This article comes with an extra resource! You can download a PDF of the “Resisting White Dominant Culture in Continuous Improvement” table here.
Education organizations practicing continuous improvement1 are increasingly naming equity2 as the purpose for their improvement efforts. At the same time, equity advocates are taking up continuous improvement because they see how these methods can help people move from critical conversation into concrete action. While continuous improvement was originally codified and practiced in industry (most famously auto manufacturing) without equity as an explicit goal, there are good reasons to be optimistic about improvement as a lever for equity. First, continuous improvement was originally based on values that align well with equity in action: respecting every worker and customer; recognizing the complexity of systems; seeking root causes; reducing variation in performance; finding joy in the work, and unleashing people at all levels of a system to make the world around them better (Imai 1986). In addition, improvement practices such as engaging user voice, collaboratively making meaning of data, and running structured reflection cycles provide a shared, disciplined approach for equity work in institutions. And of course, at its heart, improvement is about replicating high-quality outcomes, every day, for everyone – which sounds a lot like many folks’ vision for a more equitable education system (Bryk et al. 2015).
However, despite an increasing number of organizations who are attempting to practice equity-centered improvement, a common critique is that our equity practices feel separate and insufficient. For example, we might run a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and then afterwards do an “equity pause” to illuminate all the ways we didn’t attend to equity in our cycle. We might reflect on how our social identities shape our perceptions, and then build a fishbone diagram that reflects only our own views. We might interview people most impacted by the problem, and then design a change idea without them. We might set aims centering students least well-served, and then fail to meaningfully unpack disproportionalities in our data. This lack of successful integration of equity values into daily improvement practice has resulted in continuous improvement sometimes being perceived as mechanistic, overly-technical, and a means to tinker around the edges of the status quo rather than to transform it (Safir & Dugan 2021).
If so many people believe that continuous improvement has potential to be leveraged for equity, why does our practice often fall short of our aspirations? One reason is that many improvement organizations are promoting equity, but our improvement practice still often reflects the same old ways of working that we have always known. What if, instead of focusing on the equity practices we think we should be adding to our improvement repertoire, we also considered what forces may be pulling us away from living our equity values in every day practice?
A major impediment to integrating improvement and equity is the dominant culture within which we work. In the United States, those who have typically held power in our society have been wealthy, European, Christian cis-gendered men. Over time, as those holding wealth and power became racialized as “white,” whiteness became a tool to continue conferring unearned advantage on those perceived as white. Their norms, values, structures and ways of being became perceived as “superior,” creating a culture in our institutions that can be referred to as white dominant culture3 (Okun 2021). White dominant culture creates policies, practices, and norms that serve to uphold interlocking systems of oppression, including racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and others.
Seeing and naming the harmful dynamics of white dominant culture is a critical step towards reducing their influence. The article, “White Supremacy Culture,” written by white anti-racist educator Tema Okun with the mentorship of Kenneth Jones and many other colleagues of color, is the most widely-cited framework laying out the impacts of white dominant culture on organizations.4 It is also one of the more controversial articles under discussion during our current national reckoning with racism (McGlone 2020). Despite the skepticism the piece has faced, it has been returned to repeatedly in conversations about race over more than two decades because it simply captures a lot about the lived experiences of those furthest from power.
White dominant culture gives us a frame to look at ourselves and our organizations in new ways. In this article, we will be using this frame to explore how cultural values we take for granted may limit the potential of improvement work to create greater equity. However, this article will not provide a thorough introduction to white dominant culture, and readers are encouraged to delve into Okun’s work to ensure they understand the nuances of this often-misunderstood and (sometimes intentionally) mis-represented framework.
About eight years ago, I began to learn about white dominant culture and the exclusionary dynamics it can create in organizations. As a person socialized as white in America, much of this information was, sadly but not surprisingly, new to me. The more skilled I became at perceiving white dominant culture, the more I could recognize how my own thoughts and behaviors perpetuate it. I saw how my own perfectionist tendencies led me to prioritize the products of my work over the experience of those who had to work with me. My focus on my individual vision of excellence reduced my openness to others’ ideas and ways of expressing their thinking. My relationships suffered, and even if I hadn’t seen it at the time, so ultimately did my work to support schools. I still struggle regularly to resist the perfectionism I have performed for many years.
I also came to recognize that continuous improvement originated in business and industry within a capitalistic, white-dominant economic system. I began to doubt that I would be able to square my training in improvement with my values around equity and justice. Could I hold an equity consciousness and continue practicing improvement? What would need to change about my practice of improvement if I believed in deconstructing white dominant culture?
However, today I see both risks and opportunities. Continuous improvement can take many forms, but in the analysis here, I am referring to the methodology of improvement science5 as I and others describe and practice it in the field of education. Many equity-minded improvers have rightly noted that the way many in education practice improvement science risks replicating power dynamics instead of interrupting them. Like any tool embedded in white dominant culture, improvement science will tend, by default, to be used in ways that perpetuate the status quo.
If white dominant culture is the ocean we swim in, there is no doubt it has a powerful current. I believe it is how we practice improvement science and enact its principles on a daily basis that determines the potential of our work to create greater equity. Without active resistance to the pull of white dominant culture, our improvement work will largely look like old ways of thinking, being, and working.
Learning to resist white dominant culture is like learning to swim in an ocean current. If you aren’t actively swimming against it, you’re being carried by it. Recognizing that is an important first step, but actually creating inclusive, equitable continuous improvement work will require conscious intention and constant action at individual and collective levels.
