Reengineering organizational systems and culture for teacher learning: a co-design study in an urban school district

This qualitative study examines how a district-level secondary science education leader in a large urban United States school district engaged in co-design to reconsider organizational systems and conditions supporting teacher learning during the implementation of state-adopted science standards. Grounded in organizational sensemaking and co-design, the study conceptualizes leadership practice as the ongoing interpretation and redesign of system conditions that shape teaching and learning. In partnership with a team of researchers, the leader co-developed and implemented a survey as a diagnostic tool to capture teachers’ perspectives, challenges, and goals related to standards-aligned instruction. The co-design process provided contextual relevance while positioning the development of the diagnostic tool as a site for leadership reflection and sensemaking. Study results show that the co-design process functioned as a form of leadership learning, supporting shifts in how the leader made sense of organizational conditions and approached evidence-informed decision-making. The primary participant's interpretation of teacher feedback surfaced patterns of uncertainty, support, and disconnection, informing her thinking about professional learning priorities, teacher engagement, and communication practices. These shifts represent early efforts to reconsider both the technical and cultural dimensions of professional learning systems. The study suggests the potential of co-design as a site for leadership learning by supporting leaders in diagnosing system conditions and considering adaptive approaches to teacher learning. These findings suggest that co-constructed diagnostic tools may provide structured opportunities for leaders to examine assumptions, engage in sensemaking, and reconsider approaches to organizational improvement.

Instructional reform is directed not only by teachers' classroom practices, but also by the organizational conditions that support or constrain those practices (Kirst, 2024). Educational leaders are increasingly expected to act as system designers, using evidence to understand local conditions and guide improvement efforts (Louis et al., 2010). This study is situated at the intersection of research on K12 science education reform, organizational sensemaking, and collaborative approaches to improvement. The literature reviewed here emphasizes the challenges of supporting teacher learning during standards implementation, the role of leaders in diagnosing and responding to organizational conditions, and the potential of co-design to support both leadership learning and system-level change.

Science standards reform, equity, and teacher learning

Over the last decade, state adoption of new science education standards, based on a Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and their local adaptations, has brought forth a new vision for science education in the United States. These standards call for a shift away from rote memorization of science content and the passive transmission of knowledge, toward a more dynamic, inquiry-driven, and equitable model of teaching and learning (NASEM, 2025a). This vision is both urgent and challenging: it requires teachers not only to adapt their content knowledge but also to reimagine their instructional practices, classroom culture, and the ways they support the broad needs of their students (NASEM, 2015).

Putting these newer science standards into practice is a complex undertaking. The challenge is exacerbated by the scale of many urban districts, where thousands of students, each having unique learning profiles and language backgrounds, attend schools with varying resources and levels of support (NASEM, 2025b). As of 2021, 10.6% of all public school students in the United States were emergent bilinguals (EB), up from 9.4% in 2011. Numbers vary by state; in the state included in this study, approximately 20% of public school students are emergent bilinguals (U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2025). Concerted efforts are required to equitably meet these students' needs through culturally sustaining pedagogies, which recognize and incorporate home languages and cultures (García, 2023; Hamman-Ortiz, 2023). The focus of research has shifted over time from recognizing EB linguistic and cultural assets to implementing research-based strategies, such as translanguaging and multimodal and multilingual instruction, including explicit vocabulary instruction (Garza and Arreguín-Anderson, 2018; Lew, 2024).

When used as a pedagogical practice, translanguaging opens space for students to draw upon their entire linguistic repertoire for sensemaking and should be implemented with the intent to promote social justice (Seltzer et al., 2025). Translanguaging can be overlaid on multimodal and multilingual science instruction, which includes gestures, visuals, online resources such as bilingual dictionaries, and EBs working with multilingual peers (Fine and Furtak, 2020). Vocabulary instruction should be explicit (Lew, 2024). Through these approaches, EB students are scaffolded and enabled to participate equitably in science instruction (Grapin et al., 2019).

However, implementation remains a concern. To start, teacher language ideologies which position student languages and cultures from a deficit perspective versus asset-based perspectives, which value students' linguistic repertoires, may impact effective implementation (Fine and Furtak, 2020; Garza and Arreguín-Anderson, 2018). Additionally, institutionally designed top-down, prescriptive approaches may also affect the implementation of effective pedagogies or strategies, as with literacy instruction in secondary science classrooms (Lew, 2024). Policy barriers that privilege dominant languages may also impact the effective implementation of research-based pedagogies and practices. Consequently, there is a need for “a road map of classroom implementation” (Pierson and Grapin, 2021). The language section of the diagnostic survey tool developed in this study aims to provide a roadmap for classroom implementation through professional development.

