over 10 years Kelly Vice Principal Mid-size district including both rural and urban schools Female Under 5 years Linda Principal Mid-size district including both rural and urban schools Female Over 10 years Benita Principal Large urban district Female Over 10 years Robert Vice Principal Small urban district Male Over 10 years Lance Principal Large urban district Male Over 10 years Caitlin Principal Large urban district Female Under 5 years Jessica Vice Principal Large urban district Female Under 10 years First-Level Individual Interviews This research involved an approximately one-hour, semi-structured interview with each principal or vice principal. The interviews were conducted on Zoom, recorded, and transcribed, a procedure which is becoming more common in qualitative research studies (Weller, 2022). The benefit of conducting the interviews online was that it enabled the inclusion of participants from across the province and allowed flexibility for participants to participate at times and locations that worked for them. Interviews are often used in IE to “locate and trace the points of connection among individuals working in different parts of institutional complexities” (DeVault & McCoy, 2012, p. 383). These interviews explored the participants’ everyday experiences of psychological safety. The interviews also became a source of clues about which texts (see page 52) to follow up on in order to understand the institutional practices and social relations that were shaping the participants’ experiences of psychological safety. The semi-structured interview was designed to allow the participant to talk about their everyday experience and the work they do. 51 The interviews were semi-structured because some structure was necessary to direct the conversation to experiences of psychological safety. In IE, the learning is not controlled by the researcher (Smith & Griffith, 2022), but the researcher does “engage in a dialogue into which she inserts interests relevant to creating an institutional ethnography” (p. 27). The interview transcriptions were analyzed using indexing and written accounts described later in this chapter to find and describe social and organizational processes that shape the administrators’ levels of and experiences of psychological safety. Unlike most qualitative interviewing that is designed to learn about the experience of the individual person, the interview process in IE is designed to use individuals’ accounts to reveal the organizational processes that shape their experiences (DeVault & McCoy, 2006). It begins from the standpoint of the individuals doing the work and their description of that work. In this case, the research is from the standpoint of principals and vice principals and their description of psychological safety or lack of it in their workplaces. It is through these descriptions and stories that the researcher starts to identify some of the relations, discourses, and institutional processes that are shaping the work (DeVault & McCoy, 2012). There is also a particular focus on looking for the points of disjuncture or what is troubling as participants describe their experiences. The other task of the first-level interviews in IE is to direct the researcher to the next steps in the ongoing inquiry (DeVault & McCoy, 2012). After this initial inquiry into what is shaping the work, or in this case what is shaping the experience of psychological safety or unsafety, the next step in an institutional inquiry is often an exploration of texts. Texts Institutional ethnography also uses texts. IE starts with the everyday work of people and from that standpoint looks at external and text-mediated ruling relations that shape and organize 52 work (Kearney et al., 2019). In IE, the focus is on what people actually do, but always in relation to how what they do coordinates with what others are doing and the written or unwritten messages that coordinate their activity (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Pence (2021) described texts as messages that articulate the assumptions and priorities of the institution and direct the behaviour and actions of the workers, or in this case, principals and vice principals. Texts (both written and unwritten) become part of the inquiry as a way to investigate what these messages are and how these messages are shaping the work. Written texts can range from formal policy documents to simple memos. Unwritten texts can be things said formally at meetings, or a common understanding of what behaviour is expected at meetings. They are not an independent part of the inquiry but are “always to be recognized for how they coordinate what is being done as a moment in a sequence of action among people—a social relation” (Smith & Griffith, 2022, p. 50). Smith and Griffith used the term “institutionally coordinating texts” (p. 53) to describe these types of documents that shape the action and social relations in the work. IE sees texts as a form of data because texts are embedded in power relations (Foo et al., 2021). Texts are often used as the tool to manage, organize, and regulate behaviour (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Referred to as “boss” or “governing” texts, these texts include policies, rules, and procedures that are organizing work (Smith & Griffith, 2022). Texts give concrete directions that are selectively attended to, and it is the combination of the directions and the attention that impacts what is actually occurring in day-to-day work. It is both the context of the text, but more importantly, how it is attended to and acted on in the everyday work that is important to the inquiry. This study looks at how texts are activated and used in the work of principals and vice principals. In this study, if a particular work term or a document was mentioned in an interview, then exploring that term and/or the documents that describe it became part of the research. 53 One of the questions asked in the interviews was about policies and practices (written or unwritten) that impact the respondent’s decision to speak up, ask questions, or share ideas. Part of the role of the institutional ethnographer is to listen for references to texts in the interviews they conduct “to learn about the institutional processes that shape the relations they are studying” (Devault & McCoy, 2001, p. 766). After the first level of interviews was completed, I reviewed texts that were mentioned during the interview and those that described the roles of principal and vice principal. The following publicly available texts were identified during the interviews and included in the analysis: the BC School Act (Province of British Columbia, 1996), the BCPVPA Code of Professional Practice (BCPVPA, n.d.) and the BCPVPA Leadership Standards (BCPVPA Leadership Standards Review Committee, 2019). In the interviews, participants often spoke about the role of principal and/or vice principal and how their role sometimes required them to act in a certain way when it came to speaking up or remaining silent when they were working with district leaders. For example, participants often referenced the fiduciary duty of principals and vice principals and their role as an agent of the board. These terms “fiduciary duty” and “agent of the board,” and how they are connected to psychological safety, are explored in later chapters. They led me to examine the written documents that describe the roles of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. The BC School Act 1996 contains the legal description of the requirements of this role, and the other documents are a description of the BC Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association’s (BCPVPA) code of conduct and their professional standards document. According to the BCPVPA website, their professional standards document has been recognized by BC educational leaders and also recognized internationally as a comprehensive and practical guide to educational leadership in British Columbia. 54 The other coordinating texts that are important to IE and this research are the unwritten texts that also impact people’s understanding of the work and the actual work being done. This could be an instruction about meeting behaviours that a mentor or colleague tells a principal or vice principal directly; for example, when it is okay or not okay to ask a question. It could also be something that a principal or vice principal considers an accepted practice because they have observed it happening over and over again. These are the unwritten understandings that become part of the discourse and practice of the work. Boss texts, whether written or unwritten, become part of what Smith and Griffith (2022) called “institutional circuits” that bind “what is actually getting done by actual people into the abstract generalizing schemata of the authorizing (or boss) texts” (p. xv). In this research, the unwritten texts were explored by noting terms that were used in the interviews to describe the roles of principals and vice principals or to describe their decisions to speak up or remain silent. If I noticed a term being used, I asked the participant for their understanding of what that term meant. An additional set of interviews with superintendents and assistant superintendents took place to add their perspective and understanding of these texts and how they apply to the principal’s role. Second-Level Individual Interviews As is common in IE, a second level of data collection that was designed to discover information beyond the first group of participants’ personal perspective (DeVault & McCoy, 2001) was conducted. Institutional ethnography can be distinguished from other ethnographies by this requirement to move beyond the individual experience of the participants to include “the analytic use of both levels of data” (Campbell & Gregor, 2002, p. 88) to further explicate the social relations. Because IE is concerned with the significance of institutional policies and 55 practices, interviews are often conducted with managers or leaders who work above the first-level participants in the organizational structure (DeVault & McCoy, 2001). This allows the researcher to move beyond the individual’s perspective and to begin to explicate the complex social relations that shape the individual’s work (Kearney et al., 2019). These second-level interviews are often conducted after the first set of interviews because the interviewer uses the information gained in the first interviews to inform the second-level interviews (DeVault & McCoy, 2001). In this study, four second-level interviews were conducted, one with an assistant superintendent, and three with superintendents (in smaller districts where the superintendents have direct interaction with principals and/or vice principals). All four participants were from different school districts in British Columbia. They all worked in different school districts than the ones the interviewed principals and vice principals worked in. The participants were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling in the same way as the first-level interviews. The participants are described in Table 2 (see p. 57) using basic demographic information and pseudonyms to protect confidentiality. For the purposes of this study, I refer to all four participants as superintendents. These semi-structured interviews with each participant lasted approximately 30 minutes. The semi-structured interviews were designed to allow the participant to describe their understanding of the roles of principals and vice principals as well their work with them. These interviews clarified some of the information that had emerged from the analysis of the interviews with principals and vice principals and the texts referenced in those conversations in order to gain further understanding from a different role perspective. All participants in this second-level inquiry had direct supervisory responsibilities for principals and vice principals. Although they 56 were all relatively new to their current roles, they had come from other district roles where they had supported and worked with principals. They were all very experienced educators. The interview questions were about the superintendents’ understanding of the roles of principal and vice principal and about the ways school administrators learn about their roles. The questions were also designed to seek superintendents’ understanding of the terms “fiduciary duty” and/or being an “agent of the board,” as these terms pertain to school administrators and how they expected these things to be reflected in practice. The interview questions did not ask about psychological safety directly but were intended to explore the policies, practices, and ways of working that principals and vice principals said were impacting their decisions about whether to speak up, share their ideas, and ask questions. Table 2, on the next page, describes the participants in the second set of interviews. 57 Table 2 Description of Second-Level Interview Participants Participant Role District Size Gender Sarah Superintendent Mid-sized district Female Jamie Superintendent Small district Female James Superintendent Small district Male Conner Assistant Superintendent Large district Male In IE it is important to move beyond the original participants’ experiences to see how their work, and in this case principals’ and vice principals’ experiences of psychological safety, is organized and mediated by social relations. As these interviews were second-level data collection, the participants were not asked to discuss their own specific experiences; rather, they were asked for clarification about the roles of principals and vice principals and the social and organizational processes that shape their work. Reflection Reflective writing was carried out after each of the interviews and during the analysis of the interview transcripts. In IE, data analysis begins in the interview process as the researcher is both checking their own understanding and reflecting on their new understandings (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). Reflective journaling provided the opportunity to both collect and analyze the data through the process of thinking and writing (Rankin, 2017). This reflection helped to inform the direction of the study in that the questions that came from the interviews, together with my own thoughts and experiences from the reflection process, led to the need for more clarification and the second-level interviews. This reflective writing about the learning as it happens is part of 58 the data, as it becomes part of the “coordination of sense-making that brings both the activities and shared moments of consciousness together” (Earles & Crawley, 2019, p. 17). The researcher is not separate from the research, because it is the researcher’s job to learn from the participants about their work and how it connects with the work of others in order to gain understanding of the problematic. I provide more detail about my reflexivity at the end of the next chapter. Data Analysis In IE, data analysis is occurring throughout the process, as the researcher is continuously checking for understanding and seeking clarity about what is being said (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). These researchers wrote, “The thinking and writing illuminate nuanced practices that expose links into the institution that are not evident at the outset” (p. 10). Along with the analysis that happens throughout the process, there is also important analysis that happens after the interviews are complete. This research uses indexing and writing accounts (Rankin, 2017) as the form of analysis for both sets of interviews. Indexing happens after the interviews are completed. It is a way of reviewing and “organizing data into linked practices and happenings to support an analytic view into the institution” (Rankin, 2017, p. 5). This next step of the analysis involved reviewing the transcripts and the reflections, and included texts for anything that advanced the understanding of the problematic (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). Campbell and Gregor (2002) created a good description of indexing with this explanation: “When it comes to interpreting data, institutional ethnography relies on, explores, and explicates linkages that are lived, brought into existence in time and space by actual people doing actual things” (p. 98) 59 In this research, indexing involved reviewing the videos along with the transcripts of the interviews. In the administrator interviews, I noted what participants described doing in their stories of speaking up or remaining silent, and their explanations of why they made the decisions that they did. I went back over these notes and highlighted linkages between the stories or areas that described social relations or institutional practices or texts that were impacting their decisions and shaping their actions. I also noted comments or ideas that I was curious about and wanted to know more about, particularly the things that the participants also seemed to be struggling to describe. The next review of the transcripts and videos was looking more specifically at these areas of tension that I noticed during the first review or noted in my reflection journal after the original interviews. I followed a similar process with the superintendent interviews, but since the questions were different, I was watching and listening for slightly different things. I was looking and listening for the descriptions of social relations, institutional practices, and texts, just as I did with the administrators; however, I was also paying attention to points of agreement or disjuncture between the two sets of interviews. The notes from this indexing analysis were used in the next part of the analysis, which was writing accounts. Writing accounts “entails selecting an instance of activity from the ethnographic data and describing how it is socially organized” (Rankin, 2017, p. 5). Another term that is also used to describe the analysis done in IE is “mapping.” Mapping is a progressive tracing and revealing of power (ruling) relations and how that impacts the work people are doing (Pence, 2021). The goal of mapping is “to lay out a display of what is happening (the map), either in words or diagrams, that describes the features of the social practices and their respective material forms and relationships” (Rankin, 2017, p. 5). The mapping in this case is done with writing accounts, 60 which are used to make the social connections and power relations visible and to show how both are connected to the work. The researcher does this by “looking for fault lines where the narrative and the ideological rub up against each other” (DeVault & McCoy, 2001, p. 27). The analysis is developed and shared using researcher writing accounts. The researcher takes the original data (texts, interview transcripts, researcher reflections) and the indexing or linkages of this data to construct accounts of how things are socially organized (Rankin, 2017). I took the linked practices from the indexing part of the analysis and went back to the original data to highlight the descriptions of these linked social relations or practices. I used these accounts to describe the social relations, practices, and fault lines that impact principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. Trustworthiness An intentional effort has been made to ensure the validity and trustworthiness of this research. In IE there is a range of analytical procedures that could be followed: what matters is that the methodological procedures are consistent with an accepted and adequately described theory of knowing, and that these procedures are then followed and described in detail for transparency (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). The ontological commitments of IE and the ways they align with my own beliefs and understandings have been outlined in this research, and these commitments were used to inform the methodology and analysis of the data. The details of how the data was collected, how and why the research evolved throughout the process, and the descriptions of the data analysis were all designed to provide transparency for the reader (Ahmed, 2024). 61 Analysis to Action Dorothy Smith (1999) described the need to move from research to action by extending the concept of mapping and reminding researchers that “although some of the work of inquiry must be technical, as making a map is, its product could be ordinarily accessible and usable, just as a map is” (p. 95). By mapping the social and ruling relations that impact the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia, this research provides insight into ways to increase psychological safety in the K-12 education workplace. I hope that this insight adds to the understanding of psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. I have endeavoured to make visible some of the institutional practices and social relations that impact administrators’ work and their experiences of psychological safety. Making this knowledge available and usable is part of my work going forward as I share this research and my recommendations back to the field. Summary This chapter outlined the concepts and methods of institutional ethnography and how this methodology was used in this research. It described how the participants were recruited and provided basic demographic information about each participant. It then outlined the methods used to gather data and explained how this data was analyzed using indexing and writing accounts. The following chapter shares the findings from this research and analysis. 