Fighting the current begins on the inside with doing personal work to understand the dynamics of white dominant culture in our own lives. Because seeing and naming these influences is a first step towards dismantling them, developing a personal reflective practice6 is an essential component of resisting white dominant culture. White people can jump start a reflective practice through structured programs such as Layla Saad’s phenomenal, “Me and White Supremacy” (Saad 2020). Working through Saad’s book multiple times in community with other white people has given me the awareness and vocabulary to describe the dynamics of white supremacy in my life and relationships, and sharpened my commitment to not repeat my past patterns. For people of all backgrounds, a personal reflective practice can be cultivated through journaling routines, facilitated racial affinity groups, or working with an equity coach.
Nevertheless, even if we create practices for ourselves that help us better detect and resist white dominant culture, we will still encounter the influences of white dominant culture in the larger organizations and systems we are working to change. This is why resisting white dominant culture is not something we can ever check off our to-do list. White dominant culture is so old and so all-encompassing that we will likely always be swimming against the current in our lifetimes. However, we can get better at how we swim! We can get more efficient in our strokes. Our muscles can grow stronger and the work of swimming against the current can become less effortful. But, until we have collectively created a different ocean, we will always be swimming.
The following table7 describes common ways in which white dominant culture can influence our improvement efforts and limit the impact of our work. The white dominant culture characteristics in the left hand column come directly from Tema Okun’s article, “White Supremacy Culture – Still Here.” Each characteristic of white dominant culture named below is presented alongside several examples of harmful patterns that can emerge in continuous improvement when we are not intentionally interrupting some of our ingrained ways of thinking, working, and being. Each characteristic is also matched with moves that help us resist old ways and reimagine our collaborative improvement work to be more equitable, in process and results. While several possible moves are suggested here, these are simply examples offered to spark reflection and dialogue – there is no doubt our growing community of anti-racist educators, leaders, and continuous improvers will add to this list for years to come!
| White Dominant Culture Characteristic | Harmful patterns
What continuous improvement looks like when influenced by this characteristic |
Moves to resist & reimagine
Tactics for interrupting white dominant culture in our improvement work |
| Perfectionism | Feeling pressure to implement something perfectly, whether it is a change idea or continuous improvement itself.
Feeling that you need to do continuous improvement perfectly yourself before you can help others to do it. Believing that there is one best way to practice continuous improvement. Fearing failure so much that you keep the improvement work superficial and move through it quickly. Feeling so strongly that we need to meet our target that we don’t set ambitious goals. Not being able to admit when targets aren’t met, and not learning from times when we don’t achieve improvement. Focusing more on identifying and analyzing all the ways we are falling short, rather than amplifying and replicating ways in which we are succeeding. |
Emphasize More Than One “Right” Way: Ensure your practice of improvement remains open to a variety of tools and approaches for making meaning of systems and working to change them. Refrain from conveying improvement is a linear or lock-step process.
Give Yourself Permission to Start Before You’re Ready: Be honest about where you are in your own journey of learning about continuous improvement, and encourage others to do the same. Don’t be afraid to try and learn along the way, ideally with the support of colleagues and a coach. There is a developmental trajectory for continuous improvement just like there is for learning any other complex set of knowledge and skills. Look for Success: Engage in bright spots analysis to identify strengths, assets, and pockets of success. Develop change ideas based on bright spots, not just breakdowns or barriers. Publicly Celebrate Failure: Normalize mistakes and appreciate failures as a natural and important part of learning. Emphasize that more is often learned from “failed” tests than ones where the expected results are achieved! Emphasize Grace and Compassion: Encourage and model offering ourselves and others grace and compassion. Leaders Model Humility and Vulnerability: When leaders publicly admit when things don’t go as predicted and celebrate failures along with successes, it becomes safe for others in the organization to do so as well. |
| Sense of Urgency | Setting unrealistic targets, driven by accountability and fear, in which huge progress is expected in a short amount of time.
Responding to accountability and fear by “playing it safe”and pursuing superficial rather than transformative goals given the short timeframe allowed. Letting our sense of urgency make us move faster than relationships, trust, and readiness allow. Rushing collaborative processes and underinvesting in relationship-building throughout. Acting “now, now, now” as opposed to intentionally pausing to think about what we are learning. |
Calendar the Time the Work Requires: Put time for continuous improvement onto individual, team, and organization-wide calendars. Allocate the resource of time appropriately for the depth of reflection, dialogue, and learning that continuous improvement requires.
Less is More: Select a small number of specific targets and stay focused on those priorities. Narrow the number of different things we are asking ourselves and others to focus on at a given time. See Improvement Aims as Predictions, Not Targets to be Evaluated By: An improvement aim is our prediction of the results we think we can create if our theory of improvement is correct. Not meeting our aim is not something to be ashamed of; it is a call to action to re-evaluate our theory or the degree to which we actually put changes into practice. Find the Natural Consolidation Moments: Identify where in our system we have natural opportunities to slow down and reflect. Leaders recognize those points in time and ask for it. Start Small: Even though this is one of the fundamental principles of continuous improvement, the pressure we are under can make it hard to resist the urge to go too big, too soon! Be the voice in the room that says, “How could we test this on a smaller scale?” This is not the opposite of urgency: starting smaller means learning faster. |
| Transactional Goals & Relationships | Rushing the improvement journey and treating continuous improvement activities as items to check off a list.
Setting goals that are overly fixated on quantifiable factors, in a rush to get concrete results that can be reported quickly. Measuring only at the superficial or transactional level, such as participation rates rather than the quality of the participation experience for users. Using the reasoning that something is “hard to measure” as an excuse for not trying to capture it or get feedback about it. |
Push Deeper to Quality: Attend not just to easily-measurable quantity, but actual quality. Push beyond the level of transactional to assess whether the experiences of those you are trying to impact have actually changed.