District leadership, sensemaking, and organizational improvement

School district-level science leaders are called to act as boundary spanners: individuals who translate policy into meaningful practice, connect district priorities to classroom realities, and cultivate professional communities that foster teacher growth and student success (Whitworth et al., 2017). From this perspective, district leadership includes coordination and implementation, as well as ongoing organizational sensemaking, in which leaders examine complex and often competing signals from policy environments, schools, and teachers to design system-level responses that support instructional improvement (Hornung et al., 2014).

Effective science leadership at the district level is therefore not limited to compliance with policy directives or the dissemination of curriculum materials (Ozen-Tasdemir, 2024). Rather, it involves engaging teachers as partners in reform, building professional learning systems that are responsive to local needs, and developing shared ownership of instructional improvement (Coburn, 2005; Luft et al., 2026). In this sense, leadership functions as a form of system design under conditions of uncertainty, where leaders must continuously diagnose organizational factors and adjust supports for teaching and learning.

This work is especially complex in large urban districts, where learning-related inequities are pronounced, and students’ linguistic, cultural, and academic needs vary widely across schools (NASEM, 2025a, 2025b). Under such circumstances, district leaders must interpret varied and often incomplete information about instructional practice and teacher experience to guide improvement efforts. Traditional top-down approaches to professional learning often assume that leaders can anticipate teacher needs in advance and translate policy into practice without sustained feedback from educators. However, such approaches frequently fail to represent the complexity of classroom realities or surface the challenges teachers encounter during implementation (NASEM, 2015; Penuel et al., 2020). As a result, there is a growing need for mechanisms that allow leaders to better diagnose organizational conditions and respond to teachers' changing needs during reform.

Co-design as a tool for leadership learning

To respond to these challenges, the district science leader, the practitioner in this study, and a team of university researchers initiated a research-practice partnership to co-develop a diagnostic survey tool to elicit teachers' perspectives, needs, and goals, as teachers were prepared to implement new science standards one year ahead of the state's implementation plan. This joint co-design approach (Penuel et al., 2007) was based on the belief that teacher voice should inform both the content and structure of professional learning (Jeffery et al., 2025). More recent scholarship conceptualizes co-design as a form of system that facilitates stakeholder participation and generates more impartial, contextually relevant solutions (Penuel, 2019).

Within science education, co-design has been shown to strengthen leadership practice by making professional learning systems more authentic, inclusive, and responsive to local needs (Penuel et al., 2018). Importantly, engaging in research practice partnership processes can also serve as a form of leadership learning, as leaders sharpen their interpretation of teacher needs and organizational conditions through continual collaboration utilizing research (Hopkins et al., 2019). When district leaders design professional learning systems based on teachers' starting points, they signal respect for practitioner expertise while adding to the relational trust necessary for meaningful and sustained change (Tyler et al., 2020).

This partnership was built upon an existing foundation of collaboration between the district leader and the university team, including prior grant-funded work focused on empowering diversity in informal science learning environments, particularly through outdoor learning experiences for minoritized youth (Albrecht and Navarrete-Burks, 2025; Jeffery et al., 2025). Over time, this cooperation developed into a relationship characterized by aligned goals, mutual trust, and sustained commitment to educational equity. This relational foundation enabled difficult but productive conversations about system-wide barriers to equitable science instruction and supported the co-design of initiatives grounded in both research and practice.

Language equity was an important dimension of this work. As defined by Grapin and colleagues (Grapin et al., 2019), language equity involves more than providing language supports or differentiated instruction; it requires recognizing and making use of the linguistic assets students bring to science learning and designing instruction that builds upon those assets. Similarly, Bonilla and Morales-Doyle (2025) propose that language equity may be achieved through intentional interweaving of science, language, and cultural responsiveness. However, in practice, approaches to language equity vary, ranging from additive models that affirm and develop students' home languages to more traditional compensatory approaches that focus primarily on remediation. This reality points to the need for stakeholder intentionality in working towards language equity.

This study is guided primarily by two complementary conceptual lenses: organizational sensemaking and co-design. Organizational sensemaking provides a lens for examining how Courtney interpreted teacher needs, policy expectations, equity considerations, and her leadership role during standards implementation, while co-design focuses attention on how the iterative development of the diagnostic tool created opportunities for reflection and collaborative problem-solving. Together, these lenses informed the study's focus on both what Courtney made sense of and how that sensemaking developed across the co-design process.