62 Chapter 4: Tensions and Contradictions From the Standpoint of Principals and Vice Principals: Explicating Ruling Knowledge and Relations This chapter presents the findings from the initial interviews conducted with principals and vice principals. The findings identify the practices and social relations that impacted administrators’ decisions to speak up, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders (voice), as well as the outcomes and consequences of these decisions. This chapter outlines what administrators reported about speaking up when they had questions or ideas to share with district leaders and what the outcomes and consequences of silence were. It also describes the policies, practices, and procedures (both written and unwritten) that principals and vice principals explained as having impacted their decisions to speak up or to remain silent in situations when they had something to share. I conclude this chapter with my own reflections and observations about the interviews with principals and vice principals and how these interviews shaped the rest of this evolving inquiry. First-Level Interviews: Principals and Vice Principals Institutional ethnography starts with talking to the people who are directly experiencing the problematic under investigation (Smith, 2008). This first level of investigation, or entry point, always happens where the problematic is occurring and where people can describe their involvement in it (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). In these first-level interviews, the researcher is listening to the participant’s everyday experiences, paying particular attention to the institutional practices and social relations that impact principals’ and vice principals’ work and, in this case, their psychological safety. Social relations include the participant’s knowledge of practice, how that practice is coordinated with others, and how their work is shaped and coordinated by 63 institutional texts (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). Campbell and Gregor reminded researchers that “entry to the social relations organizing the setting is facilitated by careful attention to data at that level” (Campbell & Gregor, 2002, p. 88). Choosing Voice and the Outcomes of This Choice One of the hallmarks of psychological safety is the belief that one is in a group or a workplace that is safe for interpersonal risk-taking (Edmondson, 2019). To learn about some of the factors that impacted principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety, they were asked to share a story of a time they chose to speak up (what I refer to as “having voice”) with district leaders. They were asked to describe this situation and the outcome of this choice. The participants’ accounts of their decisions to speak up and of the outcomes of those decisions allowed the researcher to listen for the social and organizational processes that shaped their experiences of psychological safety (DeVault & McCoy, 2001). Principals and vice principals chose voice when a) their feedback was invited and valued by district leaders, b) they had developed a good working relationship with district leaders, c) it was a topic that was “okay to talk about,” or d) it was an “okay” time or place. They also spoke up in more reactive ways when a) something was too important to ignore, or b) when they felt an obligation to speak up despite the risk, or c) because they were in a position of power where there was less risk. Feedback is Wanted and Valued. Both principals and vice principals reported speaking up when their opinion seemed to be wanted by district leaders. For vice principals this was true with both district leaders and the principals that they worked for. Principals and vice principals chose voice when their input was asked for directly and/or there was a specific space and time provided for this type of dialogue and feedback in teams or individual meetings. When participants believed that district leadership wanted to hear the information and would consider 64 it, they were more likely to share. This belief was, at least partially, shaped by how the meeting was set up. For example, if during the meeting input was explicitly asked for and there was time and space provided on the agenda for input, then it was more likely for administrators to share their thoughts, ideas, and questions. The type of experiences they described were dialogical and created a sense of working together. When administrators believed their opinions were wanted and that speaking up was encouraged, they spoke up more and they reported feeling a sense of pride and satisfaction with being able to contribute. Principal Caitlin described the feeling of satisfaction she had when she moved to her present school district and the assistant superintendent phoned and asked for her thoughts: The [district] leaders are asking for feedback. The outcome of speaking up was great. You know, they’ve come back to me already a couple of times, said, “What do you think about this, about this?” It’s not like I get everything for my school that I want, that’s actually not the point. I understand that there’s compromise, but I feel like I am actually a part of a solution and that has felt really good. (Principal Caitlin) A couple of the participants (Principals Caitlin and Lance) talked about this happening in their present-day work, but several experienced administrators spoke of these opportunities for voice as something from the past. I felt like I could give any opinion. Actually, if I didn’t like something, if I thought something should be changed, I felt like I could put it forward, and they would consider it. It may not be agreed with, but it was never unsafe. (Principal Lenore) 65 Principal Michael said: There was a time about 10 or so years ago when there was opportunity for dialogue. At the time policy and decision-making was a very dynamic process that was ongoing. We were being asked our thoughts before the end had already been determined; it was a normal process. When administrators reported that their input was explicitly asked for and the meeting included the time and space for this input, this signalled that their ideas were valued and increased their psychological safety. If these opportunities were embedded in the ways meetings were run, then speaking up became part of ongoing practice. The administrators who spoke about this as a situation they had experienced in the past but were no longer experiencing reported this as a big loss, and were emotional when describing it to me. I could hear the lightness in their voices and see the smiles on their faces when they described their earlier experiences, when they spoke up and felt valued. When they spoke about how they were not feeling valued in their current situations, I could see and hear the pain as well. Principal Michael, who spoke in the quote above about the dynamic process he enjoyed 10 years ago, described meetings with a previous district leader as “amazing conversations that were deep and I would dare say, emotional,” but he went on to describe the current principal meetings as more corporate, with more structures and more fear. He described it as “a fear of opening things up because you don’t know where it is going to go.” This difference in voice behaviour, based on how the meeting was structured and the content of the meeting, suggests that particular institutional practices and social relations for these principals have shifted away from more reciprocal interactions towards one-way and top-down exchanges, thus diminishing psychological safety. 66 Relationship With Leaders. My participants reported that relationships with district leaders and with other administrators were connected to voice as well and were intertwined with whether they were being asked for feedback. In general, having good relationships with others increased voice behaviour. While what defined a good relationship was not explicitly stated, participants mentioned that it involved time and opportunity to know each other on a more personal level rather than just in a transactional way. Lance described the superintendent at his previous district by saying that he “had relationships with all of the administrators,” and added that [the superintendent’s] having those connections showed “a genuineness and authenticity that made me personally feel comfortable.” Lenore spoke about a deputy superintendent she worked with who had strong relationships with the whole administration team, and how that helped the team contribute and ask questions. The deputy superintendent sort of sat with us. He was always open to new ways and to be challenged. He had the ego strength to be challenged. He would never say, “Oh, it has to be my way.” Instead, it was “Well, what do you think about this?” The invitation would be there, and because he allowed himself to be vulnerable, he encouraged people to be honest because it felt like it was going to be well received. (Principal Lenore) It was the vulnerability of the leader and his openness to hearing from others that made Lenore and her colleagues feel comfortable to speak up. To be open and vulnerable is an attribute of a leader, but is also something that can be promoted and embedded in practice. This leader created an open structure for conversation by sitting with the team. He made it clear that input was needed, and challenging ideas was encouraged. Relationships mattered in both individual meetings with district leaders and in group administrator meetings. In group meetings, having established relationships with district leaders 67 as well as with other administrators mattered. If someone had good relationships with both district leaders and other administrators, these connections encouraged voice behaviour. Principal Michael, who had experienced collaborative, relationship-based meetings in the past, described times when he contributed to group meetings and felt quite proud because he was contributing to the team. He also described how things felt different now and said that he “can remember a couple of specific situations with our leadership where something was being presented, and a question or a perspective that I thought I was going to share, was actually honestly not met with curiosity, but met with judgment.” He was thinking the same thing that one of his colleagues said out loud in the group, and the response to that comment sounded judgmental and critical of the person who asked it. Michael went on to say how that one negative response was the one he (and others) tended to remember, and he was surprised at how much impact that had had on him: “It is amazing how much it can shut you down and stop you from talking.” The present-day meetings in Michael’s district are held online, and he reported that there are not the same opportunities for collaboration and relationship-building in those meetings that they used to have. They were told that questions could be submitted by email after the meeting, which seemed to Michael to be even more risky as emails are easily misinterpreted and there is no longer any opportunity to explain as you would be able to do in conversation (Constantia et al., 2023). Michael was careful to acknowledge that he was not assigning blame, as he understands “the pressures that everyone is feeling in a world that maybe feels more black and white, more us versus them, more litigious or whatever.” Even though principals understand these pressures on the education system, the result of changing meeting structures (moving online) and practices (less collaboration) has been the creation of leadership meetings where principals are feeling like recipients of information rather than participants. 68 If a meeting didn’t feel like a safe place to ask questions or share ideas, several of the participants said they would set up a more private meeting with a district leader or a colleague later on to talk about the issue or seek clarification. Vice Principal Robert said that it is pretty common to stay silent in the meeting and seek clarification after if you have a trusting relationship with someone. I can seek clarification individually afterwards. I think many people do that. They will ask someone who they trust later. I think no one wants to look foolish. And everyone wants to be seen as a team player, and no one wants to be seen as oppositional. I am that way, that’s how I want to be seen as well. The fear of looking foolish or saying something that might be judged harshly will come up again in the section about choosing silence, but it is also important to note here, because this fear of judgment narrows the places where administrators will ask questions and share ideas and who they will share them with. Opportunities for one-on-one meetings take some of the group risk away and can be a place to take questions or share ideas; however, in one-on-one meetings, the importance of relationship and the practice of the leader explicitly asking for input becomes even more important. From an organizational perspective one-on-one meetings require a lot more time than a group meeting and require leaders to have multiple conversations about the same topics. This is not efficient, and is probably not sustainable. Another problem with adding one-on-one meetings (when the group feels unsafe for asking questions) is that not everyone has the same access to these opportunities. Such situations could foster more inequality and disjointed communication. Relationship is important to voice behaviour even in regular one-on-one meetings. If principals and vice principals had questions or input that was not being explicitly invited in 69 group meetings, their relationship with the district leader became a much bigger factor in the decision of whether or not to bring these things up in a separate one-on-one conversation. If they felt like they had a good relationship with a particular district leader, administrators reported speaking up even when they were not being directly asked for input. Michael described this type of “good relationship” as the type of working relationship where you know each other from informal interactions over a cup of coffee. He described how important these casual one-on-one conversations were to his relationship with a previous district leader, and how they made him really comfortable to speak up and ask questions without concern or worry: “With my last assistant superintendent who was with me for six years, I felt like he knew who I was and what I valued through some of those closed door coffee conversations” (Principal Michael). These casual conversations and established relationships seemed to make a big difference in levels of psychological safety and voice behaviour. Principal Lenore recalled some fun she had with her supervisor: “I just remember us laughing a lot, so there might be some teasing involved. But when it came down to serious business everything was considered.” She described this as a relationship where she could talk about anything, and she felt valued and heard. I could hear the lightness and the laughter in her voice as she was remembering and talking about some projects they did together. These are the types of relationships that encourage voice. Vice principals were also impacted by relationships when sharing ideas or asking questions of principals, but there were some differences between the two groups. Vice principals had less access to district leaders and fewer relationships with them, and so they were much less likely to share ideas and ask questions of district leaders in either group or individual meetings. In the case of vice principals having voice with their principals, relationship and the belief that their input was wanted seemed equally important. These two factors were so interconnected that 70 they were hard to separate out. If the relationship with their principal was good, then vice principals felt like their voice mattered and was important. Vice Principal Kelly spoke about one of the principals she worked with in this way: “The school leader who was there, the principal, he just made everything good. He was great to me and had the respect of all the staff.” She described him as a kind man who never spoke ill of anyone. She said that he maintained and promoted a good work/life balance. This was her first experience as a vice principal, and she felt really comfortable asking questions and learning from him. Principals also mentioned how important the relationship with the principal is for the vice principal and that this often impacts their psychological safety. Principal Lance recalled what this is like for a vice principal and how he sees this pattern with many of his colleagues. I remember what it was like to be a new vice principal, you know, like I want to be a principal, and I’ve got to please that person. And yup, I’d be quiet about that, and I’ve just got to put in the extra hours. I see that in our colleagues all the time. The importance of the principal-vice principal relationship and how much this impacts the career prospects of the vice principal seemed to be strongly embedded in the understanding and the practices of both the principals and the vice principals. I remember noting in my reflections that I was not surprised about this at all. I reflected on how much all of the participants, as well as me, just see it as obvious, standard, and unchanging, like it is built into the fabric and structure of the institution. Time, Place, and Topic: The Unwritten Rules. There were some unwritten but commonly held beliefs about when voice behaviour was allowed and when it wasn’t. These rules were not written down, but also were not rules that were explicitly discussed or shared. Despite 71 that, there seemed to be general agreement around what the rules were. Unwritten informal rules that guide work and social relations have also been called informal institutions or norms (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004). These informal institutions provide norms, conventions, and social rules beyond the formal rules of the organization (Minbaeva et al., 2023). Some of these unwritten rules were that questions, concerns, and ideas were better raised in individual meetings than in the group and that some topics were okay to discuss and ask questions about and others were not. There seemed to be a fairly common understanding that group meetings were not the place for anything that could be seen as disagreement with or questioning of decisions that were being delivered. Vice Principal Robert described it this way: “Outside of meetings people are very honest and speak their minds but at district meetings people are very quiet, I think there is an implicit understanding of how to behave.” He is describing what he thinks is a very common understanding, as if everyone agrees. He went on to say: For me personally, the individual conversations are the most effective way to understand the people giving the information, to understand intention which is the critical part. Clarification about that in a large group … it is not safe to do that. (Vice Principal Robert) This implicit understanding that he refers to may be related to people picking up on social cues in a meeting where everyone remains silent on issues, even when they know people have thoughts and ideas about that topic. Robert said he believes that asking for clarification in a group meeting is unsafe, so if someone wanted to understand something they would have to find a way to ask in a more private one-on-one conversation. He watches how others behave as well and their actions confirm his belief. Another example of waiting for the right moment to ask questions was when Principal Linda was talking about a meeting where the superintendent was 72 telling principals that they needed to do more. She decided not to address the issue during the meeting, even though she was upset and so were other people in the room. Linda reported that “everyone was quiet, and the room just felt really tense.” She added: I don’t think that speaking up to her [the superintendent] in that setting [a large admin meeting] would have her best reaction. But the outcome of nobody speaking up in the larger meeting means that (in this case) some people went away feeling disrespected, or that they’re not doing a good enough job. (Principal Linda) In this case, Linda was picking up on the tension and the silence in the room. She then heard from colleagues after the meeting that they were upset about what was said. This is an example of an unwritten but powerful rule about not speaking up in group meetings. Instead, this issue was discussed in a private meeting between the superintendent and the local association president. This allowed time and space for the superintendent to process the feedback. The superintendent was then able to address the issue at the next group meeting. Principals and vice principals also reported that some topics were okay to talk about in general and some were not. For example, one of the vice principals reported that it was okay to report about things in a specialty area or a project you are doing for the district, but it was not okay to question decisions that district leaders have made. In other words, there was a sense of safety in times when school administrators could “report up” on local initiatives, but they felt less safety to “push up.” These unwritten rules about which topics were allowed in which places seemed fairly consistent and clear, but when asked about where this understanding came from, participants were not sure. What was clear was that these implicit rules were impacting administrators’ decisions around voice and their psychological safety. One of the ways administrators learned these rules was through social cues. For example, Robert described his 73 decision-making process: “There are things that I might want clarification on, but I read the room, and no one is asking questions. Topics just wash through. Information is provided.” Social and political acumen are good skills for leaders to possess (McGinn, 2008), but if these clues are telling principals and vice principals that they shouldn’t say anything in meetings this lowers psychological safety and important information is lost. The other way administrators learn these rules is through previous experiences or hearing stories about the experiences of others. The story Linda told about everyone staying quiet in the group meeting is a good example of this. When I asked why she thought people didn’t speak up in the meeting when they were not happy, she said, “From what I’ve heard from other people there, they’re fearful, and from what they’re saying, they’re worried that they’ll lose their job.” She said that “people feel they’ve had certain interactions with her that have caused them to feel that way.” She herself had not had these experiences but she had been told that others had. Reactive Voice: Some principals and vice principals reported speaking up because of a sense of obligation or a feeling of frustration that was too big to ignore—or both. For example, one vice principal reported speaking up because her stress level got so high, she felt like she had no other choice: “If you ask what impacted my decision to speak up, I am going to have to say stress.” She reported feeling a lot of stress about not being able to help students with support needs. She believed that they needed some support that was not being provided for them. She felt like it would be going against her own values to not speak out about what she considered an injustice. In this case, it was both the level of stress and her sense of social justice that prompted her to say something. She also felt a professional obligation to help her students. Other administrators reported feeling a moral obligation to speak up on behalf of themselves and/or others, particularly if they had positional power, like a role in the local principals’ association, or 74 were more experienced educators. This was also true for participants who believed that they had less to lose than others because they were no longer trying to advance in the organization. Several different reasons put people in this “less to lose” category, which included those close to retirement, people ready to leave their current school district, or people who had already been “sidelined” and would not be considered for advancement. The idea of being sidelined or no longer considered for advancement will be discussed in more detail in the section on why administrators chose silence, but some observations can be made in this section. There seems to be two rather clear categories of administrators, those on track to move up in the organization and those who are not on this track. Which category someone is in appears to impact both voice and silence, because there is an understanding that if an administrator wants to move up in the organization, they must stay silent if they don’t agree with something. They also choose voice when they agree, have something positive to say, or feel compelled to make a comment based on their sense of obligation to others. If someone is no longer trying to move up in the organization, there seems to be more freedom to speak up no matter what kind of comment they are making. Benita speaks up on behalf of others, as she is close to retirement and is less concerned about the possible repercussions. This is something that I noted as a particularly heartbreaking part of several conversations. I noted in my reflections that there was agreement that just the act of speaking up could impact administrators’ chances of career advancement, and when they spoke about it, I could hear and see the pain associated with this. Yet I also noted that not one person seemed to question this. It was as if this reality was inevitable. 