Redefine “Data”: Broaden your definition of data to include “street data,” such as observation, anecdotes, and storytelling (Safir & Dugan 2021). Bring these forms of data regularly when investigating the current state or completing Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. Measure Experiences, Not Only Outcomes: Articulate a clear vision for how you want the work to be experienced by all involved, and conduct regular checks on the process, not just the outcomes you are working towards. |
| Paternalism | Underestimating the value of co-creation and assuming you are qualified to solve problems for others.
Using the excuse of limited resources or looming deadlines to shortchange stakeholder engagement. Deciding what you’re going to do without engaging folks. Making a plan without the folks who are most impacted, or who will be operationalizing the plan. |
Let Those Most Impacted Lead: Engage those most impacted as equal members of improvement work.8 This could look like students, parents, or community members serving on your improvement team and following their lead as they determine the direction of the work (Hinnant-Crawford 2020).
Invest in 1-to-1s: Engage in the practice of one-to-one conversations that provide ample space for perspectives to be shared and relationships built. Let People Choose: Allow teachers, leaders, or whoever is doing the improvement work to name the focus of their own inquiry. |
| Superiority of the Written Word | Overemphasizing written products or equating what is written down with what has been learned.
Creating such stringent expectations for documentation that it overwhelms or disincentivizes people from doing the work of improvement. Equating continuous improvement with forms and templates, rather than reflection, dialogue, and learning. Overemphasizing jargon and technical language. Valuing ideas that are documented or packaged in a visually appealing way over the practical, experiential wisdom people are using in their work. |
Make Learning Explicit: Help people see the ways they have already been engaged in continuous improvement thinking, even if they haven’t written anything down.
Create Early Experiences Disconnected from the Written Word: Disconnect PDSA cycles from the written word by inviting someone to try something and come back next week/month to reflect verbally. Develop Approachable, Common Language: Use approachable language that people are already familiar with, such as “small change cycles” or “inquiry,” so that people don’t feel excluded by language. Common, locally-meaningful language helps bring clarity, shared accountability, and understanding. Conduct PDSAs Through Conversation: Experiment with various formats to engage people in conversation about their testing cycles. Use a huddle structure to scaffold and pace testing cycles. Rather than asking everyone to come back with a write-up, ask them to join the meeting ready to share what they tried and what they learned. |
| Right to Comfort & Fear of Open Conflict | Assuming shared values around equity without unpacking what it truly means.
Prioritizing harmony over challenging individual and shared beliefs. Being unable to hear criticism or receive feedback without feeling blamed. Blaming people of color for causing discomfort with their critique rather than considering the content of their observations. Investing more in technical skills than in relational skills, such as giving and receiving feedback effectively. |
Create the Conditions for Difficult Conversations: Applying an equity lens to our improvement work necessitates honest dialogue. Racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression are so baked into our society that the very programs we design to interrupt inequities can perpetuate them just by how they operate. If we are not explicitly talking about how we are resisting oppression, we are likely perpetuating it.
Develop Listening Skills: Support your team in growing their capacity for listening and sitting with discomfort. Incorporate opportunities for the release of emotion through speaking and listening – such as through open-ended prompts in a constructivist listening dyad. Practice Emotional Regulation and Somatic Healing: A great deal of harm in equity work is caused by defensive emotional reactions by people of advantaged identities, especially white people. To equip ourselves and our teams to lean into discomfort and have the conversations required to face inequity, we must work to understand our triggers, how threat response shows up in our bodies, and how to create space between emotional reaction and outward action.9 Create Intentional Moments for Pause and Follow-Through: Leveraging the practice of “equity pauses” can create windows to stop, reflect and re-set during group collaboration. When pauses are pre-planned or integrated as a regular routine, it can help the team grow its collective muscles around identifying and discussing equity issues. However, it is important to ensure they are used intentionally to shift the dynamics of a conversation and not as an after-thought to check the “we talked about equity today” box. Leverage a 3rd Party Perspective: Using tools such as equity audits or equity rubrics can provide outside criteria against which your team can evaluate its improvement efforts. The use of more objective descriptors can “de-personalize” areas of concern and can prevent an undue burden for raising equity concerns from being placed on particular team members. |
| One Right Way & Objectivity | Assumption that continuous tools, protocols, and data make it possible to be truly objective when studying or addressing a problem.
Falling into “solutionitis” or expecting we can find a single, quick fix for a complex issue. Talking about our theories as if we will discover one “truth” for how something works, or assuming that we will be able to discern a direct link between cause and effect. Lack of awareness that continuous improvement, though it involves strategic thinking and logic, is still susceptible to bias and influenced by emotion. |
Ask Questions: “One right way” thinking represents a lack of the curiosity and humility that are integral to continuous improvement. Return consistently to asking and answering questions.
Look for Complexity, Not Truth: Instead of looking for one answer, aim to discover and make visible the variety of factors that are inevitably at play when it comes to a particular inequity. Dig Into the Data: Use data as a vehicle for asking more questions and revealing more layers, rather than as a source of solutions. If a particular data display gives rise to more questions, seek out additional data. Be wary of summative statistics that could be hiding inequities beneath the surface (La Salle and Johnson 2019). See it from Another Angle: Recognize that everyone has a set of experiences that has shaped their worldview, including you! Inquire into the perspectives of others. Regularly identify whose voice has not been at the table and work to engage those people in the work. |
| Power Hoarding | Setting out to improve the work of other people. This can look like an improvement team formed to improve math teaching, composed of central office and school-site administration, without math teachers who are actually responsible for doing the teaching, or students who are responsible for doing the learning. | Revisit Team Composition: Don’t be afraid to revisit an improvement team’s composition regularly to see if changes or additions are needed. If at any moment, the conversation is about improving the work of someone else, not the work of those sitting around the table, that is a sign that we have a mismatch between problem and team composition. |
This starter set of patterns and moves can help any individual consider the ways in which they might actively resist some of the most harmful manifestations of white dominant culture and return to the equity-aligned values at the heart of continuous improvement. However, a fish swimming against the current benefits from belonging to a school of fish swimming in the same direction. Swimming in formation allows fish to leverage each other’s wake and increase their speed and efficiency. In this same way, any of us as individuals can actively resist white dominant culture, but our efforts will grow easier when we work in tandem with collaborators who hold the same values.