Study purpose

Taken together, these factors form the background and rationale for the study. While existing research has established the importance of equity-responsive standards implementation, leadership sensemaking, and collaborative approaches to educational improvement, less is known about how district leaders' sensemaking develops through participation in co-design, particularly through the collaborative development of diagnostic tools intended to surface teacher needs. This study addresses this gap by examining the co-design process itself as a potential site for leadership learning. The partnership's goal is to examine how co-design, in this case, the co-development of a diagnostic survey tool, may support more equitable, coherent, and effective professional learning in secondary science education. By centering teacher voice and attending to both instructional and language-related dimensions of equity, the district leader sought to move beyond compliance-driven reform toward a more receptive and adaptive model of leadership and organizational improvement. To guide this work, the following research questions were used: How did co-design shape a science district leader's understanding of teacher needs and organizational conditions during district-level reform?

How did learning through co-design inform leadership practices and organizational supports for instructional improvement?

This study used a qualitative single-case study design (Cresswell and Poth, 2023) to explore a system, one urban school district in the south-central United States, integrated with co-design methodology (Penuel et al., 2007) to examine how a district science leader's engagement in an iterative co-design process impacted their leadership sensemaking and practice during the implementation of new science standards. The study is grounded in an interpretivist paradigm (Egbert and Sanden, 2020), stressing that meaning is socially constructed, developmental, and dynamic. This approach is uniquely suited for capturing how leadership understanding evolves over time through collaborative, practice-based design spaces.

Participant and system context

Because this study integrated co-design methodology (Penuel et al., 2007), selection relied on purposive and opportunistic sampling rooted in an established, prolonged, and collaborative history. The primary participant in the partnership was “Courtney” (a pseudonym), the district science leader responsible for overseeing science education for grades 6–8 in a large urban school district in a southern U.S. state. Courtney's role encompasses the organizational management of programs, resources, assessments, and curriculum, as well as the design and implementation of professional learning structures for middle school science educators.

The focal district, Greenspoint School District (a pseudonym), serves approximately 60,000 students and is characterized by rich linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity. Nearly half of the student body comprises multilingual learners situated within historically underserved communities. Consequently, issues of educational opportunity and linguistic equity are central to the district's broader reform mandates. At the time of this study, the district was implementing new state-adopted science standards that included big shifts in the state and were adapted from the Framework (NRC, 2012), calling for a systemic shift toward three-dimensional, inquiry-based, and equity-centered science instruction.

Data collection and sources

To understand Courtney's dynamic, evolving leadership sensemaking within this single-case study, data collection was embedded within a research-practice partnership (RPP) co-design process (Coburn and Penuel, 2016) between Courtney and a team of university researchers. Over a multi-month period, this partnership co-developed a diagnostic survey tool to capture secondary science teacher educators' perceived needs, challenges, and instructional goals related to the new science standards.

While the survey functioned in practice as an operational diagnostic tool for the district, it served, methodologically, as the primary site of leadership learning for Courtney. Data collection was designed to capture both Courtney's retrospective reflections and the real-time, iterative traces of her learning while she navigated the co-design space. The dataset consists of two primary streams: semi-structured interviews and artifactual data.

Primary data: semi-structured interviews

The primary data source consisted of three in-depth semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 2019; Trinidad, 2024) conducted with Courtney. These interviews were purposefully captured at distinct chronological phases of the co-design process to trace her developmental leadership sensemaking over time:

Interview 1 (Initial Exploration): Conducted at the onset of the partnership, this interview documented baseline district priorities, perceived systemic roadblocks, and initial leadership challenges relative to the incoming science standards.

Interview 2 (Mid-Process Reflection): Conducted during the active co-design and expansion of the survey's linguistic equity metrics, this interview recorded real-time shifts in Courtney's framing of teacher needs and equity.

Interview 3 (Post-Survey Deployment Reflection): Captured Courtney's retrospective analysis of perceived teacher needs, equity implications, and upcoming system-level professional development designs based on the enactment of the finalized instrument.

The interviews lasted approximately 90 min and occurred approximately 2 months apart. The research team conducted all interviews, which were audio-recorded with participant consent and transcribed. A semi-structured interview protocol guided each interview, with questions focused on Courtney's perceptions of teacher needs, implementation challenges, professional learning, equity considerations, and her evolving leadership decisions. The protocol was adapted across interviews to allow follow-up on issues emerging through the co-design process.

Between these interviews, Courtney and the research team engaged in ongoing co-design through shared documents and email exchanges. The shared documents allowed team members to comment on, respond to, and collaboratively revise the survey instrument asynchronously. These interactions focused on the survey's alignment with district priorities and the new science standards, as well as how survey items represented teacher needs and linguistic equity. This iterative process informed subsequent revisions to the survey instrument.

Artifactual data: the iterative co-design survey

To supplement the interviews and track the trajectory of Courtney's systemic reflections, the physical survey sections and their iterative drafts were utilized as contextual artifacts. Consistent with district privacy mandates, teacher-level survey responses were not aggregated or analyzed as part of this study's research dataset; rather, the evolution of the tool itself serves as the data. To clarify, the research team did not independently analyze teacher survey responses. When Courtney discussed survey responses during interviews, those accounts were analyzed as evidence of her perceptions and interpretations of teacher feedback, rather than as direct evidence from the teacher survey data.