75 I speak up about ideas because I am two years to retirement and other newer people are not psychologically safe to speak. I guess I stand up and speak on behalf of people that I don’t think have the psychological safety. (Principal Benita) Lance sees his years of experience as giving him a responsibility to support his colleagues who come to him with questions they may not want to ask directly. I had a responsibility to ask questions that I knew people had come to me with. When you’re a vice principal and you’re trying to become a principal, you’re not going to go to the superintendent and say, “I think this is wrong,” but when you’re an established principal maybe you can. (Principal Lance) They believed that because they had less to lose, there was an obligation to speak up for others who were less safe to do so. Participants with positions in the local association also chose to speak up more, both because this role gave them an obligation to speak up and because this positional power increased their sense of safety. Even those who were not in these roles agreed that those who were in the local principals’ and vice principals’ association were able to advocate for them because of their position. However, as will be seen in the next section, position was also not a guaranteed pathway to voice. Choosing Silence In this section, I discuss the reasons that principals and vice principals chose not to speak up, ask questions, or share their ideas with district leaders (silence). Administrators chose silence because of their beliefs about what their role is and the expectations and responsibilities that go with this role. Administrators also described choosing silence for a number of other reasons: a) past experiences when speaking up had not gone well for themselves or others, b) fear of 76 being seen as a complainer or troublemaker, c) negative impact on career advancement opportunities, and d) a sense of duty to represent the beliefs and decisions of management. Position and Role Expectation. Similar to how having voice was impacted by relationship, time, and place, silence was also impacted by these factors but to a much lesser extent. Position and relationship with district leaders did seem to impact the decision to remain silent in one-on-one situations or even the availability of that opportunity to speak with district leaders. Vice principals had more limited opportunities to speak directly to district leaders because their time with district leaders is “mediated through the principal” (Vice Principal Robert). There seemed to be unwritten cultural rules around the role and expectations of vice principals and newer principals to not ask questions or share ideas because of their role. Principal Caitlin, who is a fairly new principal, said, “As a newer vice principal, for example, or a new principal, you know you should be happy that you have been given this opportunity and maybe not squeak as much. You should just kind of roll with things.” This expectation of silence for the vice principal and/or the new principal seemed to be generally agreed on not only by the people in these roles but also by the people who were now more experienced. Principal Lance, who is a more experienced administrator, said that he speaks up now because he remembers what it was like to be a vice principal, when he felt he had to be quiet all the time and put in extra hours to get ahead.in the more experienced category. He said that he “sees that in his colleagues all the time,” so now he speaks up for them. Administrators reported that silence was generally expected in certain situations, particularly in group situations. Silence or carefully considered voice was often practiced in group leadership meetings to avoid being “seen as negative” (Principal Benita), and “if one is concerned about one’s place in the system, one must always be thinking about whether they are 77 able to be honest” (Vice Principal Robert). There seemed to be a general consensus that the rule for principals and vice principals was to listen and say very little at district meetings. Questions or comments in a meeting were being curtailed either because of fear they might say something that would negatively impact them, or at the very least as a strategic move to minimize the risk of that happening. The description of the need to stay quiet as something that everyone knows shows that silence is clearly embedded in the unwritten rules. This unwritten rule is shaping people’s practice and experiences of working together; administrators are having to negotiate a dynamic tension between risk and safety, and are often choosing to err on the side of safety. This highlights the covert power of these commonly understood but not explicitly discussed psychological safety rules to shape group behaviour and impact the organization. Silence or highly censored voice appears to have become embedded in the way things are done: Every administrator needs to self-censor themselves when they are in the vicinity of people at the board office. Outside of meetings people are very honest and speak their minds, but at district meetings people are very quiet. I think there is an implicit understanding of how to behave. (Vice Principal Robert) The idea that speaking up in leadership meetings was often seen as negative in some way seemed to be consistent regardless of a person’s years of experience or whether they were a vice principal or a principal. One very experienced administrator used the example of district leaders telling them about professional learning communities, which have been used for many years in K-12 schools and are very familiar to all of the principals. “Everyone has been doing this for the last 10 years that same way and no one was saying, ‘Why are you telling us this? Who are you speaking to?’” This administrator and his colleagues felt like they had a great deal of experience in this area already, but were having to listen to instruction on it because of their position in the 78 hierarchy. They felt like their knowledge and expertise was not being valued. He went on to say that he recognizes that “when I make a choice not to speak up that I need to find a way to understand and agree rather than divorce myself from that decision.” When Robert is searching for a way to understand he could be just seeking more information but he also seems to be looking for a way to make sense of things so he can get on board with the decision. There seemed to be a lot of agreement that seeking clarification after the meeting was a much better strategy than asking questions in a group. Being a team player and not being judged as difficult was really important to everyone when it came to voice behaviour. The worry about looking foolish was mentioned a few times. This is something that is also mentioned in the psychological safety literature. Speaking up in groups always requires a level of risk, but in a psychologically safe workplace people believe that they are safe to take risks, and that others won’t make them feel foolish if they come up with a new idea, whether it is a good one or not. This perception of a safer risk is what creates growth and learning, and it explains why creating psychologically safer workplaces is so essential to success. Career Advancement. Beyond choosing silence to avoid looking foolish, participants also stayed silent to make sure they didn’t damage their careers. For many of the participants, the fear that speaking up or being seen as a complainer would limit career advancement and opportunities had a large impact on voice behaviour and the choice to remain silent. One vice principal described why she remained silent about some of her concerns when interacting with her principal: “I don’t feel safe in that environment to stand up for myself because she’s got me on a hook. She’s the one that would be responsible for my reference and my evaluation. I am at her mercy” (Vice Principal Kelly). This reference to the power of supervisors and the negative 79 impact of speaking up was mentioned by several administrators as they recounted decisions to remain silent. Principal Lance expressed his thoughts about this as follows: I think, as a leader, if you are always looking for people who agree with you and or admire you, fawn after you, then you create an echo chamber that becomes really hard to let go of and that’s really hard for other people to pierce. It’s easy to create an echo chamber when I’m the one who decides if you’re going to be a vice principal or a principal. I’m the one who decides if you should be part of this committee work or shouldn’t be a part of it. Or when there’s a crisis, I go to the same people. So that, that’s how it gets created. And then it’s kind of like the frog in the pot over time. The reference to the frog in a pot over time was an interesting visual that described the way some of these unwritten rules developed without intention over time. I think this visual was a way for Lance to describe the idea that it wasn’t a particular person or role that was responsible for the current lack of safety. Instead, he was pointing out that it is the structures and systems of the historical and current education system that have created this boiling pot. He was also pointing out how these unwritten rules and ideas build up over time and are not necessarily decided or created with intention. This power of district leaders, particularly superintendents, on the work and career trajectory of principals and vice principals was mentioned several times. School administrators’ assignments are decided at the district level, and principals and vice principals can be moved into different roles and locations by the superintendent. Robert used the phrase, “I was given an audience” [with the superintendent] to describe a year-end meeting. I asked him about the word “audience,” and he said he was being facetious but that he does “believe that the superintendent 80 has power, they have absolute power. I am not saying they are bad or good, but they have lots of power that can be used in many different ways” (Vice Principal Robert). Despite this acknowledgement of power, many of the participants were very careful to point out that this was not the fault of senior leaders themselves but was a structural, systemic issue at play. “I just wouldn’t want it to sound like it’s just about leadership. I think it’s a system-wide kind of challenge that we’ve got” (Principal Michael). There was an acknowledgement that the power structures in education are beyond the control of any individual district leader, and that perhaps as well as shaping some things in the institution, district leaders are being shaped by the institution in turn. Principal Benita talked about the realities of how the system is set up in this power-over way when she said, “The unwritten thing is that you can have your job changed and with due procedure you can lose your job. You can also be demoted in your job, all of which have happened here in my 10 years in this district.” The hierarchical structure of the organization that gives superintendents power over the placement and career path of administrators seemed to be impacting the psychological safety of the participants, because choosing either silence or supportive, unquestioning voice are safer choices if one is concerned about career advancement. There was also common agreement that there were two separate groups of administrators who could be distinguished by whether they were hoping to or able to advance in the system. Which group a given administrator was a part of (or wanting to be a part of) made a huge difference to choosing silence over voice. Administrators described a circle that some people are in, and some people are not. “If you are not in the circle and you try to do that culture of curiosity and candor, there are consequences to that” (Principal Lance). Vice Principal Jessica described it as “an inner circle at the top.” She said, “You might not be in that inner circle—you may be, or you may not be, but there is a group that definitely is, you can definitely feel that.” 81 When I asked another participant about what kind of things moved people to the in- or out-group that he kept referencing, he responded that “asking questions tends to get you out. I think” (Principal Lance). Being silent was not a way into the inner circle on its own, but administrators seemed to agree that making the wrong voice decision could easily keep a person out or stop their opportunity for advancement, which often made silence a safer choice. Learning From Past Experiences. Principals and vice principals often chose silence because of their interpretation of the unwritten rules that they had put together through their own experiences and/or the experiences of others. For example, Kelly stopped asking questions to people at the district office because the responses made her believe that the questions were unwanted, and the responses were unproductive. I would say that I don’t feel safe asking people who are above me, like the assistant superintendents, or even HR. Responses are usually by email, and I find it’s always very short and not very understanding. I think that we’re all supposed to be on the same team, but it often doesn’t feel that way. (Vice Principal Kelly) Vice Principal Jessica learned to remain silent because of her own experience with the principal at her school. She explained that she now opts for silence with her principal because “I’ve spoken to my principal about things, and they weren’t well received, honestly.” She told a story about asking if the admin team could meet to talk about how to make staff meetings run more smoothly. The principal was upset, so Jessica just left it alone and never did share her ideas. It also made her hesitate to speak up again. “So, it’s like, okay, I’m not going to do that again” (Vice Principal Jessica). This learning from experience comes from people’s interpretations of their own experiences but also from their interpretation of the experiences of 82 others. Caitlin talked about her own experience in a previous district, where she learned not to speak up. I was not as confident. I will own that part and just felt like there was almost like a hierarchical piece that I felt uncomfortable engaging in, and other times I had spoken up, and I felt dismissed. So, then I kind of didn’t do it. I felt dismissed and actually I was dismissed, too. So, I just sort of bit my tongue a little bit, and it wasn’t very good for me or my school. (Principal Caitlin) Caitlin learned silence from her own experience of being dismissed, but she had also heard stories of other people’s speaking up not going well. She talked about the idea that when you are given the opportunity to be a principal you should not “squeak as much and kind of just roll with it,” but when I ask her if she had been told that she said, “Well, I don’t know. I can’t say that that’s true for everybody, but I know a group of people that I work with would say this is kind of how it is.” She added, “You don’t want it to threaten your ability to move up because you’ve heard stories of others who have, you know, caused a ruckus, and then they’re no longer with us” (Principal Caitlin). Stories about things that have happened in the past and people’s interpretation of these events affects present-day psychological safety. This group understanding that is shared and passed on to new people can be very powerful, because it gains momentum and becomes the story of how things are done here. I was struck by the unquestioned aspect of the message that seemed to be universally agreed upon. These are not the messages that are being said aloud at official meetings or mentoring programs, but they are shaping the understanding of what it means to be an administrator and what behaviour is expected for success. 83 Fiduciary Duty/Agent of the Board. One reason for silence that was mentioned by participants Benita and Robert was that school administrators have a fiduciary duty to uphold as agents of the board, as stated in the BC School Act. Administrators work under individual contracts with the board, and when they move from the role of teacher to that of administrator, they are taught about the fiduciary duty that they now have to the board. Using an institutional ethnographic approach requires further exploration of texts that shape the work of participants, so I will discuss the BC School Act (1996) in more detail later; it is an important text that describes the role and responsibilities of BC principals and vice principals. I will also discuss what the legal definition of fiduciary duty is in the next chapter, but it is the principals’ and vice principals’ interpretation of this duty that is important to discuss here, because it is impacting their work and their decisions around voice and silence. The interpretation of this duty was that principals and vice principals were obligated to take information from district leaders and then pass this information on to their staff as they received it. Some of the participants discussed this legal duty as a reason not to speak up or share ideas and opinions. When I asked for clarification of this duty, Robert described it as not being able to have an opinion. He did say that they are not supposed to disagree in a public way, which is how it is described in the BC School Act. However, I think it is the definition of “public” that may be causing the confusion and making him, and perhaps others, think that this applies in the workplace as well. I mean, we have a fiduciary duty to the board, and we don’t have the right to express our own opinions. Even if we disagree, we’re not supposed to share that we disagree in a public way. It is a legal policy that we are reminded of. (Vice Principal Robert) 84 This fiduciary duty was often connected in the conversation to the personal service contracts that each administrator signs directly with the district: The system is geared to support collective agreements and I think it [the system] understands contracts really well but administrators’ contracts are personal service contracts and so we work at the beck and call of the board which really means the superintendent. That person has a lot of power whoever they are. I think when you enter into the job you have to accept that that is the way it is. (Vice Principal Robert) Personal service contracts were also important documents that seemed to make administrators feel more vulnerable, as Principal Benita noted when explaining fiduciary duty and the reason people choose to err on the side of silence because they are concerned about their jobs. Kelly said that as an administrator she felt so much more vulnerable because she was no longer part of a union. She described becoming very careful not to put things in writing to avoid complaints and grievances. Although she felt very confident that she was following district policies and acting with integrity, she also felt she had to be extra careful as it was easy to make a mistake or have something be misinterpreted because “as a principal you are scrutinized for everything you do” (Vice Principal Kelly). Kelly went on to explain this feeling of constraint like this: “Sometimes it feels like you’re just supposed to be a vessel to do what other people say and that doesn’t always feel good.” The interpretation of these text documents created some awareness of the vulnerability inherent in the administrator role, but at the same time provided what might be considered a safety net. If someone follows the rules and upholds the duties as outlined in these documents, then the documents could also perhaps protect them from the uncertainty of complex decisions and actions. Being a “vessel” for the decisions and actions of others doesn’t “feel good,” as Kelly described, but it may be safer if making a mistake as an 85 individual is too risky. Robert’s description of fiduciary duty aligns the administrator with the larger group of decision-makers that he has a sense of duty to. “We have a fiduciary duty to the board and have to represent what the board policy is and what the procedures are, and I understand that and take it very seriously” (Vice Principal Robert). Outcomes of Silence Principals and vice principals reported several consequences or repercussions of remaining silent. They also developed coping strategies to protect themselves and their staff when psychological safety was low. When participants were asked about the outcomes of their decision(s) to remain silent, they talked about feeling a lack of power to create change, subversive leadership practices, lower levels of individual mental health and well-being, and leaving their position or their district. Individual Powerlessness and Hope for the Collective. Administrators who chose silence reported they had no choice but to stay quiet and felt powerless to change the workplace systems and rules they lived with. They did not like withholding their input, but reported that they were part of a system that was set up to work this way or at least was set up this way at the moment. Either way, they felt powerless to change it on their own. This lack of individual efficacy did lead to the development of more collective communication strategies between administrators and district leaders. Participants reported some hope in the power of the collective voice of the local or provincial Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association. The power of the local association varied across districts, but the association could speak on behalf of the group, which was often considered helpful. The British Columbia Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association (BCPVPA) is a voluntary professional association which does not carry the same 86 collective power as a union, but it is an association that many administrators appreciated and felt supported by. They [the local association executive] represent some of the big challenges we have. The local association executive role is a very important role, they are meant to represent the voice of administrators, when some people feel unheard. When we have our meetings, they take that message and construct it in a way that will be heard by the superintendent and understood and maybe acted on in a positive way and I think that’s smart. (Vice Principal Robert) The idea of massaging or carefully constructing the message delivered to district leaders seemed to be a successful strategy sometimes, particularly through meetings with local association executive members and superintendents. As Linda, who was a member of the local executive, explained, “I wanted to make sure I was using the right language [with the superintendent] and had to be very careful with the language I was choosing” (Principal Linda). Vice Principal Robert described the association executives as translators. “They understand how to represent, how to make it look like we are team players and not complainers.” When individual principals or vice principals felt like they didn’t have the power to deliver a message themselves, they chose to stay silent as an individual but often relied on the local principals’ and vice principals’ association to provide collective voice. Subversive Leadership and Withdrawal. Another outcome of choosing silence when psychological safety is low is that administrators started to protect themselves and/or their schools by isolating themselves within their school communities and withdrawing from their school districts. Several of the participants talked about withdrawing personally and just doing their job by focusing on their role in the school or their position (for district principals) but no 87 longer getting involved in other district initiatives and committees. They also described a “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy where they just made decisions at the school level and avoided asking for support or permission from the district office. This school level or department level decision-making created a sense of control and autonomy and enabled these administrators to do things that they believed were best for the school. It also allowed administrators to avoid the feeling of rejection and perceived judgment that could have happened if they had asked the district office. This is a description of Michael’s thoughts around the challenges of a school start-up: I would say that in the last five to seven years, I have decided that what I have control over is my community and my school. And often, if I ask for things, or if I bring things to other people’s attention, then I’m also opening myself up to being told what to do or being judged. It’s a lot less stressful if I know what I’m dealing with, so whether it is talking to HR about absences, asking for more staffing based on the number of students that have come in, or asking about different policies, I will say that many times over the last three weeks I just haven’t said a word. Most of the time it’s worked out, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily the healthiest approach. (Principal Michael) By not asking for more staff when the number of students who had registered justified having more staff, Michael made a choice that he thought was going to be better for his school overall. If he had called the district office, then the decisions about how to accommodate the newly arriving students would have been made at the district office, and may not have been what he thought was best for his community. He was using his own discretion and acting strategically by subverting some of the district reporting rules in ways that were subtle and would not draw attention, but would serve what he believed were the best interests of his school community. 