Some people express criticism towards continuous improvement, seeing the ways it has reflected white dominant culture in practice as reason to dismiss the entire methodology. In the spirit of Audre Lorde’s critical comments at a 1979 feminist conference, they ask, “Can you really dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools?” (Lorde 1984). However, Dr. Brandi Hinnant-Crawford, a scholar of educational justice and improvement who identifies as black and female, challenges that notion, asking in a recent podcast interview:
Is it the master’s tools if they’re now in my hands? Or are they now my tools? (Hinnant-Crawford 2022)
Our practice of improvement can and must evolve, and critically applying the framework of white dominant culture can help us continue to make these tools our own. As we bring our equity-driven colleagues, teams, and organizations along with us, developing new habits and practices together will accelerate our ability to use continuous improvement to re-engineer oppressive systems and build the world we all want to live in.
1. “Continuous improvement” refers to a suite of methods used to create change in organizations and drive towards continually better outcomes. This article assumes the reader holds a basic familiarity with continuous improvement and its practice in education, although people at any stage of learning about improvement are welcome to engage with the ideas presented here! To read more about continuous improvement, take a look at the “further reading” section at the end of this article.
2. This article will not be exploring the concept of equity in a nuanced way, despite the fact that there is an ever growing range of interpretations and meanings as “equity” becomes more mainstream. Readers are encouraged to learn more about the various meanings and uses of the word, “equity.” For the purposes of this piece, think of “equity” as referring to both 1) the state that would be achieved if how one fares in society were no longer predictable based on any identity or social factor, as well as 2) the practices that are leveraged to pursue that state.
3. Also may be referred to as “white supremacy culture.” This article does not provide anything beyond basic introduction to white dominant/supremacy culture, and refers to characteristics that are explained in more depth in the original materials from Tema Okun and colleagues. Readers are encouraged to delve into additional resources on white supremacy and white supremacy culture to sharpen their ability to apply this lens to continuous improvement. To read more about white-dominant culture, take a look at the “further reading” section at the end of this article.
4. There is much more to know about white dominant culture than we could possibly explore in this article, and so readers with additional questions are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the original Okun piece, which you can find at https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/
5. Improvement science is a particular methodology for continuous improvement originally championed in healthcare by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and popularized in education by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Readers are encouraged to seek additional information about improvement science as needed.
6. Thanks to Jaime Kidd for reminding me of the importance of naming this aspect of the work, even when discussing the broader impacts on organizations!
7. The patterns and moves shared here have been compiled through conversation and collaboration with many valued colleagues, and are presented with particular gratitude to Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Eve Arbogast of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), as well as David Montes de Oca of CORE Districts. The framework was originally presented at the 2022 Carnegie Summit in collaboration with these inspiring leaders from SFUSD.
8. More and more, improvement efforts are recognizing the importance of engaging students as designers and improvers of their own school experiences. You can find resources to help you with this in under “Designing with Students” in the “Further Reading” section at the end of the article.
9. Thanks to Iris Lopez for naming this work as critical to efforts to dismantle white dominant culture. I wholeheartedly agree.
White Dominant Culture
Improvement Science in Education
Designing With Students
This article would not have been possible without the thought partnership of many valued colleagues whose wisdom and experience is reflected throughout the compilation of harmful patterns and helpful moves to resist and reimagine. Much gratitude especially to inspirational improvement leaders Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Eve Arbogast of San Francisco Unified School District and David Montes de Oca of CORE Districts for contributing many tangible practices to this effort. Thank you to my always enthusiastic and supportive writing group, as well as many other mentors and co-conspirators for sharing thoughts and encouraging me to pursue this project.
Arbogast, Eve, Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Amanda Meyer. “Interrupting White Dominant Culture in Continuous Improvement: Anti-Racist Leadership Lessons.” Presentation at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education (April 25, 2022).
Bryk, Anthony, Louis Gomez, Alicia Grunow, and Paul LeMahieu. (2015). Learning To Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Press.
Hinnant-Crawford, Brandi Nicole. (2020.) Improvement Science in Education: A Primer. Myers Education Press.
Hinnant-Crawford, Brandi Nicole. Interview with Stacey Callier, High Tech High Unboxed. Podcast audio. February 15, 2022. https://hthunboxed.org/podcasts/s3e14-improvement-as-a-tool-for-our-collective-liberation-with-dr-brandi-hinnant-crawford/
Imai, Masaaki. 1986. Kaizen (Ky’zen), the key to Japan’s competitive success. New York: Random House Business Division.
La Salle, Robin Avelar and Ruth S. Johnson. 2019. Shattering Inequities: Real World Wisdom for School and District Leaders. Rowman & Littlefield.
Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.
McGlone, Peggy. “African American Museum site removes ‘whiteness’ chart after criticism from Trump Jr. and conservative media.” The Washington Post, 17 July 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african-american-museum-site-removes-whiteness-chart-after-criticism-from-trump-jr-and-conservative-media/2020/07/17/4ef6e6f2-c831-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html
Okun, Tema. “White Supremacy Culture – Still Here.” May 2021. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/
Saad, Layla F. (2020). Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Sourcebooks.
Safir, Shane and Jamila Dugan. (2021) Street Data. Corwin.