The survey was adapted from an existing instrument (Penuel et al., 2020) and customized to the district's local context. Crucially, the co-design team recognized that the baseline instrument did not address language equity (MacDonald et al., 2022) in the science classroom, an omission that would have been highly problematic given the district's highly linguistically diverse student population. To rectify this, the team drew on their prior asset-based frameworks developing outdoor experiences for minoritized youth (Albrecht and Navarrete-Burks, 2025; Jeffery et al., 2025) to explicitly embed linguistic equity metrics across a four-part structure (Parts A-D):

Part A (current classroom practices) included statements on a targeted subset of science and engineering practices (SEPs) from the Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) prioritized by the district. Notably, a new section was added tracking the use of multilingual support. Items asked teachers to reflect on how often they supported multilingual learners through both English as a Second Language (ESL) strategies (e.g., English-only sentence stems and vocabulary) and bilingual/translanguaging methodologies (García, 2009), such as leveraging students' home languages for oral and written meaning-making.

Parts B, C, and D (Vision of the “Ideal” Classroom) probed teachers' underlying pedagogical philosophies regarding content (Part B), purpose (Part C), and multilingual student language supports (Part D). Educators were presented with both standards-aligned and misaligned statements; their selections mapped out clear patches of vision alignment and misalignment across the district.

The iterative changes made to these four parts (see Table 1), specifically the curation of items representative of both ESL and translanguaging methodologies (Garcia, 2009), served as physical evidence of Courtney's collaborative decisions to achieve system-level coherence along with equity goals.

Positionality and trustworthiness

Our research team, the authors of this paper, consisted of two investigators from diverse disciplines- STEM education, educational leadership, and bilingual education- as well as varied geographic, cultural, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Our positionality, defined by our intersecting identities, worldviews, institutional affiliations, and leadership experience, directly influenced our research approach, data collection, and interpretation (Darwin-Holmes, 2020).

We practiced ongoing critical reflexivity (Hesse-Biber, 2017) throughout the project. Drawing on our diverse backgrounds, we interpreted the organizational realities, policy constraints, and conditions shaping Courtney's role. Instead of seeing our active co-design participation as a source of bias, we leveraged our professional and cultural perspectives to deepen our insight into educational policy, linguistic equity, and the interactive dynamics essential to research-practice partnerships.

To ensure qualitative rigor, we used strategies aligned with established interpretive criteria (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010). We engaged with the data through multiple coding cycles, maintained a detailed audit trail, and employed investigator triangulation through collaborative analysis. We also examined interpretations across interview transcripts and sequential survey drafts to assess consistency across data sources. We conducted member checking by sharing preliminary findings and thematic trajectories with Courtney, who confirmed that our interpretations accurately reflected her experiences and sensemaking throughout the co-design process.

Data analysis

To capture the process-oriented, developmental shifts in Courtney's leadership language, priorities, and relational practices, a longitudinal qualitative case analysis was utilized (Saldaña, 2003). A multi-cycle coding protocol (Saldaña, 2021) was used to directly address the two central research questions. Consistent with the study's conceptual framing, organizational sensemaking guided attention to changes in how Courtney interpreted teacher needs, equity, policy demands, and her leadership role, while co-design guided attention to how those interpretations developed through the iterative creation and revision of the diagnostic survey tool.

First-cycle coding

The first cycle of analysis began with an initial immersion in the data through repeated readings of the interview transcripts and side-by-side reviews of the sequential survey drafts. A combination of in vivo coding to preserve Courtney's authentic leadership voice, process coding to document her evolving leadership actions, and values coding to capture her shifting beliefs regarding equity and systemic constraints was applied.

To address RQ1 (teacher needs), we tracked how Courtney conceptualized her teaching staff's readiness and interpreted teacher feedback, noting whether her assessments shifted from more rigid expectations of compliance to more context-specific, empathetic understandings of teachers' shared realities. For RQ2 (leadership practice), coding focused heavily on explicit leadership moves and systemic tensions (e.g., from delivery to dialogue, adapting goals vs. district mandates). Simultaneously, artifact analysis was conducted on the survey drafts; modifications, additions, and deletions within the tool (such as the insertion of bilingual/translanguaging metrics in Part A and Part D) were open-coded as structural reflections of Courtney's decision-making.