88 This withdrawal from district collaboration, and the employment of subversive leadership practices (Wang, 2018) also extended beyond the administrator themselves to making these decisions for their school communities as well. Some administrators talked about just focusing on their school communities and buffering themselves and their staff from district initiatives by picking and choosing which ones to share and which ones they could ignore. Principals often buffer teachers and other staff from district initiatives by choosing which parts to share, highlight, or ignore (LeChasseur et al., 2018). As a school-based principal, there are a lot of things I buffer. I buffer things from the district to teachers because I’m the one in the middle. I just buffer it for my staff. I would just say we’re not doing that. There are things that the district wanted that I didn’t even mention to staff, because they’re just trying to do their thing, and someone has to protect that systematic well-being for them. (Principal Lance) As Lance suggested in the quote above, these subversive leadership strategies and buffering were undertaken with the goal of improving well-being, but often ended up having the opposite effect on the administrator themselves. Lower Personal Mental Health Outcomes. Another outcome of low psychological safety is the impact on personal mental health and the increase in burnout. The participants who were focusing on their own communities and trying not to engage with the district office as much were feeling the impact of this isolation on their well-being. I think I can be reflective enough to say that it [isolating from the district] doesn’t help my mental health or well-being. I say this to kids and to parents all the time, by not saying something you end up reliving the worst-case scenario over and over and over 89 again. As opposed to just dealing with it and then not having to worry. So, I think I add worry in my life and stress. (Principal Michael) Michael is aware that by isolating and not asking for clarification about things, he spends more time than he should worrying about things and running through possible scenarios and explanations in his head that may not even be true. He advises students and parents to address concerns directly to avoid adding to problems or creating problems that might not even exist, but he is aware that he is not following his own advice. The other impact of low psychological safety was the loss of connection and relationships with district leaders and colleagues. Michael was talking about how he feels less connected in his district than he used to, and how he missed that opportunity to build relationships. He explained his situation this way: “I think by raising questions and asking others you build connections and relationships that are important. I am a social person, but I am not doing that.” This feeling of being disconnected was also mentioned by administrators who were wanting to or needing to stay fully engaged. Jessica cried while she talked about not having anyone to talk to, and told me, “You just do your work and hold it in. You don’t know if you can say things to people. You don’t know who’s speaking to who. So, you just keep going and mind your own business” (Vice Principal Jessica). Jessica was clear she was struggling, and also that others around her were, too. She even mentioned a previous mentor that she might have called on but added, “My mentor is not doing well either. So, it’s not like I could reach out to him and say, ‘Hey, I am having a tough time.’” This lack of connection and relationship created a lot of emotional pain for principals and vice principals, because they wanted support but were not sure where and with whom to get it. This feeling of not knowing what to do in situations where they had chosen silence and were feeling psychologically unsafe was also mentioned by Principal 90 Lenore, who commented that “[I] started taking meetings in my car because it was so toxic in the office, and it seemed pointless to bring it up because if you don’t feel heard, you shut down.” This feeling of being unsafe and disconnected was definitely having an impact on her health and well-being. Some administrators reported that when particular incidents occurred where they felt unsafe and they chose to remain silent, it impacted their level of confidence in the work they were doing and in themselves. Lenore reflected on a time in her career when she felt unsafe in her workspace and said, “It’s funny, because I’m a very confident person. And because of what happened it totally destroyed my confidence.” Besides the impact on their current work and their own mental health, some participants reported people leaving their positions earlier than intended because they were unhappy or burnt out in their current roles. Leaving Early. Several of the participants (Benita, Robert, Caitlin, Lance) spoke about examples of people who are no longer doing the job because it was just too much. They talked about themselves and/or other administrators moving districts or taking early retirement if they were able to. They also mentioned colleagues who had moved from principal back to vice principal or had gone back into the classroom. Recently, we’ve had principals [who] decide that they either want to be a vice principal or they’d like to return to the classroom. I always congratulate those people and say, “Good for you, for making that decision and doing what’s best for you.” I try to really frame it in a positive way. But then there’s other people that are not like that, and it’s kind of like, you’re a failure. You feel like you’re a failure if that’s the way people talk about you. (Principal Benita) Choosing to leave the role does not seem to be taken lightly and is very much described as a last resort and a very difficult decision. These stories of leaving unsafe and perceived-to-be 91 unfixable situations are painful stories that seem to be becoming part of the narrative of some school districts. These stories become part of the unwritten texts, the stories that shape workplace cultures. They are made even more powerful by the silence surrounding them. They are not talked about and not acknowledged (officially), but are often talked about in quiet conversations. Reflections on the Interviews In this section I will share my own reflections on the principal and vice principal interviews from the reflective journal that I kept. I will also explain the questions that came from these interviews and how they led to a second level of interviewing with superintendents and assistant superintendents. I will then describe these second-level interviews and the learning that come from these interviews and my reflections on them. The interviews and the analysis of these interviews was an emotional experience for me as a researcher. Participants were discussing things that were often emotional for them as well. When participants talked about speaking up and being heard, there was a sense of lightness as they described these positive relationships. For example, when Lenore remembered a superintendent she worked with and said, “I just remember us laughing a lot,” she smiled as she told the story. I also noted their sense of pride when they described contributing their thoughts and ideas in leadership meetings. Principal Michael shared this memory of earlier years in his school district: “I can give an example of putting up my hand and offering something [at a meeting] and feeling quite proud. People would even come up after to tell me it was helpful to hear.” The participants shared their stories of silence with more difficult emotions. There were tears when they said, “I don’t have anyone to talk to about this,” and many pauses with 92 explanations and unnecessary apologies. “I pause a little bit because I think I actually can become a little bit emotional.” I could hear the emotion in their voices, and the pauses were longer as they struggled to collect themselves. The emotion the participants experienced brought up emotions in me as well, and I found myself wanting to help them or to move into a counsellor role, which is one with which I am much more familiar. I was aware of my role as a researcher in this instance, and what a powerful and also limiting role that is. Below is an excerpt from my journal after a particularly emotional interview: This one was an emotional one for the person I was interviewing and for me to hear and witness the struggle they were having. There were tears and a discussion about not knowing who to trust. I want to provide hope and to offer something they can hold on to. I am struck by the courage it takes, and I am angry about the fact that it takes that much courage to talk about things that should be just normal things to talk about. As I am listening to the description of a typical day, I wonder who would want that day? The person I was talking to holds back their questions and ideas but also their connection to others as they have learned that is the only way to move up. They talk about the stress of this, and I can see and hear this burden of silence and disconnection. I wonder why they are doing this. Why do they want to move up? Do they think that will help? They briefly talk about their mentor that they had for two years but that person is also struggling, and they don’t want to add to his burden. I am struck by the fact that as they are describing the impact of the system around them, they are talking about self-care as a solution. I want to talk more, to listen more, to ask some of these questions but most of all I just want to fix it. I know it is not something I can do but still I want to. This is not just a cognitive exercise either as I can describe it here with words, but I am also aware of the 93 feelings in my body, a tightness in my chest, as I am watching the participants experiencing their emotions. Although participants did express emotion, I also noticed a lot more hesitation when they spoke about things that were emotionally difficult, as they appeared to be struggling to contain these emotions. They gave slower answers and appeared to be carefully choosing how to frame things or which words to choose. After one interview, I noted that the participant I was interviewing was being so careful with his wording that he was struggling to say what he wanted to say. In the same interview, while he described how words and ideas need to be shared carefully or translated to district leaders, I noted that he seemed to be “massaging the message” in the interview as well. He described the reason for translating the message to district leaders as needing to look like team players and not complainers, and I suspect this described how he was approaching the interview as well. As I was transcribing this conversation, I knew there was powerful data here, but it also felt so sad to hear how constrained this administrator felt and how careful he has to be about everything he says, even in this interview. It was like he was trying to preserve his sense of self-worth by playing by the rules, but at the same time playing by the rules isn’t working either. He has chosen an individual solution to protect himself, by looking at what he feels he can control and choosing to focus on what is working. I hear the pain and disappointment in his voice, but I also hear the reframing that is helping him make peace with his own experience. He wants to tell the story so the system may change for others, but he has found a way to survive and flourish personally by focusing on his individual work and contributing in that way. The use of words and phrases that referenced power and hierarchy is something that particularly struck me as I reviewed the principal and vice principal interviews. I know that as 94 part of IE I was being attuned to listening for ruling relations, but I was struck by how often power was directly referenced in participants’ interviews. I didn’t have to look very far, as the participants themselves were using words and phrases like “my superior” and “having an audience with” the superintendent. Related to that was the description of their role as an “agent of the board” with a fiduciary duty. I realized that I didn’t really understand, but I also suspected that many of the participants were not really sure what that meant either. This seemed to be a common reason given for not speaking up in leadership meetings. However, when I asked them to say more, they tried to explain their understanding of “fiduciary duty” but had difficulty. The explanations didn’t seem to connect or make sense in this context. The fiduciary duty of principals and vice principals seemed like a point of disjuncture that needed further exploration. If principals and vice principals believed it was part of their role or fiduciary duty to stay silent with regards to their questions and ideas, what exactly was the definition of this duty, and did the superintendents or assistant superintendents they reported to have the same understanding? These questions informed the direction of the next part of this inquiry. Summary This chapter shared the findings from the principal and vice principal interviews and my reflections on these interviews. The findings identified the practices and social relations that impacted administrators’ decisions to speak up or to remain silent with district leaders when they had questions or ideas to share. The outcomes and consequences of these decisions were also discussed. The next chapter shares the findings from the analysis of texts and the superintendent interviews. 95 Chapter 5: Institutional Processes and Discourses: A Bifurcation of Consciousness This chapter begins with an analysis of texts that were referenced in the interviews. In institutional ethnography texts are considered and analyzed because they are messages that coordinate what people are doing (Smith & Griffith, 2022). The particular texts were chosen because they were mentioned directly or indirectly as impacting principals’ and vice principals’ decisions about whether to choose voice or silence. These texts are impacting the work and the psychological safety of principals and vice principals. This chapter also describes the understanding of district leaders about the role of the school administrator and how school administrators learn about their role. This is important to understand because principals and vice principals have said that one of the reasons that they don’t speak up with district leaders is because of their understanding of their role and the responsibilities of this role. I will describe district leaders’ understanding of the terms mentioned by the principals and vice principals, such as “fiduciary duty” and being “an agent of the board.” These terms were the ones that principals and vice principals referenced in describing their duty to the district and their understanding of how this duty impacted their voice behaviour. This chapter also explores the leadership administration meetings from the district leadership perspective. This includes an explanation of where and when district leaders saw opportunities for administrators to share their ideas and concerns or the ideas and concerns of their school staff. Texts The interviews with principals and vice principals often referenced the fiduciary duty of their role and their responsibility as agents of the board. In order to get a better understanding of the roles of principals and vice principals in British Columbia, and these terms in particular, my 96 research included an exploration of the texts that referenced these duties and responsibilities. The following publicly available documents were identified during the interview: 1. BC School Act, RSBC 1996, c 412 (Province of British Columbia, 1996). The Reference entry provides a link to the full School Act. In this chapter, I include quotes from specific sections of the School Act, sections 5 and 175, as stated in a document from the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care (2024), and including page numbers from that document. 2. BCPVPA Code of Professional Practice (BCPVPA, n.d.). 3. BCPVPA Leadership Standards for Principals and Vice-Principals in British Columbia 2019 (BCPVPA Leadership Standards Review Committee, 2019). Individual service contracts were also mentioned as important documents that shaped the work of principals and vice principals, but these are personal, individual documents that are not publicly available and therefore were not included in the study. The BC School Act The BC School Act lays out the powers and duties of principals and vice principals and states that one of the responsibilities of “the principal or, if so, authorized by the principal, the vice principal of a school” is that they shall “represent the board when meeting with the public in the capacity of principal or vice principal of a school” (BC School Act, RSBC 1996, c 412, s 5, para 6, at h.2 (i); see BC Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2024, p. D-90). This description of representing the board is clear about how administrators must act when meeting with the public, but it is unclear about what contexts are included when “representing the board.” Does a “public” context apply to the workplace and meetings with district leaders, as was the understanding of my participants? The school district workplace is not generally considered a 97 public space, and therefore, there is no legal requirement to represent the board. This same section of the School Act (s 5, para 6[b]) describes the powers and duties of principals and vice principals and also compels administrators to “confer with the board on matters of educational policy” (BC Ministry of Education and Child Care, p. D-90). This suggests that they are expected to share information and discuss policy issues with the board when needed. Principals are also responsible to “assist in making the Act and this regulation effective and in carrying out a system of education in conformity with the orders of the minister” (p. D-90), which does compel them to conform with ministry orders and directives. This responsibility to carry out ministry directives is a responsibility that principals and vice principals and, in my experience, educators at all levels of the organization, are aware of and take seriously. The other duties that are outlined in this section (s 5, at para 6) of the BC School Act that are relevant to this research and psychological safety are the following: (e) advise and assist the superintendent of schools in exercising the superintendent of schools’ powers under the Act, (f) recommend to the superintendent of schools the assignment or reassignment of teachers to positions on the teaching staff of the board, (g) recommend to the superintendent of schools the dismissal or discipline of a teacher. (BC Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2024, p. D-90) The words “assist,” “advise,” and “recommend” in reference to the superintendent suggest that the role of the principal and through the principal, the vice principal, is to ask questions and share ideas and information with district leaders. According to the BC School Act, then, the principals’ or vice principals’ duty is actually to advise, assist, and recommend things to the superintendents as opposed to remaining silent. Of course, intention is open to interpretation, but the wording of the policy seems to promote speaking up. The wording of the BC School Act 98 seems to compel principals and vice principals to share information with district leaders and includes this as part of their legal responsibility. This particular text raises questions again regarding what counts as engaging with the public. My interviews with both district and school leaders suggest that what “engaging with the public” means has been expansively interpreted to include various activities such as staff meetings and meetings with district leaders where what is commonly understood to mean “the public” is not present. This particular text which speaks to fiduciary duty has likely become part of the rationale for not speaking up. It seems that the silence is less about the written policy and role descriptions and more about the understanding of the administrator role that is embedded in the unwritten rules. If speaking up is the duty assigned and there is not enough psychological safety to do this, there is a disconnect that is worth drawing attention to and exploring further. This disconnect may be causing what Smith (1987) calls “a bifurcation of consciousness” for the principals and vice principals: they are experiencing these two contradictory understandings and trying to make sense of them. The notion of fiduciary duty as outlined in the BC School Act has become a rationale for principals and vice principals not speaking up when they have something to share with district leaders, pointing to a fault line that they are having to negotiate. Code of Professional Practice Another text that shaped the experiences of school administrators I spoke with, particularly with regards to the notion of fiduciary duty, was the BCPVPA’s Code of Professional Practice (BCPVPA, n.d.). The BCPVPA also lists the responsibility of school leaders to “represent the school board when meeting the public” (p. 5) and to “enact the provisions of the School Act and district policies” (p. 7). There is also a bullet point under positive school climate where it says that principals and vice principals “represent students [sic] interests at the district 99 level to the Superintendent and Board of School Trustees,” (p. 7) which points to a responsibility to share information and advocate for students. This code of professional conduct reinforces the legal responsibilities outlined in the BC School Act, particularly the responsibility to represent the school board to the public and to enact the provisions of the School Act. The BCPVPA Code of Professional Practice also adds district policies to that responsibility as well. Similar to the responsibility to enact the provisions of the BC School Act, this responsibility to enact district policies was understood by my participants as including district practices and ways of working together. In some cases, such as when participant Kelly referred to herself as an empty vessel, this may also have been interpreted to include the responsibility to enact these policies without question or authentic conversation. If this understanding of the legal and ethical responsibilities of the principal and vice principal is being shared through district cultures and informal conversations with new administrators, then these written texts and the unwritten rules that are developed from them could readily be impacting psychological safety. It would appear that, to a certain extent, this collective interpretation of the institutional texts that guide the work of principals and vice principals is decreasing psychological safety. Leadership Standards The other document I examined in order to understand fiduciary duty was the BCPVPA Leadership Standards for Principals and Vice-Principals in British Columbia 2019 (BCPVPA Leadership Standards Review Committee, 2019). These standards are not regulatory, and during the time of this research they were being revised. At the time of initial writing of this research, the document said it was “intended to be used as a guide and resource” for individual principals or vice principals to identify and reflect on their own learning needs. Although there is no required formal training for principals and vice principals in British Columbia, many opt to 100 attend the summer training offered by the BCPVPA, and the leadership standards form the basis of this training for new administrators. The leadership standards provide action statements under each standard, followed by some possible reflection questions for each of these statements. There are action statements that could be related to fiduciary duty or administrators’ role to be an agent of the board, but there are none that clearly state a duty one way or the other in relation to communication at the district level. For example, there is an action statement that says, “Develop and implement a communication protocol for your school community” (p. 33), but the reflective questions that go along with this action reflect only communication within the school community, not between the school and the district. Another action statement about the management and administration standards states that principals and vice principals should “ensure that acts, laws, regulations, policies, collective agreements, and enhancement agreements govern your decisions and actions” (p. 32), and the reflection question asks how these things inform decisions and actions. There is no specific reference as to how that applies to communication between individual administrators and district leaders. As this research was being finalized, the BC Principals’ and Vice-Principals’ Association released their report Leadership Competencies for BC Principals and Vice Principals: Being in the Canoe (BCPVPA, 2024). These new competencies were not available at the time this research was conducted. Reflections on the Texts The documents that shape the roles of principal and vice principal state that administrators, when acting in their roles, must be agents of the board when engaging with the public. This responsibility to be an agent of the board does not mention this responsibility in relation to the workplace. Although the workplace is not mentioned in these documents 101 specifically, it does seem to be a common understanding of the participants that representing the board at the school level is important. This responsibility to communicate and enact provincial and district directives has been interpreted by some participants as the need for unquestioning and, at times, almost rote delivery of district decisions. This perceived need to withhold questions and discussion and to deliver messages in a prescriptive and collective manner may not be what is stated in written documents; rather, it is more a matter of a collective understanding