This article comes with an extra resource! You can download a PDF of the “Resisting White Dominant Culture in Continuous Improvement” table here.
Education organizations practicing continuous improvement1 are increasingly naming equity2 as the purpose for their improvement efforts. At the same time, equity advocates are taking up continuous improvement because they see how these methods can help people move from critical conversation into concrete action. While continuous improvement was originally codified and practiced in industry (most famously auto manufacturing) without equity as an explicit goal, there are good reasons to be optimistic about improvement as a lever for equity. First, continuous improvement was originally based on values that align well with equity in action: respecting every worker and customer; recognizing the complexity of systems; seeking root causes; reducing variation in performance; finding joy in the work, and unleashing people at all levels of a system to make the world around them better (Imai 1986). In addition, improvement practices such as engaging user voice, collaboratively making meaning of data, and running structured reflection cycles provide a shared, disciplined approach for equity work in institutions. And of course, at its heart, improvement is about replicating high-quality outcomes, every day, for everyone – which sounds a lot like many folks’ vision for a more equitable education system (Bryk et al. 2015).
However, despite an increasing number of organizations who are attempting to practice equity-centered improvement, a common critique is that our equity practices feel separate and insufficient. For example, we might run a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and then afterwards do an “equity pause” to illuminate all the ways we didn’t attend to equity in our cycle. We might reflect on how our social identities shape our perceptions, and then build a fishbone diagram that reflects only our own views. We might interview people most impacted by the problem, and then design a change idea without them. We might set aims centering students least well-served, and then fail to meaningfully unpack disproportionalities in our data. This lack of successful integration of equity values into daily improvement practice has resulted in continuous improvement sometimes being perceived as mechanistic, overly-technical, and a means to tinker around the edges of the status quo rather than to transform it (Safir & Dugan 2021).
If so many people believe that continuous improvement has potential to be leveraged for equity, why does our practice often fall short of our aspirations? One reason is that many improvement organizations are promoting equity, but our improvement practice still often reflects the same old ways of working that we have always known. What if, instead of focusing on the equity practices we think we should be adding to our improvement repertoire, we also considered what forces may be pulling us away from living our equity values in every day practice?
A major impediment to integrating improvement and equity is the dominant culture within which we work. In the United States, those who have typically held power in our society have been wealthy, European, Christian cis-gendered men. Over time, as those holding wealth and power became racialized as “white,” whiteness became a tool to continue conferring unearned advantage on those perceived as white. Their norms, values, structures and ways of being became perceived as “superior,” creating a culture in our institutions that can be referred to as white dominant culture3 (Okun 2021). White dominant culture creates policies, practices, and norms that serve to uphold interlocking systems of oppression, including racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, ableism, and others.
Seeing and naming the harmful dynamics of white dominant culture is a critical step towards reducing their influence. The article, “White Supremacy Culture,” written by white anti-racist educator Tema Okun with the mentorship of Kenneth Jones and many other colleagues of color, is the most widely-cited framework laying out the impacts of white dominant culture on organizations.4 It is also one of the more controversial articles under discussion during our current national reckoning with racism (McGlone 2020). Despite the skepticism the piece has faced, it has been returned to repeatedly in conversations about race over more than two decades because it simply captures a lot about the lived experiences of those furthest from power.
White dominant culture gives us a frame to look at ourselves and our organizations in new ways. In this article, we will be using this frame to explore how cultural values we take for granted may limit the potential of improvement work to create greater equity. However, this article will not provide a thorough introduction to white dominant culture, and readers are encouraged to delve into Okun’s work to ensure they understand the nuances of this often-misunderstood and (sometimes intentionally) mis-represented framework.
About eight years ago, I began to learn about white dominant culture and the exclusionary dynamics it can create in organizations. As a person socialized as white in America, much of this information was, sadly but not surprisingly, new to me. The more skilled I became at perceiving white dominant culture, the more I could recognize how my own thoughts and behaviors perpetuate it. I saw how my own perfectionist tendencies led me to prioritize the products of my work over the experience of those who had to work with me. My focus on my individual vision of excellence reduced my openness to others’ ideas and ways of expressing their thinking. My relationships suffered, and even if I hadn’t seen it at the time, so ultimately did my work to support schools. I still struggle regularly to resist the perfectionism I have performed for many years.
I also came to recognize that continuous improvement originated in business and industry within a capitalistic, white-dominant economic system. I began to doubt that I would be able to square my training in improvement with my values around equity and justice. Could I hold an equity consciousness and continue practicing improvement? What would need to change about my practice of improvement if I believed in deconstructing white dominant culture?
However, today I see both risks and opportunities. Continuous improvement can take many forms, but in the analysis here, I am referring to the methodology of improvement science5 as I and others describe and practice it in the field of education. Many equity-minded improvers have rightly noted that the way many in education practice improvement science risks replicating power dynamics instead of interrupting them. Like any tool embedded in white dominant culture, improvement science will tend, by default, to be used in ways that perpetuate the status quo.
If white dominant culture is the ocean we swim in, there is no doubt it has a powerful current. I believe it is how we practice improvement science and enact its principles on a daily basis that determines the potential of our work to create greater equity. Without active resistance to the pull of white dominant culture, our improvement work will largely look like old ways of thinking, being, and working.
Learning to resist white dominant culture is like learning to swim in an ocean current. If you aren’t actively swimming against it, you’re being carried by it. Recognizing that is an important first step, but actually creating inclusive, equitable continuous improvement work will require conscious intention and constant action at individual and collective levels.