Second-cycle coding

In the second analytic cycle, we utilized pattern coding (Saldaña, 2021) to collapse the first-cycle codes into higher-level conceptual categories. Categories were intentionally structured to reflect chronological and conceptual movement in Courtney's sensemaking. First-cycle codes were organized into categories such as: (a) Evolution of Equity Stance (from standard ESL accommodations to systemic translanguaging methodologies), (b) Redefining Leadership Modalities (from top-down professional learning delivery to distributed/collaborative ownership), and (c) Systemic Coherence (negotiating state and local resource barriers against contextualized teacher needs).

The research team participated collaboratively in the coding and interpretation process, comparing interpretations and discussing coding differences until consensus was reached. A preliminary codebook was developed and iteratively revised throughout the analysis as codes were refined, combined, or clarified.

Final synthesis

The final phase of analysis involved cross-analyzing these conceptual categories against the partnership's sequential timeline. By using analytic memoing and mapping the categories chronologically from Interview 1 to Interview 3, we synthesized the data into three overarching thematic trajectories. These trajectories explicitly map how the collaborative co-design process reshaped Courtney's systemic mental models and translated into leadership practices. An audit trail was maintained to ensure that final assertions stayed grounded in both Courtney's verbal reflections and the physical modifications made to the co-designed survey instrument. Table 2 provides a sample of this longitudinal coding progression. To guard against confirmation bias, we also examined the longitudinal data for continuity, inconsistency, or limited change in Courtney's sensemaking, rather than assuming change occurred across all dimensions of her leadership.

The longitudinal qualitative case analysis revealed three interrelated trajectories that reflected Courtney's experiences within the co-design process and her shifting leadership processes. Across the three interviews and sequential survey drafts, Courtney's sensemaking progressed from an initial emphasis on policy alignment and curricular fidelity, to greater attention to linguistic equity and teacher needs during active co-design, and finally to an expressed emphasis on listening, shared ownership, and more responsive leadership. The following sections discuss these trajectories and their significance within the context of the district's science standards implementation.

Seeing through teachers' eyes: reframing professional learning gaining ground-level responsiveness

Courtney's initial shift toward a teacher-centered, inquiry-driven model of professional learning created the basis for her subsequent growth. This evolution in her beliefs about how best to support teachers set the stage for deeper awareness of organizational issues, new leadership behaviors, and a gradual reshaping of her professional identity as an adaptive and equity-oriented district leader.

Throughout the co-design process, Courtney's view of teacher professional learning expanded from a more compliance-oriented, top-down model to a more receptive, inquiry-driven approach anchored in teacher voice. Early in the partnership, she described professional learning in institutional terms, emphasizing “policy-driven, systemic alignment, and curricular fidelity.” Courtney recalled, “ In the past, I’ve used observation data (anecdotal) to decide which sessions to offer and who to bring in.” She noted that systematic methods for capturing teacher voice or feedback were primarily used after PD sessions, rather than to help prepare the professional learning plans for the year. She elaborated, “ Yes. After each district PD, I survey teachers about the sessions: whether they found them useful, if they should be repeated, changed, or discontinued.”

As the co-design of the survey modules progressed, her focus broadened from supervisory responsibilities to developing a more systematic approach to understanding teachers' needs and engaging with classroom realities in detail. We observed this conceptual shift through a cluster of process and values codes—teacher struggle, relevance, and contextual gaps—that became more prominent in later interviews. Courtney actively reframed the district's role in teacher professional growth, placing greater emphasis on insights grounded in teachers' instructional practices and ideal classroom beliefs. She conveyed this shift by explaining, “ The survey tool helps us understand what teachers believe should be happening in science classrooms. It gives us insight beyond what I hear from instructional specialists, which usually centers on the resource, not broader instructional practices.”

Through the co-development of the survey and the integration of new methods for capturing teacher insights, Courtney demonstrated an ongoing commitment to responsive leadership. This process not only broadened her understanding of classroom realities but also facilitated stronger connections between district initiatives and teachers' everyday experiences. Courtney increasingly described professional learning as needing to be more collaborative and attuned to educators' practical needs, particularly in addressing the challenges of implementing the new science standards.

Realizing misalignments between policy and practice

As Courtney's beliefs about professional learning evolved, she developed a sharper awareness of the structural misalignments between district and state policy directives and the realities of classroom practice. This system-level perspective deepened her commitment to responsive leadership and was associated with shifts in how she interpreted and responded to these changes.

The co-design process provided a lens for Courtney to observe the gaps between ambitious system-wide reforms and the practical capacities found in schools—especially with respect to the language demands of equitable, three-dimensional science instruction. This organizational learning, captured by codes such as gap recognition, standards insight, and leadership constraints, progressed through a series of interviews. As Courtney reflected on these disconnects between policy expectations, available resources, and the complex language needs of multilingual learners, she noted, “ Another barrier is the perception that, because state tests aren’t in students’ home languages, especially in middle and high school, there's no reason to encourage their use. But if using the home language helps students understand the content, then it's clearly beneficial.” Such reframing allowed her to move away from attributing implementation challenges to individual shortcomings and instead recognize them as possibilities for systemic growth and improvement. At the same time, these structural tensions remained unresolved, indicating that Courtney's evolving sensemaking did not eliminate the policy and organizational constraints shaping implementation.