of what the responsibilities of the principal and vice principal roles include. Texts are brought into IE because they coordinate institutional work (Pence, 2021). In my study, it was an interpretation of these texts, or at least the meaning of fiduciary duty, that was powerfully shaping the discourse, the work of school leaders, and their sense of psychological safety. The unwritten rules regarding engagements such as leadership meetings have given the school leaders in my study a sense that these meetings are not a good place to discuss anything controversial or ask questions. My participants spoke about not wanting to be seen as a troublemaker. The institutional discourse about the role of administrators made it clear that there was a responsibility to represent the district at the school level and vice versa, but the details about this responsibility were often unclear. The magnitude of the perceived and actual consequences for those who ended up in what was described as the “out-group” points to how this discourse powerfully impacts experiences of psychological safety. I wonder if a similar “discourse mismatch” (Pence, 2021, p. 336) was also part of the understanding of people in other roles, particularly district leaders who worked directly with administrators. Second-Level Interviews: Superintendents and Assistant Superintendents As described in the methodology chapter, IE research requires different levels of data collection. This data moves the research from the local accounts and actions of the people whose 102 standpoint one is researching (in this case, principals and vice principals) to explore the social relations that are coordinating or ruling their work (Smith & Griffith, 2022). The superintendents and assistant superintendent interviewed in the second set of interviews provided another perspective on the roles and fiduciary duty of principals and vice principals. These interviews also provided an opportunity to further explore the psychological safety of principals and vice principals and the social relations that are impacting it from a different angle and perspective. Opportunities to Share Ideas and Ask Questions in the School Administrator Role The superintendents all reported that their job was to support the work of principals and vice principals. They said they needed and wanted to hear from administrators and to include them in the work of the district. They described various ways of doing this, but there seemed to be an intentional focus on providing spaces for dialogue and conversation between the administrators and themselves. Jamie said that she realized when she started as a superintendent that her job was “to focus on my principals and vice principals and give them the time and space to allow them to flourish in their practice.” There was an acknowledgement that the traditional framework of district leadership meetings probably did not promote psychological safety because the content was more “things that could be sent by email.” One participant talked about a large district where they had previously worked, where it was really hard for leadership meetings “not to just be information download and presentation focused as opposed to collaborative and lots of conversation.” That district leader wondered whether this “information download” type of meeting was more likely to occur in a large district because there is so much information to share, but it was also the way they said things had previously run in the smaller districts as well. Conner, the assistant superintendent currently in a large district, agreed that was the way meetings had been running 103 previously, and wondered if it “might be a pandemic hangover.” Meetings during the pandemic were by necessity more about passing of information and directives, and principals did report an increase in bureaucratic tasks (Constantia et al., 2023). Conner talked about these meeting being more about disseminating information: During the pandemic the system was really reliant on the information we had. It became a lot of downloading of things to people and there wasn’t a lot of active participation per se in meetings unless there was discussion about the information that was being downloaded. (Assistant Superintendent Conner) Whether this downloading of information style of meeting was a hangover of the pandemic or a traditional system or both, there seemed to be a desire to make leadership meetings more collaborative and conversation-based, meetings where principals would be psychologically safe to ask questions and share ideas. All of the superintendents interviewed have split their leadership meetings up so that one is a business type of meeting and there is another meeting where “we talk about education and learning and where it is conversation- based” (Superintendent Sarah), with the idea that providing space and time for discussion allows for and promotes input from principals and vice principals. We’ve recently reframed our meetings to try and have it so that it’s just the principals and myself for the first portion, just to have conversation about the things they want to talk about. It could be pertinent things that are going on or bigger picture things that they want to discuss. (Assistant Superintendent Conner) All of the interviewed superintendents had made an intentional effort to co-create agendas with administrators for many of these leadership meetings, especially the ones with the 104 collaborative learning focus. This was with the intention of encouraging engagement and input. The superintendents I spoke with wanted information about what was happening in the schools and were creating opportunities like calls, visits to the schools, and meetings designed to encourage that. We tried to change the [meeting] structure so that it’s coming from the field, and not necessarily the district always driving the bus. It’s a bit of a balance because as district staff we need to have our eyes on what’s coming and how to move this system forward. But then, if you’re not paying attention to what’s happening in the field, you render yourself irrelevant in many ways. So, it’s this delicate dance as we’re trying to give a little more ownership over the meeting to those that are doing the work on a daily basis, but we are there to walk alongside and support. (Superintendent Jamie) There was also an acknowledgement of the social component of these learning meetings. They are places where people get to connect with each other, which is also often a way to increase psychological safety (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). One of the superintendents talked about this social component, and mentioned how they often walk and talk in pairs during their leadership meetings as a way to increase conversations and get some social interaction and exercise at the same time. He noticed how important this connection was and mentioned that he thought it “improves our productivity because they actually got to connect and then really sink into things and get into good juicy conversations.” (Superintendent James) Beyond the leadership meetings, the superintendents also talked about providing one-on-one opportunities for conversation and feedback. They considered these one-on-one meetings as a place for asking questions and sharing ideas. They were intentionally trying to create spaces that encouraged psychological safety by setting up structures that invite 105 conversation and input. There was the more formal performance planning, which in BC schools is tied to compensation for principals and vice principals, and more informal opportunities like school visits and phone conversations to check in or as an opportunity for questions. The formal performance meetings were seen by the superintendents as opportunities to talk about and support the school plan and the professional growth plan of the principal. I’m really kind of interested in, how do I support you? You know I’m interested in the school plan, of course, too. But I’m also really interested in how we maximize the amazing potential of the humans we have supporting staff and doing really complex work in schools with staff and kids. (Superintendent Sarah) The superintendents all agreed that one-on-one meetings (both formal and informal) and team meetings that were more focused on learning than information giving were opportunities for principals and vice principals to share ideas and ask questions. The Impact of Relationships on Principals’ and Vice Principals’ Psychological Safety Superintendents agreed with the principals and vice principals from the previous interviews that relationships were important for principals and vice principals to feel they can speak up. One of the superintendents pointed out that she didn’t think it was always the relationships with them [superintendents] that mattered most to voice behaviour. She thought that sometimes other principals had the power to impact whether group meetings were a safe place to speak up. What was interesting to me was watching the groups at the last meeting having to make right versus right decisions [where both decisions have value] because we have finite resources. It was the person with the pen that had the power. So, from that I actually 106 created a whole separate survey where everybody could put their individual ideas down. Because I’m like, “Hmm! I’m not sure this is totally going to represent the team.” (Superintendent Sarah) Superintendent Sarah was pointing out that it wasn’t just the principals’ or vice principals’ relationships with her that mattered, as there are more forms of power other than just positional power. She was pointing out that although she had power as the superintendent, other people in the meeting had power too. Some of the administrators had relational power (popular with colleagues or bosses), positional power (a more senior administrator), or, in this case, just having the pen to record what was occurring in the meeting gave that person power as they decided which of the comments and ideas to record and how to record them. Sarah was pointing out the complexity of relationships and social factors that had the potential to impact psychological safety in the group. This was also mentioned in the principal and vice principal interviews by a few of the participants. For example, Principal Michael said that even in their own association meetings, people were “fearful and worried about sharing ideas that pushed people into new ways of thinking.” These were meetings with colleagues, yet people were still concerned about whether new ideas were okay to share or not. However, the idea that relationships mattered to psychological safety and team success was a point of agreement between principals, vice principals, and superintendents. There was also an intentional focus by all superintendents interviewed on relationship-building and creating safer spaces than may have existed in the past. One of the superintendents was working hard to change the administrator team in her district from what she described as “the boys’ club” where “there was mostly guys who all did mountain biking or fishing together. They did all of these things together, and then there would be a couple of women that were not 107 part of any of that” (Superintendent Jamie). These relationships that some principals and vice principals were part of (and others were not) created different levels of psychological safety, as there were obvious in-groups and out-groups. Jamie was trying to make things safer for everyone by creating team meetings where everyone could contribute and by developing relationships with everyone on the team. She said that now, in the team meetings, administrators are much more inclined to say how they are feeling. “I wouldn’t say that they felt safe to do it before, not necessarily because of me, but because of the old guard that was around the table they didn’t feel welcome to have a conversation.” She was aware that this was not perfect but believed there was some progress being made towards psychological safety. Learning About the Role In order to see whether the superintendents’ understanding of the roles and responsibilities of principals and vice principals was the same or different from the administrators’ understanding of their roles, I asked the superintendents how administrators learn about their roles. One of the superintendents very bluntly said, “We’re really bad at that. I came into a district where there were no admin procedures, so how do we learn? We learn through our mistakes” (Superintendent James). If principals and vice principals learn about their roles and responsibilities on the job and by making mistakes, then psychological safety becomes particularly important. In a psychologically safe workplace, learning can come from mistakes but only if it is safe to talk about them and learn how to make improvements for next time (Edmondson, 2023). Training opportunities were different in each district, but it was generally agreed that most training happens on the job and/or is the responsibility of the individual. This is particularly true for vice principals, who are typically mentored by their building principals and do most of their learning on the job. 108 There are also opportunities for more formal training for administrators. For example, in three of the four districts included in these interviews, new principals and vice principals are supported to attend the School Leaders Foundations Course offered by the BCPVPA during the summer break. This is a well-regarded optional training program. The fourth district offered more in-house training, as the increasing number of new administrators was making paying for outside training less affordable. All of the superintendents mentioned formal or informal mentoring opportunities for new principals as well. Similar to the principals interviewed, superintendents saw mentoring as a positive support that could increase psychological safety of school administrators. In the following chapter, I will discuss in more detail how mentoring programs could be an institutional structure and practice to increase psychological safety, but they must be set up that way. If the messages and practices that increase psychological safety are being shared from mentor to mentee that is helpful. If, on the other hand, messages describing what to do in order to stay safe and be part of the in group are being shared by mentors, then although that may be helpful to the mentee’s success in the current system, the passing on of such messages is not contributing to psychological safety. Fiduciary Duty and Being an Agent of the Board The superintendents’ understanding of the fiduciary duty of administrators and what it meant to be an agent of the board was similar to that of principals and vice principals, but superintendents did not extend this duty to district level meetings and conversations amongst themselves or with other management staff. They discussed this duty to represent the decisions of the board or the district leaders as applying to principals’ interactions with unionized staff, parents, and the community. Similar to the opinions of the principals and vice principals, there seemed to be a common understanding among the superintendents that administrators have a 109 responsibility to share messages and direction from the district to staff with a collective voice. One of the superintendents described it this way: I think it’s about being really clear and having a collective vision and language about the priorities and the values of the district—in speaking with their staff and in speaking with parents. It’s important that they support, through their actions and their language, that collective vision. (Superintendent Sarah) They talked about how everyone, including themselves, has a responsibility to their employer, and that sometimes as an employee they may not agree with a decision but it is their responsibility to uphold it. For example, when a directive came from the Ministry of Education or the district had already decided about something, principals and vice principals had a duty to support that decision and align themselves with it. There seemed to be agreement among the superintendents that it was important for the school administrator to be aligned with district decisions and to be working “in the best interest of the district.” One of the superintendents described a situation where a principal was working in the best interest of their school community, but they had “lost sight of that notion that yes, you’re working to serve that school community, but you also have to meet the broader objectives of the board, because ultimately you’re serving those broader objectives” (Superintendent James). This need to align with district objectives and particularly with decisions and directives was clear in these conversations. The details about what that actually looked like in practice and how that was different than the obligation of anyone to their employer was less clear. For example, does this apply to all information being passed down from a district to schools or departments, or does it only apply to directives? Is it okay to talk about situations where the interests of the school conflict with the interests of the district, and about how to negotiate those complexities? When and with whom are 110 these conversations okay and when are they not? The answers to these questions do not appear to be clear, and the uncertainty and fear of getting it wrong is impacting the psychological safety of principals and vice principals. The interviewed superintendents acknowledged that the terms “fiduciary duty” and “being an agent of the board” are important terms that are not necessarily well understood by everybody, but particularly not by principals and vice principals. James noted, “It is a fundamental piece, and we say you’re an agent of the board, but I actually don’t think we do as good a job as we can about the criteria.” He went on to describe how it can sometimes be even more difficult for principals and vice principals as “middle managers.” They’re middle managers, and they get into very delicate situations between, you know, decisions that come from the board or from district office. They have to implement it even if [they] don’t like it, and then [they’re] still trying to manage human beings in their building. And so that fine line between not throwing the district under the bus, towing the company line, and then managing your people, I think it puts principals in a very delicate position. I don’t know if they always navigate that as well as we want them to. (Superintendent James) James and the other superintendents seemed to agree that it is everyone’s responsibility to uphold and implement directives, but that principals and vice principals were in a particularly difficult position. He described the dilemma principals and vice principals face like this: “When a difficult decision comes down and they may try ‘to soften the blow’ by ‘aligning with their teachers’ but if they do that they are ‘shirking their fiduciary duty’” (Superintendent James). It is an interesting assumption that there are two sides, the management staff and the unionized staff, and that the principals and vice principals are required to be on the side of management. He went 111 on to explain that he thinks aligning with the teachers probably happens often but that district leaders only know about it when it becomes a problem. I think it happens more than I think. People at district office realize that it [fiduciary duty] only comes out when there’s a problem where, you know, they try to, and I get it, to soften the blow, right? So, a decision comes down and they [administrators] try to soften it by saying, “Yeah, you know, we don’t really have a choice.” It becomes them [district leaders], that they’ve done this. They’re kind of releasing their responsibility so it isn’t on them [administrators]. When actually it is us. I am them. It is us. I don’t think they do that as much, and I get why, but I think it creates a distorted view and creates that gap between district office, the board of education and schools. (Superintendent James) The existence of two distinct sides, also alluded to in the principal and vice principal interviews, was articulated by James in the quote above. There is a belief that administrators must take a position they may not agree with, or in some cases not completely understand, and present it as coming from management collectively, including themselves. If this is the understanding of fiduciary duty, then it puts principals in a difficult and unclear position when speaking to their staff and when speaking with district leaders. When there are many ways to get it wrong and few clear ways to get it right, then silence is often the safest decision. The interpretation of fiduciary duty and the responsibility as an agent of the board were mostly used interchangeably, and both the school administrators and the superintendents were unclear about the difference. James did differentiate between the two by saying that he thought fiduciary duty was “to not speak ill of the employer” and that being an agent of the board was the responsibility to carry out policy and to align with that, “so you are not saying it is them, but delivering the message as ‘us.’” James did add that he wasn’t sure about this distinction because 112 “in education we love to throw language and terminology out there without fully exploring what it means until we need to.” This use of language that has been taken from written texts and used in practice without being fully explored or explained impacts psychological safety. The distinction between the two phrases is probably not as important as the clarity about what the responsibilities are and how to honour them. Although it seemed difficult for the superintendents to articulate the difference between these two terms and even to define them clearly, there was an openness and a curiosity to learn more about how these responsibilities were being interpreted by others, and how this was impacting the work of principals and vice principals and their psychological safety. Summary This chapter presented the findings that emerged from an exploration of the written texts and the comparison of these texts to the unwritten processes and discourses that also organize and coordinate the work of principals and vice principals and affect their psychological safety. It also adds the perspective of district leaders to the understanding of the roles of principals and vice principals and the institutional processes and discourses that shape these roles. The results from the initial interviews with principals, the exploration of texts, and the superintendent interviews explicate a “bifurcation of consciousness.” This is a term used to describe the split or division between what a person is actually experiencing and the dominant, ingrained discourse of the institution that one is functioning within (Pence, 2021). There is a bifurcation of consciousness between the experience of psychological safety that principals and vice principals in British Columbia are experiencing (Wang, 2022b) and the discourse and perhaps even the intention of the institutions they are working in. 113 Chapter 6: Discussion and Recommendations This chapter summarizes the themes that emerged from the findings of this research, the institutional practices and social relations impacting the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. I also provide some recommendations arising from the study, describe study limitations and conclude with some final reflections. The research questions that I set out to explore were: 1. Under what circumstances do principals and vice principals speak up or not, ask questions, and share their ideas with district leaders? 2. What institutional practices and social relations impact psychological safety for principals and vice principals? 