Fighting the current begins on the inside with doing personal work to understand the dynamics of white dominant culture in our own lives. Because seeing and naming these influences is a first step towards dismantling them, developing a personal reflective practice6 is an essential component of resisting white dominant culture. White people can jump start a reflective practice through structured programs such as Layla Saad’s phenomenal, “Me and White Supremacy” (Saad 2020). Working through Saad’s book multiple times in community with other white people has given me the awareness and vocabulary to describe the dynamics of white supremacy in my life and relationships, and sharpened my commitment to not repeat my past patterns. For people of all backgrounds, a personal reflective practice can be cultivated through journaling routines, facilitated racial affinity groups, or working with an equity coach.
Nevertheless, even if we create practices for ourselves that help us better detect and resist white dominant culture, we will still encounter the influences of white dominant culture in the larger organizations and systems we are working to change. This is why resisting white dominant culture is not something we can ever check off our to-do list. White dominant culture is so old and so all-encompassing that we will likely always be swimming against the current in our lifetimes. However, we can get better at how we swim! We can get more efficient in our strokes. Our muscles can grow stronger and the work of swimming against the current can become less effortful. But, until we have collectively created a different ocean, we will always be swimming.
The following table7 describes common ways in which white dominant culture can influence our improvement efforts and limit the impact of our work. The white dominant culture characteristics in the left hand column come directly from Tema Okun’s article, “White Supremacy Culture – Still Here.” Each characteristic of white dominant culture named below is presented alongside several examples of harmful patterns that can emerge in continuous improvement when we are not intentionally interrupting some of our ingrained ways of thinking, working, and being. Each characteristic is also matched with moves that help us resist old ways and reimagine our collaborative improvement work to be more equitable, in process and results. While several possible moves are suggested here, these are simply examples offered to spark reflection and dialogue – there is no doubt our growing community of anti-racist educators, leaders, and continuous improvers will add to this list for years to come!
| White Dominant Culture Characteristic | Harmful patterns
What continuous improvement looks like when influenced by this characteristic |
Moves to resist & reimagine
Tactics for interrupting white dominant culture in our improvement work |
| Perfectionism | Feeling pressure to implement something perfectly, whether it is a change idea or continuous improvement itself.
Feeling that you need to do continuous improvement perfectly yourself before you can help others to do it. Believing that there is one best way to practice continuous improvement. Fearing failure so much that you keep the improvement work superficial and move through it quickly. Feeling so strongly that we need to meet our target that we don’t set ambitious goals. Not being able to admit when targets aren’t met, and not learning from times when we don’t achieve improvement. Focusing more on identifying and analyzing all the ways we are falling short, rather than amplifying and replicating ways in which we are succeeding. |
Emphasize More Than One “Right” Way: Ensure your practice of improvement remains open to a variety of tools and approaches for making meaning of systems and working to change them. Refrain from conveying improvement is a linear or lock-step process.
Give Yourself Permission to Start Before You’re Ready: Be honest about where you are in your own journey of learning about continuous improvement, and encourage others to do the same. Don’t be afraid to try and learn along the way, ideally with the support of colleagues and a coach. There is a developmental trajectory for continuous improvement just like there is for learning any other complex set of knowledge and skills. Look for Success: Engage in bright spots analysis to identify strengths, assets, and pockets of success. Develop change ideas based on bright spots, not just breakdowns or barriers. Publicly Celebrate Failure: Normalize mistakes and appreciate failures as a natural and important part of learning. Emphasize that more is often learned from “failed” tests than ones where the expected results are achieved! Emphasize Grace and Compassion: Encourage and model offering ourselves and others grace and compassion. Leaders Model Humility and Vulnerability: When leaders publicly admit when things don’t go as predicted and celebrate failures along with successes, it becomes safe for others in the organization to do so as well. |
| Sense of Urgency | Setting unrealistic targets, driven by accountability and fear, in which huge progress is expected in a short amount of time.
Responding to accountability and fear by “playing it safe”and pursuing superficial rather than transformative goals given the short timeframe allowed. Letting our sense of urgency make us move faster than relationships, trust, and readiness allow. Rushing collaborative processes and underinvesting in relationship-building throughout. Acting “now, now, now” as opposed to intentionally pausing to think about what we are learning. |
Calendar the Time the Work Requires: Put time for continuous improvement onto individual, team, and organization-wide calendars. Allocate the resource of time appropriately for the depth of reflection, dialogue, and learning that continuous improvement requires.
Less is More: Select a small number of specific targets and stay focused on those priorities. Narrow the number of different things we are asking ourselves and others to focus on at a given time. See Improvement Aims as Predictions, Not Targets to be Evaluated By: An improvement aim is our prediction of the results we think we can create if our theory of improvement is correct. Not meeting our aim is not something to be ashamed of; it is a call to action to re-evaluate our theory or the degree to which we actually put changes into practice. Find the Natural Consolidation Moments: Identify where in our system we have natural opportunities to slow down and reflect. Leaders recognize those points in time and ask for it. Start Small: Even though this is one of the fundamental principles of continuous improvement, the pressure we are under can make it hard to resist the urge to go too big, too soon! Be the voice in the room that says, “How could we test this on a smaller scale?” This is not the opposite of urgency: starting smaller means learning faster. |
| Transactional Goals & Relationships | Rushing the improvement journey and treating continuous improvement activities as items to check off a list.
Setting goals that are overly fixated on quantifiable factors, in a rush to get concrete results that can be reported quickly. Measuring only at the superficial or transactional level, such as participation rates rather than the quality of the participation experience for users. Using the reasoning that something is “hard to measure” as an excuse for not trying to capture it or get feedback about it. |
Push Deeper to Quality: Attend not just to easily-measurable quantity, but actual quality. Push beyond the level of transactional to assess whether the experiences of those you are trying to impact have actually changed.