This awareness also brought to light persistent tensions between district-standardized goals and the realities of classroom teaching. Although the district prioritized rigorous, inquiry-based environments for diverse learners, Courtney became aware of the limitations within existing structures and instructional models. As she stated, “ There's a much greater focus on English language acquisition than on home language support. The exception is one of our high schools, which has a dual-language program. There, students receive science instruction in both English and Spanish. I’m not sure if they alternate by topic or grading period, but students learn biology, chemistry, IPC, etc., in both languages. That's just at the high school level, and it's the only one in the district with that model.”

Courtney's developing perspective was also evident in the artifact data. Through the co-design process, which contrasted standard monolingual ESL practices with culturally responsive, multifaceted language supports, she made institutional inequities more visible and actionable within the district. Looking back on this process, Courtney noted, “ It's allowed me to see where to focus and home in to meet our goals, ensuring students get opportunities to participate in science practices and that classrooms are culturally responsive and meet student needs. It helped me identify where to support teachers better.”

Evolving leadership: from inquiry to relational practice

Building on her evolving beliefs about professional learning and her growing system awareness, Courtney described subtle but meaningful shifts in her leadership thinking and intended practices. While she had long collaborated with instructional specialists and teachers within the schools, engaging in the survey co-design process enabled her to engage a broader range of educators and foster more substantive, district-wide dialogue.

A key development was Courtney's shift toward a more inquiry-based and responsive leadership stance. Participation in the research-practice partnership encouraged her to model openness and actively seek teacher perspectives to inform district decisions. As she explained, “ I like the idea of using the survey to really see what teachers think they need and make sure that aligns with what we’re seeing in classrooms.” The survey prompted her to reflect on her assumptions about teacher support and consider new approaches. For example, when Courtney reviewed teacher feedback and perceived unexpected gaps in classroom practices, she said she intended to visit more campuses: “ This has made me realize I might need to do more pop-in visits to see what's really going on.”

These experiences led Courtney to ask different questions, listen more deeply, and experiment with collaborative problem-solving and shared leadership. She began to see ambiguity and teacher hesitation not as problems to fix but as valuable sources of insight. Courtney recalled, “ One question asked whether students were being asked to explain patterns in data. A surprising number answered ‘hardly ever,’ which concerned me. Labs are supposed to include that kind of analysis, so if students aren't being asked to explain patterns, it suggests a gap in implementation.”

Over time, Courtney's sensemaking increasingly reflected a more relational and collaborative orientation to leadership. Rather than representing a complete departure from her earlier practice, this development built on her existing collaboration with instructional specialists and teachers while placing greater emphasis on listening, teacher perspectives, and shared responsibility. As she reflected, “ The co-development process helped me clarify what I want to see from teachers and how often. It pushed me to think more deeply about inclusive, high-quality science instruction and how teachers perceive that in our district.” By the final interview, she described greater attention to shared ownership and responsiveness in how she approached her leadership role, suggesting that co-design can empower district leaders to foster more collaborative and equity-centered practices.

In interpreting these findings, we distinguish among shifts in Courtney's sensemaking, her stated intentions for future action, reported leadership practices, and broader organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine how a district science leader's engagement in an iterative, co-design process within a research-practice partnership (RPP) was associated with shifts in her leadership sensemaking and practice during the implementation of new science standards. The data show that Courtney's engagement did more than support implementation; it shifted how she understood and enacted her role. Through sustained collaborative inquiry, she shifted from viewing implementation primarily as alignment and compliance toward seeing it as an opportunity for responsiveness, reflection, and systemic improvement.

Analyzing these findings through the lenses of leadership sensemaking (Coburn, 2005; Luft et al., 2026) and co-design (Penuel, 2019; Penuel et al., 2007) highlights a central conceptual contribution of this study: the process of co-designing a diagnostic artifact may itself function as a site for leadership learning and sensemaking. In this case, the iterative development of the survey created opportunities for Courtney to articulate and reconsider assumptions about teacher needs, instructional practice, linguistic equity, and her own leadership role. Rather than demonstrating broader organizational transformation, this case suggests that the design process surrounding a diagnostic tool may create structured opportunities for leaders to interrogate assumptions and reconsider how they understand problems of practice. Yields two primary conceptual insights that oppose traditional, top-down models of educational reform.