3. What support, services, or practices are needed to create a psychologically safe and healthy environment for principals and vice principals? As a result of my interviews with administrators and superintendents, several major themes emerged regarding the institutional practices and social relations impacting principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. For the school administrators I spoke with (as well as the district leaders), the structure and environment of meetings between school leaders and school district leaders were significant sites of engagement, in which the unwritten rules of speaking or not speaking up powerfully impacted their sense of psychological safety. Closely associated with whether school leaders spoke up or not was their relationships with district leaders, as well as whether they had opportunities to meet informally. The concept of “fiduciary duty,” and their understanding of it, was frequently mentioned in my conversations with school administrators. This led me to explore this concept further in my talks with district leaders and 114 my examination of key documents such as the BC School Act. Not surprisingly, another key theme emerging from my conversations was the hierarchical structure in which principals and vice principals must operate as middle managers, balancing their responsibilities and duties to follow district and ministry mandates while attending to the well-being of their school staff, students, and community. As is the intention of institutional ethnography, this chapter identifies the points of disjuncture where the institutional practices and social relations listed above “have been organized and coordinated to produce outcomes that often no one intends and that can be harmful” (Pence, 2021, p. 365). Meetings and Relationships How meetings were organized and conducted impacted psychological safety of principals and vice principals. For both one-on-one meetings and team meetings, school leaders described how many of these engagements offered little time and space for their input or questions, and they did not find district leaders clearly asking for their input. Principals and vice principals also described how relationships with both colleagues and district leaders impacted their decisions to speak up or not, reporting that having a working relationship where they could talk informally on a more personal level allowed them to feel more comfortable to ask questions or share ideas later. Having relationships at work matters to psychological safety, but having a good working relationship with a district leader is particularly important as they “control the key resources and thus have unique roles and spheres of influence and can determine the future of the employees” (He et al., 2022, p. 529). 115 Principals and vice principals discussed their assessment of different meeting structures and practices that made them feel their ideas and questions were wanted or not. This is consistent with research in other workplaces confirming that words and actions by leaders who invite and appreciate other voices (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006) can help to overcome the effects of status on psychological safety. Meeting structures and practices also promote and support belonging and psychological safety (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). Meetings designed as simply delivery mechanisms do not signal that input is valued and wanted (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). The superintendents I interviewed acknowledged that in the past, meetings were often more of an information delivery structure, and they were now all moving towards more open and discussion-based meetings. This is encouraging, but will not on its own create psychological safety. From the principal and vice principal interviews it is clear that some school districts have not made the transition to more collaborative meetings. Beyond the format of the meeting, other institutional practices are also important. In my conversations with school leaders, the social rules of the group and organization were another matter which influenced psychological safety. The principals and vice principals I spoke with learned from others as well as from their own observations of group norms and practices that speaking up was risky; they felt it would impact their job security and potential for promotion. Other research has also pointed to the importance of school leaders knowing what is expected of them, but also what to expect from others (Lenberg & Feldt, 2018). In the absence of clear practices, interpretations are made regarding social rules. The human brain is designed to reward story completion (Schlegel & Parascando, 2020), and the school leaders I spoke with interpreted many exchanges with district leaders, particularly during meetings, as unsafe. Situations that 116 evoke fear in speaking up in group meetings are not conducive to free exchanges across lines of hierarchy (Norris, 2021). The district leaders I spoke with described their desire to work towards a co-creation of meeting agendas and group norms about how team members will work together. Understanding Fiduciary Duty In my conversations with school administrators and district leaders I found some confusion and different understandings regarding the fiduciary duty of school administrators. Participants in the study were often unclear as to exactly what the fiduciary duty of principals and vice principals was; however, there was common agreement that it was important, though it was an area where administrators sometimes made mistakes. The combination of the lack of clarity, the importance of getting it right, and the fear of getting it wrong makes this duty very important to psychological safety. According to the BC School Act (s 5, at para 6 [h.2] [i]), principals and vice principals are required to “represent the board when meeting with the public in the capacity of principal or vice principal of a school” (British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2024, p. D-90). This responsibility to represent the board to the public did not define who was included as the public. This sense of responsibility was sometimes extended to include when administrators were working with other school or district staff. Fiduciary duty was sometimes being used by administrators to justify their choice of staying silent or of withholding ideas and/or questions from district leaders. These leaders explained that this was sometimes why principals and vice principals felt pressure to listen and not offer an opinion. The assumption was that if one was an agent of someone else, or in this case, a group of people, the task was to move a message from one place (the district office or the board) to another (school staff), and that the message should remain relatively intact and unquestioned. This is problematic both up and down the system 117 hierarchy. For district leaders, it can undermine relationships and leave educational practice unexamined and even not understood. This can have a similar effect on administrators as the message is communicated down the hierarchy to teachers and other staff positions. An unquestioned message can also undermine authenticity and relationship when one feels required to deliver a message as the agent of someone else. The other aspect of fiduciary duty was the part of the BC School Act that requires principals (and vice principals, through their principals) to “advise and assist the superintendent of schools” (s 5, at para 6[e]) and “recommend to the superintendent of schools in regard to placement, reassignment, and discipline of teachers” (s 5, at para 6[f] and [g]) (British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, 2024, p. D-90). This part of the Act indicates a responsibility for administrators to speak up and share their knowledge about what is happening at the school level with district leaders. The use of the terms “fiduciary duty” and being an “agent of the board” was something that my participants referenced as part of their decision to remain silent or withhold ideas and/or questions from district leaders. In my conversations with administrators, they shared how the notion of fiduciary duty created a sense of high risk about speaking up. District Leaders’ Interpretations The other disconnect is that superintendents did not have the same understanding or expectation of silence from principals and vice principals as these administrators did. The superintendents described wanting principals and vice principals to speak up and share ideas with them and with their administrator colleagues in team meetings and one-on-one. Although this is the culture they were trying to create, they did agree that the open and collaborative culture did not always exist in the past and was a work in progress at the moment. 118 Research has shown the tendency for leaders to assess the level of psychological safety in the teams they lead as higher than the team members would assess it (Edmondson, 2019). This could be because they are experiencing more freedom to express themselves in their higher status positions (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006), but it could also be explained by the fact that their teams often withhold this information from them. In this study, the four superintendents interviewed were intentionally working towards creating more open and psychologically safe spaces, which may or may not be the case in districts where the principals and vice principals are working. The disconnect between the intentions of the superintendents and the experiences of the principals and vice principals in this study could be happening for a few different reasons. It is possible that the superintendents I interviewed are a group of progressive leaders who are intentionally moving towards psychological safety and that the administrators they support are experiencing higher psychological safety because of this. It is also possible that their experiences and practices are similar to their colleagues across the province and that there is a disconnect between the level of psychological safety that district leaders are intending to create and what is being experienced by principals and vice principals. Since all participants in this study are from different school districts, it is difficult to know which situation is causing the disconnect, but it is also quite possible that some combination of both explanations is true. What is important is to be aware of the potential for these different perspectives on the level of psychological safety that exists within a team and an organization. Another disconnection between the understanding of the superintendents and the administrators is the understanding of fiduciary duty. The superintendents did not connect fiduciary duty or the responsibility of being an agent of the board to work they did with principals and vice principals. Superintendents saw this duty as a responsibility to align with 119 district decisions and represent these decisions as a collective plan/decision both to the public and to school staff. This understanding that messages should be delivered as collective decisions to school staff was a shared understanding between district leaders and school administrators, but what exactly that looked like was difficult to describe for everyone. For example, it seemed clear that it was not okay to “throw the district under the bus” but it was unclear exactly what that meant. Duty to Staff The interpretation of fiduciary duty extended to what principals and vice principals thought they needed to do or were allowed to say to their staff. Everyone understood that if a provincial or district directive came down, the school administrators had to make sure it was implemented in the school, but after that it became quite unclear about how that had to be done. Both superintendents and school administrators said that it was important for principals and vice principals to be aligned with the district message, but what exactly that meant was also unclear as participants had trouble describing what exactly “aligning with the district” meant. What there seemed to be a bit more agreement on is that this is often where principals and vice principals can get into trouble. This lack of clarity as to what that looks like in practice and the descriptions of people being in trouble for doing this wrong seemed to heighten the fear of making mistakes (Edmondson & Besieux, 2021). Power and Hierarchy When discussing decisions about voice and silence, principals and vice principals were very aware of power differences and the hierarchical system they worked in. Awareness of power and their position in the district hierarchy was embedded in the language they used, the decisions they made, and the stories they told about speaking or remaining silent. The place a person 120 occupies in the institutional hierarchy and the degree of authority this gives them impacts psychological safety (Edmondson et al., 2016). The higher status a person has in an organization, the more the person themselves assumes that their voice is valued, and the more they are asked for their opinion by others (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). Of course, the opposite is also true, so that when someone is in the lower position in a hierarchy they tend to defer to the person with more authority and undervalue their own knowledge whether or not they objectively have more knowledge in the area being discussed (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). The other aspect of power that is impacting psychological safety is the fact that superintendents have decision-making power over many things that impact the day-to-day work of administrators. The administrators I spoke to were very aware of this power, which is connected to opportunities and career advancement within the district. They also spoke about this power as being more absolute than the power a supervisor would have in a unionized environment. In education there is both a well-established hierarchical work environment, and “a tremendous uncertainty as to how to progress in one’s career” (Edmondson et al., 2016, p. 68). In this study, being in the in-group was described as the way to be promoted and being in the out-group was seen as career limiting. This belief increased the fear of making mistakes or saying the wrong thing, which lowered psychological safety. Unwritten and Unexamined Workplace Rules There seemed to be commonly understood but unwritten rules among principals and vice principals about which topics were okay to bring up and which weren’t, as well as when, where, and by whom these topics could be discussed. These restrictive rules are problematic, since team 121 meeting processes shape team and organizational outcomes (Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). Avoid Controversy One of these rules was that team meetings were not a place to disagree or ask questions, particularly about topics that might be controversial. This hesitation to bring up controversial topics restricts the problem-solving communication that allows teams to come to a common understanding of problems and to move towards solutions together (Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). The exception to this rule about controversial topics seemed to be occasions when people were specifically asked for their ideas and contributions. Some school administrators spoke about these types of meetings, where contributions were welcomed and expected, as things of the past. Participants gave no particular reasons for the change, but they did note that the current system is more complex, and that many educators and leaders are experiencing increased work intensity (Wang, 2022a). The fact that some of the opportunities for input and questions are now online may also have impacted the likelihood of discussing controversial topics or bringing up problems, because creating psychological safety is more difficult in online environments (Tkalich et al., 2024). District leaders spoke about making some changes towards creating more psychologically safe working environments where the difficult topics were more welcome. From the superintendent interviews, it appeared that there is a move to create more collaborative and interactive meeting where controversial topics would be more welcome. They were creating meetings using co-created agendas and including more learning-focused leadership meetings. The superintendents I spoke to were all learning about and connected to the compassionate systems leadership framework that is currently being supported by the Ministry of 122 Education in British Columbia as part of their Mental Health in Schools Strategy (2020). This framework supports more collaborative work and the building of more authentic and trusting relationships in workplaces (Rowcliffe & Schroeder, 2021) as one of the three interrelated pillars of systems change along with self-reflection and systems thinking. Learning Culture From Existing Culture The unwritten rules about when administrators should stay quiet often came from past experiences where their own ideas or the ideas of others were not well received. Along with the learning of protocols from their own previous experience, a lot of learning occurred by watching what others were doing in the moment or “reading the room.” Group members not only learn and make judgments about psychological safety by watching others, but also the level of psychological safety is often a shared perception in groups (Fyhn et al., 2023). Psychological safety can sometimes be perceived differently by different people, but more commonly there is team agreement or a shared experience of psychological safety. If the team does have a shared understanding, psychological safety will be likely to have a stronger impact on team performance (Fyhn et al., 2023). The principals and vice principals in this study did think that these rules of when and what was safe to talk about were commonly shared. This is problematic, because if psychological safety is low and climate strength (level of shared agreement) is high, this leads to low team performance. Of course, the opposite is also true; if psychological safety is high and the team has a shared understanding (high climate strength), team performance will increase (Fyhn et al., 2023). There was also mention of mentoring or coaching, particularly of vice principals by principals, and of how new principals were taught by their mentors what is safe to say, and how and when to say it. Mentorship and coaching are generally considered valuable and positive for organizational culture and team success (Moore & Wang, 2017), and both 123 administrators and superintendents spoke of mentorship favourably. Although mentoring was considered supportive and helpful, some of the things new administrators were taught by their principal colleagues were the ways to behave in meetings with district leaders. Some of this advice helped to reinforce the rules of voice and silence that were already ingrained in the district culture. Unintended Consequences The unwritten rules and the lack of clarity about the written rules are institutional practices and ways of working that are unintentionally impacting principals’ and vice principals’ psychological safety. When there is a lack of clarity about what is okay to say or do, silence is often considered a safer option (O’Donovan & McAuliffe, 2020). Principals and vice principals are choosing silence because of a belief that saying the wrong thing will result in being labelled a troublemaker and/or impact their career opportunities. This fear of being punished for speaking up is not only stopping them from sharing important information, but is also decreasing their sense of belonging and connection at work. These unwritten and largely undiscussed rules or ways of working have been unintentionally embedded in some district cultures. These rules do not actually represent the intention of district leaders, who report wanting information from the administrators they support. This fear of being given the poor assignments or no longer being considered for career advancement was referred to as “being sidelined” by one of the participants. In my reflections after the interviews, I noted the pain that was associated with this description of being sidelined and with other stories of not belonging to the in-group. Career Trajectory and Sense of Belonging. There was agreement among school administrators that breaking the voice rules had a clear negative impact on one’s career trajectory and sense of belonging at work, as it determined whether they were in the in-group or the 124 out-group of school administrators. People in the in-group had the possibility of being given opportunities and/or promotions and those in the out-group did not. Previous research has found that leaders rely on input from the inner group more (Burris et al., 2009), and that those in the outer group often start to disengage from group activities as they become more aware of their position (Burris et al., 2009). In the principal and vice principal interviews, these two unofficial social groups were described by both those who found themselves in the out-group and by people that were still trying to stay in the in-group. The need to belong is one of the most powerful and painful motivators of human behaviour (Eisenberger, 2015; Leiberman, 2013), and school administrators are no exception. Besides the pain of not belonging (Eisenberger, 2015) experienced by the people in the out-group, another risk of having two different groups is that people tend to stay more connected to members of their own group and distance themselves from people in the other group (Meyer et al., 2015). This creation and strengthening of subgroups “contributes to less social integration, lower levels of cohesion and identification, and, ultimately, lower levels of team performance” (Meyer et al., 2015, p. 357). Belonging and Relationships at the School Level. Another unintended consequence of the unwritten and often unquestioned rules was that principals and vice principals sometimes felt disconnected at the school level as well. The administrator’s role as an agent of the board also created questions and limitations around what school administrators could talk to staff about. This impacted their relationships with school staff and their sense of belonging in their schools. There were many things that principals and vice principals believed could only be discussed with other administrators, but it was difficult to determine why that was necessary and what exactly (other than confidential information) couldn’t be shared. The lack of clarity led to more isolation at the school level, particularly if they were the only administrator on-site. This is not to suggest 125 that highly formalized role descriptions or prescribed behaviours would be better; very prescriptive rules often don’t allow the flexibility needed in complex systems (Turner, 2001). Individual Well-Being and Subversive Leadership. This study supports the previous research findings that lack of psychological safety is impacting principals’ and vice principals’ individual mental health and well-being (Wang, 2022a). When asked about the outcomes of their decisions to speak up, there were stories of positive experiences where their input was heard and well received and stories of times when speaking up was not well received. When their input was well received, people felt valued, and they continued to contribute to the collective work of the district. When it was not well received, this led to self-protective behaviour in the future. This was sometimes something as simple as choosing to remain silent with regards to their questions and ideas, but it also included withdrawing from district contact when possible. Consistent with the literature on the impact of silence on well-being (De los Santos et al., 2020), principals and vice principals reported that staying silent or worrying about saying the wrong thing impacted their own health and well-being. When they were in situations where they could contribute, principals and vice principals reported feeling valued and connected, but when they felt like they couldn’t contribute, they reported that it was not good for their mental health. Research on the impact of knowledge-hiding found that keeping information hidden from others lowered employees’ subjective experience of well-being at work (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). When psychological safety was low it also increased situations where school leaders were isolating themselves and their schools or using subversive leadership practices (Wang, 2018) to work around policies and practices that they feel helpless to change. Collective Learning and Success. These unwritten rules about when and where it is okay to speak up and when it is not are having the unintended but real consequence of narrowing 126 the collective wisdom of school leaders. If school leaders think that only certain people are allowed to speak at certain times and in very specific and not always available places, this seriously limits the collaboration and learning that workplaces need to be successful (Drayton, 2021). Organizational learning is more than just individuals learning within the organization. It is a collective type of learning where members “become learning agents and address internal and external environmental changes to uncover and respond to errors” (Lwin et al., 2024, p. 212). When people hold back their ideas and questions at work, the quality of conversation and diversity of thought is lowered (Edmondson & Besieux, 2021), and in this case, the wisdom and knowledge of what is happening in classrooms and schools doesn’t reach district leaders and decision makers. In the absence of information and feedback, organizations can’t learn and grow (Edmondson, 2019), especially if the people with the information are not sharing it with the people making the decisions. Division From Staff. As leaders in the middle of the education hierarchy who represent their school to the district, principals and vice principals are often counted on as the people who move information, ideas, and questions both up and down the system hierarchy. The lack of clarity around their fiduciary duty and what that looks like in practice is also having an impact on their relationships with other educators because it is affecting what principals and vice principals share with them. Fiduciary duty was sometimes being interpreted as a duty to repeat district messages without questions or conversation. The understanding of fiduciary duty as the need to align with the district made delivering messages to school staff fraught with the danger of possibly getting it wrong. The assumption seemed to be that there were two sides, as opposed to everyone in the organization having the responsibility to carry out provincial and district mandates. The lack of clarity also extended beyond the delivery of these mandated directives to 127 other information and ideas. School administrators often felt very restricted in what they could talk to other educators about. When asked about what they couldn’t talk about and share with other educators, it was difficult for them to find examples or describe what they meant. When people don’t have a clear sense about what they can talk about and share with others, or information is unnecessarily restricted, both relationships and organizational learning are affected. Figure 2 on p. 128 depicts how this research adds to the understanding of psychological safety of principals and vice principals. Figure 2 shows that organizational practices can be leveraged to increase psychological safety and to open up communication between administrators and district leaders. Although it was not the focus of this research, the findings revealed that psychological safety also impacted communication between administrators and their staff, so that is depicted here. Additional explanatory details about Figure 2 are provided on p. 129. 