Research invitation · For Multi-Academy Trusts - Developing Resilient Potential
Could the microclimates we create change our capacity to meet what comes next?
Dr Rona Mackenzie, Jenny Weidner and James Carter · Collaborative research
We cannot control all of the pressure, uncertainty and change coming towards organisations. We can influence the microclimates people experience every day: how people understand one another, work with difference, communicate, make decisions, adapt and learn.
The idea we want to test
Difference is valuable. Friction is inevitable. The question is not how to create a friction-free organisation, but how to reduce unnecessary friction without removing the difference that creates challenge, learning and innovation.
Our research focus
- If we reduce unnecessary friction within the microclimate, what becomes possible with the capacity that is no longer being consumed?
- What changes when resilience becomes a property of "we", rather than separate acts of "I"?
- Can changes to the everyday microclimate strengthen collective capacity to respond when greater pressure or adversity arrives?
Built on research, designed to be tested
| Bandura | agency + reciprocal influence |
|---|---|
| Denckla / Rutter | dynamic, contextual resilience |
| Duchek | anticipation + adaptation + learning |
| Edmondson | psychological safety + team learning |
| Bakker & Demerouti | demands, resources + depletion |
Our existing research provides a foundational understanding of resilience. The next phase tests the missing bridges: the relational conditions that help people work with difference, and what unnecessary demands or friction may do to available capacity.
For Multi-Academy Trusts, this raises an interesting question: what conditions help Heads and their schools retain the capacity to respond, adapt and learn when pressure increases?
An invitation to explore this with us
We are seeking Multi-Academy Trusts interested in becoming research and development partners. This is not a pre-designed resilience programme. It is an opportunity to test a research-informed proposition in a real organisational context.
- 1
Understand
the existing microclimate, difference, friction and perceived capacity
- 2
Intervene
through a small, intentional process focused on awareness and navigating difference
- 3
Learn
from before/after evidence and people's experience of what changed
The invitation is not to prove a finished model. It is to help us find out whether the proposition holds.