Co-design as a mechanism for shifting leadership sensemaking

Traditional policy implementation models regularly assume that district leaders act as compliance officers whose primary responsibility is ensuring fidelity to policy and curriculum mandates (Spillane et al., 2002). However, this study suggests that collaborative design spaces may support shifts in how leaders interpret problems, make decisions, and understand their roles within reform efforts. At the outset of the study, Courtney's leadership orientation centered primarily on institutional alignment, implementation timelines, and district-level indicators of success. Amid iterative cycles of drafting, revising, and interpreting the diagnostic survey, her focus turned toward ground-level responsiveness.

This finding expands existing work on leadership sensemaking (Coburn, 2005; Luft et al., 2026) by illustrating how the process of developing a co-designed artifact can provide a structured space for leaders to examine their interpretations of complex organizational realities. As Courtney worked through decisions regarding the inclusion of bilingual instructional practices and translanguaging (García, 2009) measures, the survey became more than a data-collection instrument. It served as a vehicle for interrogating assumptions about teacher readiness, instructional capacity, and student opportunity. In this case, the design process provided a concrete context in which Courtney reconsidered district assumptions and attended more closely to classroom realities. Whether diagnostic co-design functions similarly as a site for leadership learning in other contexts warrants further research.

Importantly, the transformative potential observed in this study may stem not solely from the RPP structure itself but also from the co-design processes embedded within it. While RPPs provide an important context for collaborative inquiry, similar opportunities for leadership learning may also emerge through other structures, such as cross-district networks, professional learning communities, leadership coaching partnerships, design teams, and university-school collaborations. What appears most consequential is not the organizational form but the presence of sustained opportunities for leaders to engage in iterative problem-solving, receive critical feedback, examine assumptions, and collaboratively construct meaning around challenging issues.

Viewed through this lens, co-design functions as a mechanism for leadership learning rather than simply a method for developing tools or resources. The iterative design process required Courtney to articulate assumptions, confront competing perspectives, and reconcile district priorities with classroom realities. These experiences created conditions for reflection and sensemaking that extended well beyond the survey itself. These findings suggest that co-design may provide one structure through which leaders engage in reflection and sensemaking.

The findings also extend research on distributed and responsive leadership (Leithwood et al., 2020; Spillane, 2005) by suggesting that collaborative design processes may support individual leadership learning with potential implications for broader organizational learning. Unlike traditional professional development models that are often compliance-driven and top-down, Courtney's experience demonstrates how co-design can promote authentic inquiry, collective problem-solving, and sustained reflection. This interpretation is consistent with Penuel (2019), who argues that partnerships and collaborative improvement efforts support sustained, context-responsive change through valuing stakeholder expertise and employing local knowledge.

Centering linguistic equity in science infrastructure

A second major finding concerns the role of co-designed tools in surfacing and addressing systemic inequities within district systems. Prior asset-based frameworks focused on minoritized youth (Albrecht and Navarrete-Burks, 2025; Jeffery et al., 2025) emphasize the importance of connecting community funds of knowledge with formal science instruction. Consistent with this literature, Courtney leveraged the survey artifact to make previously invisible inequities visible within her district's science program.

By intentionally restructuring survey items to distinguish between traditional monolingual approaches and translanguaging-oriented instructional practices (García, 2009; MacDonald et al., 2022), Courtney did more than revise a measurement instrument. She altered the questions the district was asking about teaching, learning, and student participation. Through this process, linguistic equity moved from a peripheral concern to a central component of science implementation.

In urban contexts such as the Greenspoint School District, where students represent a wide range of linguistic backgrounds, treating the implementation of science standards as linguistically neutral creates significant equity blind spots. Courtney's evolving sensemaking enabled her to recognize that district expectations surrounding Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) were not always aligned with the linguistic resources and learning experiences of emergent bilingual students. Rather than framing challenges as teacher deficits requiring remediation, she increasingly viewed them as systemic issues requiring organizational adaptation.

This finding contributes to the literature on equity-oriented leadership (Ishimaru, 2019; Khalifa, 2018) by demonstrating how leaders can use co-designed tools to identify structural barriers and reconsider organizational practices. The survey served not only as a diagnostic and reflective tool but also as an instrument for reframing district conversations about instructional quality, professional learning, and student access. In this way, the findings suggest that co-design can support the development of localized forms of critical consciousness among district leaders, transforming standards implementation from a technical exercise into an opportunity for equity-focused reform.

Implications for practice and policy

One of the most significant implications of this study is that leadership learning is not a linear or individual process but rather a recursive and relational one shaped by trust, dialogue, and sustained engagement with others. Courtney's evolving practices and professional identity were supported through regular opportunities for reflection, feedback, and collaborative inquiry. These experiences suggest that effective leadership development requires more than technical training; it requires environments where leaders can test ideas, examine assumptions, and learn alongside colleagues and partners.