128 Figure 2 Psychological Safety: Results From This Research 129 Figure 2 represents how organizational practices can be used to increase the psychological safety of administrators. Increased psychological safety is indicated by the large shaded ellipse within the Administrators’ Group. In the figure, the lever “raises” the Administrators’ Group closer to the District Office, representing better communication between district leaders and administrators. The communication arrows in Figure 2 are markedly different than the arrows in Figure 1 to represent the improvement in communication at all levels of the hierarchy. • The green arrows that originate within the psychological safety shaded area are much wider than they were in Figure 1. This indicates that administrators feel comfortable to communicate questions, ideas, and feedback to district leaders. • The third, narrower arrow going from the administrators’ group up to the District Office represents the same positive messages as it did in Figure 1—the “agreeable,” uncontroversial messages that can be voiced even if a sense of psychological safety is not present. • The continuous green arrow originating at the school, passing through the Administrators’ Group and up to the District Office, indicates that school staff’s questions and ideas are being shared by administrators with district leaders. • There is a wide blue arrow going all the way down from the District Office, through the Administrators’ Group, and down to the school. The represents the prediction that administrators will be more likely to pass on messages from the District Office to their schools as their psychological safety increases. 130 Limitations and Future Research This study was done with principals, vice principals, and district superintendents in British Columbia, Canada, which is not the same context as other provinces in Canada or other parts of the world. For example, British Columbia is one of the few provinces where principals and vice principals are not part of the teachers’ union. Further research on the institutional factors that impact the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in other provinces or countries where the union/management structures are different would be valuable. Although care was taken to include a variety of participants, the sample size in this study was small. Further research with a wider variety of participants would expand the learning around the impact of race, gender, and years of experience on psychological safety and would provide information about how institutional factors may impact people differently. Separating out different groups of administrators like school-based principals and vice principals and district principals or vice principals, or looking at those working in rural or urban contexts would also expand the understanding of how institutional factors impact psychological safety. It would be helpful to see further research that includes specific learning about these diverse groups, as well as research in contexts with different organizational structures. Another limitation of this research is that the research is about psychological safety which is a difficult thing to discuss. Although participants were anonymous and confidentiality was strictly maintained, simply discussing this topic was probably new and sensitive to many of the participants. The possible discomfort and the one-time interview format that makes it difficult to build necessary rapport, may have limited some of the conversation. This may have been particularly true for district leaders as the pressure to know the right answer and to be doing the right thing could have led to more performative responses. This is not a comment about the 131 individual participants but a more general tendency of people to want to present well when asked about their work. Recommendations The recommendations about how to leverage institutional factors to increase the psychological safety of principals and vice principals begins with recommendations for the overall district culture. The following recommendations are based on each of the main findings of this research: meeting structures, power and hierarchy, the interpretation of fiduciary duty, and open communication as a way to address the impact of unwritten rules. Table 3 on the next page outlines the main findings of this research and provides an overview of recommendations that will be discussed in more detail in the following pages. These recommendations for changes in organizational practices were also summarized in Figure 2 (see p. 128). 132 Table 3 Recommendations From This Research Recommendations Details of Suggested Actions Create a district culture of psychological safety • Explicitly teach the impact of psychological safety and how to create it in the workplace Design psychologically safe meeting structures and practices • Design meetings to include collaboration and reflection • Co-create group norms • Embed the expectation of and opportunities for feedback • Normalize and plan for mistakes and conflict • Include vice principals when possible Redistribute social power • Create cross-role learning opportunities • Design diverse committees and projects • Provide opportunities for shared or distributed leadership and decision-making • Review institutional practices to align them with present values Clarify terms and expectations • Clarify fiduciary duty and what that looks like in practice • Share clear criteria for success and advancement • Create and/or clarify growth opportunities beyond formal advancement Design open communication plans and create collective accountability • Reinforce collective goals • Share decision-making and increase opportunities for input • Make non-confidential information open and accessible • Consider sharing problems widely for diverse ideas and input • Create open communication channels up and down the system hierarchy Create mentoring programs that model psychological safety • Establish or continue mentoring opportunities for principals and vice principals • Embed psychological safety into all mentoring programs 133 Create a District Culture of Psychological Safety Creating an overall culture that promotes psychological safety in a school district will promote psychological safety of all staff, including principals and vice principals. Principals and vice principals are part of the larger organization, and it is more difficult to improve psychological safety at one level of an organization without some level of understanding of psychological safety and interest in creating it in the school district overall (O’Leary, 2016). Explicit teaching about the impact of psychological safety and how to create it in the workplace should be available to people at all levels of the organization so that psychological safety practices can be embedded and expected at all levels of the organization. This could be done as formal professional development opportunities, but could also be intentionally included in staff and team meetings. Understanding the importance of psychological safety is essential but not sufficient for embedding it into practice (Farrell et al., 2021), so looking at particular practices is also important. The following recommendations are focused on principals and vice principals, but the same practices would be valuable across the organization. It is important to note that although it would be easier to create and support psychological safety for principals and vice principals if this was an organizational norm across the district, it is not essential. If a group within the organization creates an atmosphere of psychological safety which allows them to question organizational practices and norms, they can begin to make wider changes and impact the organizational climate more broadly (O’Leary, 2016). 134 Design Psychologically Safe Meeting Structures and Practices District principal meetings should include practices that create and support psychological safety. It was encouraging to hear that there is a move towards creating more collaborative team meetings that move beyond simply information delivery and become meetings that encourage input, increasing psychological safety and promoting voice behaviour. Such meetings are designed to increase collaboration, sharing of ideas, and reflection, signalling to participants that their input is wanted and valued. This type of leadership meeting that includes and involves principals and vice principals should be encouraged and expanded to districts where meetings are currently more focused on delivering information. In all cases, but particularly if there is a transition to a more collaborative model, it is also important to discuss and co-create group norms so that there is a shared understanding of how the group works together. This should include things that support psychological safety, like a common understanding and practice around giving and receiving feedback. The group norms should also include normalizing and planning for mistakes and conflict so that when they inevitably arise, they do not destroy the psychological safety that has been built. A leader who shares their own mistakes so the team can learn together about how to improve is an example of normalizing mistakes. Providing time and space for others to debrief things that went wrong or topics they are struggling with, can also encourage people to share and learn from mistakes together. Explicitly saying that conflict is expected and having clarity around what productive conflict looks like in practice will help everyone when conflict arises. When it does arise the group norms created together can be useful for negotiating this conflict together. If the conflict is helpful and productive then acknowledging and celebrating it is helpful for reinforcing this behavior and if it doesn’t go well it is another opportunity for learning and growth. 135 Meeting practices that are explicit about the expectation that feedback is expected and valued from everyone have been shown to increase psychological safety in teams (Edmondson, 2019). District leaders can also create more psychological safety by modelling asking for help and discussing mistakes openly and as an opportunity for improvement (Edmondson, 2019). If leaders are open to being vulnerable in this way, it encourages the people they lead to do the same. District leaders should also be encouraged to explicitly seek input and to be prepared for feedback that is difficult to hear. One of the foremost researchers of psychological safety, Amy Edmondson (2019), advises leaders to respond productively to voice no matter how it is delivered, because everyone is watching to see how the input is received. This need to be prepared for feedback and receive it well was confirmed by results of this study, as administrators reported learning about when it was safe to speak up not only from their own experiences but also from the experiences or stories of others. Receiving feedback well is an important skill for all members of teams and organizations to have. It is a skill that requires learning and practice, so some training in this area would also be helpful. Every effort should be made to include vice principals in team meetings and for them to participate in one-on-one meetings with district leaders when possible. All participants in the study agreed that the vice principal role can be very isolating, and that their level of psychological safety is dependent on the principal they are assigned to. This limits their opportunity for input and heightens the power differential, because without other connections and relationships all of the power rests with the principal. Diversifying vice principals’ opportunities for connection would strengthen their relationships with other leaders and expand their learning and thinking by introducing them to more leadership ideas and perspectives. It 136 would also send a message that their wisdom and ideas are welcomed and needed and that they are important part of the team. Redistribute Social Power This study reconfirmed the impact of power and hierarchy on the psychological safety of principals and vice principals (Wang, 2022b). People with more years of experience and/or higher positions enjoy more psychological safety (Edmondson et al., 2016). In this study, principals and vice principals were very aware of power differences between themselves and district leaders, and that was often detrimental to building relationships and doing creative collective work. As middle managers, the impact of hierarchy in both directions affected school administrators’ relationships and their ability to collaborate. Rethinking ways of working together that would redistribute this social power would increase psychological safety for principals, vice principals, and others in the system. In K-12 education activities such as professional learning and district projects or committees are often divided by role. Rethinking these structures (often taken for granted) and learning together across roles lowers power imbalances and develops relationships across roles. Such changes improve psychological safety. When projects and committees include people with different, diverse roles and experiences and the members are psychologically safe to contribute, more creative ideas and more successful outcomes are likely to emerge. Another way to lower the hierarchical barriers and create more psychological safety is to create more opportunities for shared decision-making in these committees and project groups (O’Leary, 2016). Often, in education, a lot of time and energy is taken finding ways to get information to the decision-makers, when it would be more effective and productive to move the decision-making power to where the knowledge is. This is also true of leadership opportunities. In a committee or project, it doesn’t have to be the person with the 137 highest-ranking position who is the leader of the team. Leadership can be shared or distributed differently beyond the traditional hierarchy as long as it is open and clear to everyone about how the team, committee, or project will be run and why. Having an awareness of the impact of power and hierarchical status on psychological safety is a first step towards reducing this impact, but reducing the power differentials and the role of hierarchy will require change at the institutional level (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022). Looking at hierarchical structures at the institutional level is a worthwhile goal, because traditional power structures, although “rooted in cultural norms” (Farrell et al., 2021, p. 7), are not necessary or particularly helpful for effective teamwork and success. Looking at and improving larger systems processes, like hiring practices and clarity around criteria for advancement, for example, would be helpful to decrease power differentials and increase psychological safety, because these advancement decisions would no longer be perceived to be based on whether one is part of the in-group or out-group. Other smaller systems processes within leadership teams can begin to lower the power differences in teams and increase psychological safety. This could include practices like acknowledging and explicitly recognizing power dynamics, highlighting a common mission, and developing “institutional practices that reward speaking up and asking questions, even when doing so may mean challenging the traditional hierarchical structures” (McClintock & Fainstad, 2022, p. 7). Clarify Terms and Expectations The terms “fiduciary duty” and what it means to be an “agent of the board” should be clarified so that everyone (district leaders, school administrators, and school staff) has a better 138 understanding of these terms. This is not a recommendation about the policy itself but about having an understanding of what these terms mean in practice, a crucial point because the lack of common understanding is causing confusion and the fear of getting it wrong. This fear is decreasing psychological safety for principals and vice principals and restricting their work and relationships. It is important that principals and vice principals understand their legal duty according to the School Act, but also what the district expectations are as well. It would be a good exercise for districts to clarify not only what the expectations are or have been, but also to look at the purpose of these expectations to see if they fit with the values and needs of today’s workforce and are aligned with other district values and goals. For example, district values and goals often include things like increasing belonging and collaboration, but if principals and vice principals are seeing fiduciary duty as a reason that they don’t contribute their ideas, that is problematic. The misunderstanding is then inadvertently working against the values and intentions that the institution and its leaders are trying to create. Clear criteria for success and advancement would also increase psychological safety by taking away a degree of uncertainty and promoting more collaborative and less competitive teams. Administrators in this study believed that career advancement was achieved by being in the in-group. What this meant was not clearly defined or understood but was generally described as not being a troublemaker. In the absence of clear criteria for advancement and demonstrated examples of this criteria being followed, this belief will continue to impact psychological safety whether it is objectively true or not. Practices like posting and sharing opportunities widely, making criteria for advancement clear, and sharing decision-making processes openly will help create more psychological safety for principals and vice principals. Creating and/or clarifying opportunities for growth beyond the formal advancement into district positions would also create 139 more growth opportunities and perhaps lower some of the fear of and the practice of being sidelined. Other leadership opportunities could include running projects or committees in a particular area of expertise or interest. Design Open Communication Plans and Create Collective Accountability Creating school and district cultures with open and timely communication and where everyone is collectively responsible for outcomes increases psychological safety on teams (Weiner et al., 2021). Practices designed to increase connection and input such as the collaborative, conversation-based meetings mentioned by the superintendents should be encouraged. Reinforcing the collective goals of the district and providing opportunities for input in district decision-making would increase sharing of ideas (Lee, 2021). Including the voices of school administrators, in particular, has several benefits as it will increase the quality of the decisions made and also the likelihood of these ideas being implemented. Opening up communication both up and down the system hierarchy will also have an impact on the psychological safety of principals and vice principals because it will lower the perceived need for administrators to choose sides between the district and school staff. Creating more open information-sharing processes, where (non-confidential) information is open to everyone, would be helpful to spark ideas and creative conversation at all levels of the organization. This would also enable the development of stronger relationships, which is another protective factor for psychological safety (Lee, 2021). Information sharing does not always mean that information is sent to everyone; that can overload people with information they may not need. What it does mean is that information is more open and can be found and accessed by those who need it. For example, if a committee is working on a project, the data that has been collected to inform that project would be shared with the people on the committee, but could also be made available to 140 others if they are interested. Another way of opening up communication and collaboration is as simple as sharing a problem that a person or a group is working on with a wider group and inviting them to give input if they want to. As it is an invitation, it doesn’t add to people’s workload unless they choose to contribute, but it is a simple practice that reinforces the perception that everyone is working and contributing to the same goals. Design Mentoring Programs That Model Psychological Safety Formal and or informal mentoring programs exist in many school districts. These programs, where more experienced school administrators support new principals and vice principals, were mentioned by participants in this study as helping to clarify their roles and offer support. Research supports the value of these programs (Miller-Smith, 2021), as they give new administrators more on-the-job experiences and help them navigate challenges that may not come up in traditional learning formats (Miller-Smith, 2021). It is also a way to develop relationships with colleagues that increases trust and support (Parfitt & Rose, 2020). Mentoring is often an excellent way to foster relationships, and belonging should be encouraged as a way to increase psychological safety. One exception to this that came out of this research and is worth considering and studying further is what happens in a district where psychological safety is low. In a workplace where psychological safety is low, the mentor has two conflicting questions to consider. Is it their role to teach the new administrator to survive, despite the unsafe culture, by teaching them when it is okay to speak up and when it is not? Or is the role of the mentor to teach a new administrator to have thoughtful and productive voice even if it is damaging to their career? In a workplace with low psychological safety, mentoring programs run the risk of teaching new administrators how to survive in their role instead of helping them learn, thrive, and grow—the intended purpose of these programs. As a district moves towards a culture of 141 psychological safety, care should be taken to design mentoring opportunities with intention (Mendez, 2023), and to include psychological safety so that this is the culture that is being promoted and encouraged by mentors. It is important to note that if psychological safety has been low, actions to promote psychological safety will have to come first. Mentors will have to feel this sense of safety in the district culture before they advise their mentees to work in this way. Conclusion This research revealed that the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia is impacted by systems level institutional factors. School administrators’ decisions about whether to share their ideas and questions with district leaders were shaped by personal factors like their own positionality and interpersonal factors like their relationships with senior leaders, but also by system structures and practices. Institutional factors such as school administrators’ fiduciary duty as an agent of the board and as a management level employee impacted their likelihood of speaking up with questions or concerns. It was not necessarily the legal policy on fiduciary duty (BC School Act, 1996) but their understanding of the policy that impacted their work. Even more than the uncertain understanding of the official policies, the unwritten but commonly held beliefs around what was expected and what made someone successful as a principal or vice principal was impacting psychological safety. The unwritten rules about what, when, where and with whom administrators should share their thoughts are limiting conversation and collaboration between school administrators and other educators. These unwritten (and often unspoken) rules are creating fear around getting things wrong, leading to unnecessary silence or withdrawal. 