Redefine “Data”: Broaden your definition of data to include “street data,” such as observation, anecdotes, and storytelling (Safir & Dugan 2021). Bring these forms of data regularly when investigating the current state or completing Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. Measure Experiences, Not Only Outcomes: Articulate a clear vision for how you want the work to be experienced by all involved, and conduct regular checks on the process, not just the outcomes you are working towards. |
| Paternalism | Underestimating the value of co-creation and assuming you are qualified to solve problems for others.
Using the excuse of limited resources or looming deadlines to shortchange stakeholder engagement. Deciding what you’re going to do without engaging folks. Making a plan without the folks who are most impacted, or who will be operationalizing the plan. |
Let Those Most Impacted Lead: Engage those most impacted as equal members of improvement work.8 This could look like students, parents, or community members serving on your improvement team and following their lead as they determine the direction of the work (Hinnant-Crawford 2020).
Invest in 1-to-1s: Engage in the practice of one-to-one conversations that provide ample space for perspectives to be shared and relationships built. Let People Choose: Allow teachers, leaders, or whoever is doing the improvement work to name the focus of their own inquiry. |
| Superiority of the Written Word | Overemphasizing written products or equating what is written down with what has been learned.
Creating such stringent expectations for documentation that it overwhelms or disincentivizes people from doing the work of improvement. Equating continuous improvement with forms and templates, rather than reflection, dialogue, and learning. Overemphasizing jargon and technical language. Valuing ideas that are documented or packaged in a visually appealing way over the practical, experiential wisdom people are using in their work. |
Make Learning Explicit: Help people see the ways they have already been engaged in continuous improvement thinking, even if they haven’t written anything down.
Create Early Experiences Disconnected from the Written Word: Disconnect PDSA cycles from the written word by inviting someone to try something and come back next week/month to reflect verbally. Develop Approachable, Common Language: Use approachable language that people are already familiar with, such as “small change cycles” or “inquiry,” so that people don’t feel excluded by language. Common, locally-meaningful language helps bring clarity, shared accountability, and understanding. Conduct PDSAs Through Conversation: Experiment with various formats to engage people in conversation about their testing cycles. Use a huddle structure to scaffold and pace testing cycles. Rather than asking everyone to come back with a write-up, ask them to join the meeting ready to share what they tried and what they learned. |
| Right to Comfort & Fear of Open Conflict | Assuming shared values around equity without unpacking what it truly means.
Prioritizing harmony over challenging individual and shared beliefs. Being unable to hear criticism or receive feedback without feeling blamed. Blaming people of color for causing discomfort with their critique rather than considering the content of their observations. Investing more in technical skills than in relational skills, such as giving and receiving feedback effectively. |
Create the Conditions for Difficult Conversations: Applying an equity lens to our improvement work necessitates honest dialogue. Racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression are so baked into our society that the very programs we design to interrupt inequities can perpetuate them just by how they operate. If we are not explicitly talking about how we are resisting oppression, we are likely perpetuating it.
Develop Listening Skills: Support your team in growing their capacity for listening and sitting with discomfort. Incorporate opportunities for the release of emotion through speaking and listening – such as through open-ended prompts in a constructivist listening dyad. Practice Emotional Regulation and Somatic Healing: A great deal of harm in equity work is caused by defensive emotional reactions by people of advantaged identities, especially white people. To equip ourselves and our teams to lean into discomfort and have the conversations required to face inequity, we must work to understand our triggers, how threat response shows up in our bodies, and how to create space between emotional reaction and outward action.9 Create Intentional Moments for Pause and Follow-Through: Leveraging the practice of “equity pauses” can create windows to stop, reflect and re-set during group collaboration. When pauses are pre-planned or integrated as a regular routine, it can help the team grow its collective muscles around identifying and discussing equity issues. However, it is important to ensure they are used intentionally to shift the dynamics of a conversation and not as an after-thought to check the “we talked about equity today” box. Leverage a 3rd Party Perspective: Using tools such as equity audits or equity rubrics can provide outside criteria against which your team can evaluate its improvement efforts. The use of more objective descriptors can “de-personalize” areas of concern and can prevent an undue burden for raising equity concerns from being placed on particular team members. |
| One Right Way & Objectivity | Assumption that continuous tools, protocols, and data make it possible to be truly objective when studying or addressing a problem.
Falling into “solutionitis” or expecting we can find a single, quick fix for a complex issue. Talking about our theories as if we will discover one “truth” for how something works, or assuming that we will be able to discern a direct link between cause and effect. Lack of awareness that continuous improvement, though it involves strategic thinking and logic, is still susceptible to bias and influenced by emotion. |
Ask Questions: “One right way” thinking represents a lack of the curiosity and humility that are integral to continuous improvement. Return consistently to asking and answering questions.
Look for Complexity, Not Truth: Instead of looking for one answer, aim to discover and make visible the variety of factors that are inevitably at play when it comes to a particular inequity. Dig Into the Data: Use data as a vehicle for asking more questions and revealing more layers, rather than as a source of solutions. If a particular data display gives rise to more questions, seek out additional data. Be wary of summative statistics that could be hiding inequities beneath the surface (La Salle and Johnson 2019). See it from Another Angle: Recognize that everyone has a set of experiences that has shaped their worldview, including you! Inquire into the perspectives of others. Regularly identify whose voice has not been at the table and work to engage those people in the work. |
| Power Hoarding | Setting out to improve the work of other people. This can look like an improvement team formed to improve math teaching, composed of central office and school-site administration, without math teachers who are actually responsible for doing the teaching, or students who are responsible for doing the learning. | Revisit Team Composition: Don’t be afraid to revisit an improvement team’s composition regularly to see if changes or additions are needed. If at any moment, the conversation is about improving the work of someone else, not the work of those sitting around the table, that is a sign that we have a mismatch between problem and team composition. |
This starter set of patterns and moves can help any individual consider the ways in which they might actively resist some of the most harmful manifestations of white dominant culture and return to the equity-aligned values at the heart of continuous improvement. However, a fish swimming against the current benefits from belonging to a school of fish swimming in the same direction. Swimming in formation allows fish to leverage each other’s wake and increase their speed and efficiency. In this same way, any of us as individuals can actively resist white dominant culture, but our efforts will grow easier when we work in tandem with collaborators who hold the same values.