An additional implication concerns the limited opportunities available for district leaders to engage in meaningful professional learning (Whitworth et al., 2017). Educational reform efforts frequently assume that administrators possess the expertise necessary to interpret policy, support implementation, and navigate organizational change. Yet district leaders often receive relatively little structured support for developing these capacities, particularly when reforms involve issues of equity, language, and instructional transformation.

Courtney's experience highlights the importance of creating intentional spaces where leaders can engage in reflection, inquiry, and collaborative sensemaking. The recurring design meetings associated with the partnership served as embedded professional learning, allowing her to analyze data, receive feedback, experiment with new ideas, and reconsider established assumptions. Such opportunities differ markedly from traditional leadership development approaches that emphasize technical compliance, managerial efficiency, or isolated professional development events.

The findings raise the possibility that ongoing learning infrastructures for leaders, including inquiry networks, collaborative design teams, coaching relationships, and professional learning communities, may support leaders in developing adaptive, reflective, and equity-oriented capacities. Rather than treating leadership development as an individual responsibility, districts and policymakers should recognize it as a collective and organizational endeavor requiring sustained resources, time, and relational support.

The study raises the possibility that diagnostic tools, when collaboratively developed with stakeholders, may support organizational learning and attention to equity. In this case, the iterative development of the survey tool and other artifacts supported Courtney in reconsidering teacher perspectives and instructional issues within her leadership sensemaking. This finding supports growing calls for collaborative and data-informed approaches to leadership development and continuous improvement (Datnow and Park, 2019; Penuel et al., 2020).

For state and district policymakers, these findings offer a caution against implementing instructional mandates through exclusively top-down approaches that overlook local context. When new standards are introduced, professional learning should extend beyond content delivery and technical training. Leaders and teachers need opportunities to collaboratively construct meaning, adapt implementation strategies, and address the unique challenges and assets present within their communities.

While research-practice partnerships provided the context for this work, this case suggests a hypothesis for future research: that collaborative structures characterized by sustained inquiry, reflection, and shared problem-solving may support similar opportunities for leadership learning across educational systems. The relational trust established through sustained partnership was not valuable simply because it existed within an RPP; rather, it created conditions under which vulnerability, reflection, and distributed leadership could flourish. Similar conditions may be cultivated through a variety of collaborative learning structures across educational systems.

Limitations and future research

Limitations should be considered when interpreting these findings. As a single-case study focused on one district science leader in a specific context within the south-central United States, the findings are not broadly generalizable across all educational settings. Additionally, this study did not directly measure the downstream effects of leadership transformation on classroom instruction or student learning outcomes. Although the study provides evidence of shifts in Courtney's reported and interpreted leadership sensemaking and practices, it was not designed to assess organizational transformation directly. Accordingly, claims regarding broader organizational change should be understood as potential implications of Courtney's evolving leadership rather than as demonstrated outcomes of the co-design process. While Courtney described ways that her evolving sensemaking informed her district decision-making and professional learning efforts, future research should investigate how such leadership shifts translate into instructional practice and student experiences over time. Researcher positionality and the close working relationship between members of the research and practice teams may also have influenced data interpretation. Although reflexive practices were used throughout the study, future investigations should continue exploring how partnership dynamics shape both leadership learning and research outcomes.

Future studies should examine how co-design processes influence leadership learning across diverse district and state contexts, particularly in systems with varying demographic, political, and resource conditions. Longitudinal research could provide valuable insight into the sustainability of leadership transformations and their effects on teaching and learning. Additionally, incorporating the perspectives of teachers, students, and community stakeholders would offer a more comprehensive understanding of how co-design practices shape organizational culture and educational improvement efforts.

Final summary

Ultimately, this study suggests that the success of science education reform depends not only on policy design but also on the learning opportunities available to those responsible for implementation. Courtney's transformation was facilitated through sustained participation in collaborative inquiry and co-design, demonstrating that leadership growth occurs when administrators or leaders are provided structured opportunities to question assumptions, engage with multiple perspectives, and learn alongside others.

By moving beyond the traditional role of policy enforcer and embracing the role of co-designer, Courtney demonstrated that effective educational leadership requires more than technical expertise. It requires intellectual humility, reflective practice, and a willingness to continuously reconsider how systems serve students and educators. Significantly, the study suggests that the power of this transformation lies not solely within research-practice partnerships themselves, but within the collaborative learning processes they can support.

In this sense, the findings contribute not only to the literature on science education reform but also to a growing understanding of leadership development as a central component of systemic improvement. When leadership learning is grounded in collaborative inquiry, authentic partnership, and a sustained commitment to equity, district leaders can move beyond compliance-oriented approaches and cultivate more responsive, inclusive, and effective pathways for educational change.