142 This research uncovers some of the disjunctures between the role and responsibility of school administrators to be a connection between schools and the district office and what is actually playing out in their day-to-day work. Official documents, academic research, and the superintendents interviewed in my study all describe the role of school leader as vital to the success of schools, but this important outcome cannot be realized if communication between schools and the district office is limited. IE tells us that these disjunctures “can be recognized in moments when something feels wrong—unsettling moments when people know something from experience but are told or taught something quite different” (Devault, 2019, p. 84). This is what is happening for many principals and vice principals in British Columbia right now, because the formal policy and the good intentions of the district leaders regarding collaboration and voice are not fitting well with the structures and the ways of working that are currently embedded in K-12 education. This disconnect is getting in the way of the creative solutions and learning that is so needed in the education system at the moment. It is also impacting the well-being of individual principals and vice principals, which is not only important on its own but also impacts the well-being and success of the students, staff, and communities these administrators lead. There is a need to move to more collaborative structures and ways of working together. This research shines a light on the systems factors that are hindering psychological safety, and offers some recommendations to address these challenges. Although systems change is often thought of as something overwhelming and time-consuming, the recommendations that come from this research (see the section above) can have a substantial impact on well-being, relationships, and organizational success. I think back to the principal who didn’t want to share his opinion with me because he believed it didn’t matter. I hope that this research will encourage school districts to adopt 143 practices that will empower principals and vice principals to share their wisdom and know that it does matter. Thanks to the courage of the participants in this study, this research provides a better understanding of how institutional practices and social relations are impacting the psychological safety of principals and vice principals in British Columbia. If the knowledge generated through this research remains only in academic discourse, it is not fulfilling the responsibility of an institutional ethnographer. This includes the responsibility to create texts that express the standpoint of people actually doing the work and to make these texts available to those who will use them (Campbell & Gregor, 2002). As part of that responsibility, I will continue to speak, write, and teach about the importance of psychological safety in the K-12 education workplace. 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Linking colleague support to employees’ promotive voice: A moderated mediation model. PloS ONE, 10(7), e0132123. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132123 166 Appendix A: Participant Information and Consent Form (Principals and Vice Principals) (See next four pages.) 167 Department of Educational Studies Faculty of Education Education Centre at Ponderosa Commons 6445 University Boulevard Vancouver B.C. V6T 1Z2 CANADA Tel: 604-822-5374 Fax: 604-822-4244 Web: http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca    Participant Information and Consent Form Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography 1. INVITATION AND STUDY PURPOSE You are being invited to take part in this research study because you are a principal or vice principal in British Columbia. The purpose of this study: Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography, is to explore principal’s experience of psychological safety which is the extent they feel safe to speak up, ask questions and share ideas at work. This study will look at systemic factors that impact psychological safety for principals and vice principals. The intent of this study is to provide recommendations for systemic actions that can be taken to increase psychological safety for principals and vice principals in British Columbia. 2. STUDY TEAM Principal Investigator: Dr. Fei Wang, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia – Vancouver. Co-Investigator: Gail Markin, Graduate Student, Doctor of Education Program, University of British Columbia-Vancouver. STUDY PROCEDURES The study will include a one-hour individual interview and follow up focus group(s). The interviews will run up to one hour and will be a semi-structured conversation between the researcher and the participant conducted over zoom. The interview sessions (both audio and video) will be recorded (with permission). If you wish, a copy of the recording and/or transcription it will be provided to you. As the interview will be conversational in nature, you are encouraged to leave your camera on, but it is not a requirement of participation. You are free to withdraw participation at any time in the process. The focus group(s) will occur in the fall/winter of 2023 and although you will be invited to participate in the focus group(s) (with 168 your consent) there is no obligation to participate. The 1-2 focus groups of 4-6 participants will provide the opportunity for the researcher to share some of the themes and questions from the interviews and seek clarification if necessary. A separate consent form will be provided for the focus group if you choose to participate. 4. STUDY RESULT AND DISSEMINATION The results of this study will be reported in a graduate doctoral thesis and shared publicly as part of the requirements of the Doctor of Education program at UBC. The results of this study may also be published in journal articles and books or presented at professional development conferences. All identifying information will be removed to maintain confidentiality and a draft copy will be shared for your review before the final report is completed. Should you wish to receive a copy of the published thesis, please check the box below. No information or records that disclose your identity will be published without your consent, nor will any information or records that disclose your identity be removed or released without your consent unless required by law. 5. POTENTIAL RISKS AND BENEFITS OF THE STUDY There are no anticipated risks associated with this study as the experiences that will be discussed are the experiences that are already occurring in daily life. However, some potential risks associated with the research project could be feelings of anxiety, or regret about sharing your experience. Although the research protocols will mitigate the risk of identification (see confidentiality section below) there is no guarantee that no risk will occur. You do not have to answer any questions or share any experiences that you do not wish to answer or share. Some potential benefit of this research could be feelings of satisfaction and efficacy that can result from sharing information about your work experiences and knowing that you are contributing to a broader discourse on workplace well-being. 6. CONFIDENTIALITY Your identity will remain anonymous as confidentiality will be respected and protected in this study. Participants names, locations and any other data that may lead to the identity of persons or places will be coded to maintain confidentiality. All notes, transcriptions and recordings will be identified by code number and stored on a password protected OneDrive account. Password will only be known to the researcher. You will be assigned a unique study number as a participant in this study. This number will not include any personal information that could identify you. Only this number will be used on any 169 research-related information collected about you during this study, so that your identity will be kept confidential. Information that contains your identity will remain only with the Principal and Co-Investigator mentioned above. The list that matches your name to the unique study number that is used on your research-related information will not be removed or released without your consent unless required by law. In the written report all names will be pseudonyms and school districts will be described by size: small, medium, large and by urban/rural. Other potentially identifying information will be described in general demographic categories. Participants will be invited to review the draft research report and remove or alter any information they feel may identify them. 7. CONTACT FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THIS STUDY If you have any questions or desire further information with respect to this study, you may contact Gail Markin or the research supervisor, Dr Fei Wang. 8. CONTRACT FOR CONCERNS ABOUT THE RIGHTS OF RESEARCH SUBJECTS If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your experiences while participating in this study, contact the Research Participant Complaint Line in the UBC Office of Research Ethics at 604- 822-8598 or if long distance e-mail RSIL@ors.ubc.ca or call toll free 1-877-822-8598. By signing this form, you do not give up any of your legal rights and you do not release the principal investigator, participating institutions, or anyone else from their legal and professional duties. 170 Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography Participant Consent My signature on this consent form means:  I have read and understood the information in this consent form.  I have been able to ask questions and have had satisfactory responses to my questions.  I understand that my participation in this study is voluntary.  I understand that I am completely free at any time to refuse to participate or to withdraw from this study at any time.  I understand that I am not waiving any of my legal rights as a result of signing this consent form.  I understand that there is no guarantee that this study will provide any benefits to me. I will receive a signed and dated copy of this consent form for my own records. o I consent to participate in this study, and I am willing to be contacted about participating in focus groups. o I consent to participate in this study, but I am not willing to be contacted about participating in focus groups. o I would like to receive a copy of the recording and/or transcript of the interview. o I would like to receive a copy of the final research report. _______________________ _______________________ _______________ Participant’s Signature Printed Name Date _______________________ ____________ _________ _______________ Signature of Person Printed Name Study Role Date Obtaining Consent Ethics ID Number: H23-00832 171 Appendix B: Participant Information and Consent Form (District Leaders) (See following four pages.) 172 Department of Educational Studies Faculty of Education Education Centre at Ponderosa Commons 6445 University Boulevard Vancouver B.C. V6T 1Z2 CANADA Tel: 604-822-5374 Fax: 604-822-4244 Web: http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca    Participant Information and Consent Form Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography 1. INVITATION AND STUDY PURPOSE You are being invited to take part in this research study because you are a School Superintendent or Assistant Superintendent in British Columbia. The purpose of this study: Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography, is to explore principal’s experience of psychological safety which is the extent they feel safe to speak up, ask questions and share ideas at work. This study will look at systemic factors that impact psychological safety for principals and vice principals. The intent of this study is to provide recommendations for systemic actions that can be taken to increase psychological safety for principals and vice principals in British Columbia. 2. STUDY TEAM Principal Investigator: Dr. Fei Wang, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia – Vancouver. Co-Investigator: Gail Markin, Graduate Student, Doctor of Education Program, University of British Columbia-Vancouver. STUDY PROCEDURES The study involved one-hour individual interviews with Principals and Vice Principals and will include 30-minute individual interviews with Superintendents or Assistant Superintendents. The Superintendent interviews will run up to 30 minutes and will be a semi-structured conversation between the researcher and the participant conducted over zoom. The interview sessions (both audio and video) will be recorded (with permission). If you wish, a copy of the recording and/or 173 transcription will be provided to you. As the interview will be conversational in nature, you are encouraged to leave your camera on, but it is not a requirement of participation. You are free to withdraw participation at any time in the process. 4. STUDY RESULT AND DISSEMINATION The results of this study will be reported in a graduate doctoral thesis and shared publicly as part of the requirements of the Doctor of Education program at UBC. The results of this study may also be published in journal articles and books or presented at professional development conferences. All identifying information will be removed to maintain confidentiality. Should you wish to receive a copy of the published thesis, please check the box below. No information or records that disclose your identity will be published without your consent, nor will any information or records that disclose your identity be removed or released without your consent unless required by law. 5. POTENTIAL RISKS AND BENEFITS OF THE STUDY There are no anticipated risks associated with this study as the experiences that will be discussed are the experiences that are already occurring in daily life. However, some potential risks associated with the research project could be feelings of anxiety, or regret about sharing your experience. Although the research protocols will mitigate the risk of identification (see confidentiality section below) there is no guarantee that no risk will occur. You do not have to answer any questions or share any experiences that you do not wish to answer or share. Some potential benefit of this research could be feelings of satisfaction and efficacy that can result from sharing information about your work experiences and knowing that you are contributing to a broader discourse on workplace well-being. 6. CONFIDENTIALITY Your identity will remain anonymous as confidentiality will be respected and protected in this study. Participants names, locations and any other data that may lead to the identity of persons or places will be coded to maintain confidentiality. All notes, transcriptions and recordings will be identified by code number and stored on a password protected OneDrive account. Password will only be known to the researcher. You will be assigned a unique study number as a participant in this study. This number will not include any personal information that could identify you. Only this number will be used on any research-related information collected about you during this study, so that your identity will be kept confidential. Information that contains your identity will remain only with the Principal and 174 Co-Investigator mentioned above. The list that matches your name to the unique study number that is used on your research-related information will not be removed or released without your consent unless required by law. In the written report all names will be pseudonyms and school districts will be described by size: small, medium, large and by urban/rural. Other potentially identifying information will be described in general demographic categories. 7. CONTACT FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THIS STUDY If you have any questions or desire further information with respect to this study, you may contact Gail Markin or the research supervisor, Dr Fei Wang. 8. CONTRACT FOR CONCERNS ABOUT THE RIGHTS OF RESEARCH SUBJECTS If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your experiences while participating in this study, contact the Research Participant Complaint Line in the UBC Office of Research Ethics at 604- 822-8598 or if long distance e-mail RSIL@ors.ubc.ca or call toll free 1-877-822-8598. By signing this form, you do not give up any of your legal rights and you do not release the principal investigator, participating institutions, or anyone else from their legal and professional duties. 175 Principal and Vice Principal Psychological Safety: An Institutional Ethnography Participant Consent My signature on this consent form means:  I have read and understood the information in this consent form.  I have been able to ask questions and have had satisfactory responses to my questions.  I understand that my participation in this study is voluntary.  I understand that I am completely free at any time to refuse to participate or to withdraw from this study at any time.  I understand that I am not waiving any of my legal rights as a result of signing this consent form.  I understand that there is no guarantee that this study will provide any benefits to me. I will receive a signed and dated copy of this consent form for my own records. I consent to participate in this study I would like to receive a copy of the recording and/or transcript of the interview. I would like to receive a copy of the final research report. _______________________ _______________________ _______________ Participant’s Signature Printed Name Date _______________________ ____________ _________ _______________ Signature of Person Printed Name Study Role Date Obtaining Consent Ethics ID Number: H23-00832 176 Appendix C: Interview Script and Questions for Principals and Vice Principals I would like to start by just checking if you have any questions? I have a series of questions to ask, but I am hoping that we can just have a conversation about your experiences and ideas so please add, go back or ask questions as we go along. 1. Would you start by telling me a little bit about yourself? 2. Would you tell me about what a typical day would look like for you? This study is interested in the things that impact psychological safety for principals and vice principals. Psychological Safety is defined as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” (Edmondson, 2019). 3. Could you tell me about a time where you spoke up, asked questions, or shared your ideas with district leaders? If needed: Can you tell me more about that? 4. What impacted your decision to speak up? 5. What was the outcome of this decision? 6. Can you tell me about a time you chose not to speak up, ask questions or share your ideas with district leaders? 7. What impacted your decision not to speak up? 8. What was the outcome of this decision? 177 9. Are there any policies, practices or procedures (written or unwritten) that impacted the decision to speak up or not speak up? If yes, then can you tell me about those? How do you know about them? 10. Are there any supports, services, policies, or practices that you can think of that increase your psychological safety at work? 11. Are there any supports, services, policies, or practices that you can think of that would increase your psychological safety at work but are not available? 12. Is there anything else that you would like to tell me or clarify? 13. Is there anyone else you can recommend that may be willing to participate in this study? Thank you so much for this conversation today. If you have indicated on the consent form or let me know now, that you would like a copy of the transcript and/or recording of our conversation, I will send that to you in the next couple of days. Once the individual interviews are complete, I will be gathering a focus group or two of principals and vice principals from around the province. The focus groups will provide clarification and reflection on the data that emerges from the analysis of the individual interviews and related texts that I will be looking at. This should happen (give date range). There is no obligation to participate in the focus groups. If you checked that box on the consent form to indicate, you may be interested or you send me an email anytime expressing interest, you will receive an email with more information prior to that time. As you know, the intention of the design of this research is to have individual participants not be identifiable, so as a final check when the research and analysis is complete, I will send you a draft research report to review, and you will be able to remove or alter any information you are concerned may identify you. 178 If you indicated on the consent form that you would like a copy of the final report or you let me know anytime, I will send that you by email as soon as it is complete. 179 Appendix D: Interview Script and Questions for District Leaders Thanks for agreeing to speak with me. I am hoping that we can have a conversation about your experiences and ideas so please add, go back, or ask questions as we go along. Before I ask you some questions about your role in relation to Principals and Vice Principals, do you have any questions about my research? 1. Please tell me a little bit about yourself? 2. What is your role in relation to principals and vice principals? What is involved with supporting them to fulfill their roles. 3. How do principals and vice principals learn about their role? In my interviews with Principals and Vice Principals, fiduciary duty, being agents of the board, and leadership/administrative meetings surfaced as important in relation to how they understand their role and duties, as well as how these impact their opportunities to share ideas and concerns. 4. In your view, what is the fiduciary duty of principals and vice principals, what does it looks like in practice, and what is your role? 5. In your view, what does it mean for principals and vice principals to be agents of the board? What does this look like in practice, and what is your role? 6. Finally, please tell me more about leadership/administrative meetings in your district, your role in these meetings and the role of Principals and Vice Principals. Are these meetings spaces where principals/vice principals can ask questions, share their ideas and/or the ideas of their staffs with you, and their concerns? Are there other 180 opportunities/processes for principals and vice principals to share their ideas and concerns? (ask questions, share their ideas and/or the ideas of their staff) 7. Is there anything else that you would like to tell me or clarify? 8. Is there anyone else you can recommend that may be willing to participate in this study? Thank you so much for this conversation today. If you have indicated on the consent form or let me know now, that you would like a copy of the transcript and/or recording of our conversation, I will send that to you in the next couple of days. If you indicated on the consent form that you would like a copy of the final report or let me know anytime, I will send that you by email as soon as it is complete.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Educational Leadership and Policy
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Wang, Fei (Professor in educational leadership and policy studies)
Principal and vice principal psychological safety in British Columbia : an institutional ethnography
Text