Some people express criticism towards continuous improvement, seeing the ways it has reflected white dominant culture in practice as reason to dismiss the entire methodology. In the spirit of Audre Lorde’s critical comments at a 1979 feminist conference, they ask, “Can you really dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools?” (Lorde 1984). However, Dr. Brandi Hinnant-Crawford, a scholar of educational justice and improvement who identifies as black and female, challenges that notion, asking in a recent podcast interview:
Is it the master’s tools if they’re now in my hands? Or are they now my tools? (Hinnant-Crawford 2022)
Our practice of improvement can and must evolve, and critically applying the framework of white dominant culture can help us continue to make these tools our own. As we bring our equity-driven colleagues, teams, and organizations along with us, developing new habits and practices together will accelerate our ability to use continuous improvement to re-engineer oppressive systems and build the world we all want to live in.
1. “Continuous improvement” refers to a suite of methods used to create change in organizations and drive towards continually better outcomes. This article assumes the reader holds a basic familiarity with continuous improvement and its practice in education, although people at any stage of learning about improvement are welcome to engage with the ideas presented here! To read more about continuous improvement, take a look at the “further reading” section at the end of this article.
2. This article will not be exploring the concept of equity in a nuanced way, despite the fact that there is an ever growing range of interpretations and meanings as “equity” becomes more mainstream. Readers are encouraged to learn more about the various meanings and uses of the word, “equity.” For the purposes of this piece, think of “equity” as referring to both 1) the state that would be achieved if how one fares in society were no longer predictable based on any identity or social factor, as well as 2) the practices that are leveraged to pursue that state.
3. Also may be referred to as “white supremacy culture.” This article does not provide anything beyond basic introduction to white dominant/supremacy culture, and refers to characteristics that are explained in more depth in the original materials from Tema Okun and colleagues. Readers are encouraged to delve into additional resources on white supremacy and white supremacy culture to sharpen their ability to apply this lens to continuous improvement. To read more about white-dominant culture, take a look at the “further reading” section at the end of this article.
4. There is much more to know about white dominant culture than we could possibly explore in this article, and so readers with additional questions are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the original Okun piece, which you can find at https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/
5. Improvement science is a particular methodology for continuous improvement originally championed in healthcare by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and popularized in education by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Readers are encouraged to seek additional information about improvement science as needed.
6. Thanks to Jaime Kidd for reminding me of the importance of naming this aspect of the work, even when discussing the broader impacts on organizations!
7. The patterns and moves shared here have been compiled through conversation and collaboration with many valued colleagues, and are presented with particular gratitude to Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Eve Arbogast of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), as well as David Montes de Oca of CORE Districts. The framework was originally presented at the 2022 Carnegie Summit in collaboration with these inspiring leaders from SFUSD.
8. More and more, improvement efforts are recognizing the importance of engaging students as designers and improvers of their own school experiences. You can find resources to help you with this in under “Designing with Students” in the “Further Reading” section at the end of the article.
9. Thanks to Iris Lopez for naming this work as critical to efforts to dismantle white dominant culture. I wholeheartedly agree.
White Dominant Culture
Improvement Science in Education
Designing With Students
This article would not have been possible without the thought partnership of many valued colleagues whose wisdom and experience is reflected throughout the compilation of harmful patterns and helpful moves to resist and reimagine. Much gratitude especially to inspirational improvement leaders Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Eve Arbogast of San Francisco Unified School District and David Montes de Oca of CORE Districts for contributing many tangible practices to this effort. Thank you to my always enthusiastic and supportive writing group, as well as many other mentors and co-conspirators for sharing thoughts and encouraging me to pursue this project.
Arbogast, Eve, Enikia Ford-Morthel, Jill Hoogendyk, and Amanda Meyer. “Interrupting White Dominant Culture in Continuous Improvement: Anti-Racist Leadership Lessons.” Presentation at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education (April 25, 2022).
Bryk, Anthony, Louis Gomez, Alicia Grunow, and Paul LeMahieu. (2015). Learning To Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Press.
Hinnant-Crawford, Brandi Nicole. (2020.) Improvement Science in Education: A Primer. Myers Education Press.
Hinnant-Crawford, Brandi Nicole. Interview with Stacey Callier, High Tech High Unboxed. Podcast audio. February 15, 2022. https://hthunboxed.org/podcasts/s3e14-improvement-as-a-tool-for-our-collective-liberation-with-dr-brandi-hinnant-crawford/
Imai, Masaaki. 1986. Kaizen (Ky’zen), the key to Japan’s competitive success. New York: Random House Business Division.
La Salle, Robin Avelar and Ruth S. Johnson. 2019. Shattering Inequities: Real World Wisdom for School and District Leaders. Rowman & Littlefield.
Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.
McGlone, Peggy. “African American Museum site removes ‘whiteness’ chart after criticism from Trump Jr. and conservative media.” The Washington Post, 17 July 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/african-american-museum-site-removes-whiteness-chart-after-criticism-from-trump-jr-and-conservative-media/2020/07/17/4ef6e6f2-c831-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html
Okun, Tema. “White Supremacy Culture – Still Here.” May 2021. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/
Saad, Layla F. (2020). Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Sourcebooks.
Safir, Shane and Jamila Dugan. (2021) Street Data. Corwin.
