Protocols as Innovation Infrastructure: Leadership for Participatory, Culturally Sustaining Change

Educational innovation is too often defined by new programmes or technologies, overlooking the structural processes that make meaningful change possible. This chapter argues that protocols – deliberately structured, repeatable formats for collaborative learning – function as innovation infrastructure. Through intentional sensemaking and sensegiving (Weick, 1995), protocols embed curiosity, shared authority, and cultural responsiveness into educational contexts, turning these spaces into learning organizations (Senge, 1990). Grounded in sociocultural learning theory (Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 1998) and activity theory (Engeström, 2001), we show how protocols impact participation and reframe authority, creating equitable spaces where multiple ways of being and knowing can shape improvement. Drawing on discourse and identity perspectives (Anzaldúa, 1987; Gee, 2000–2001), we explain how well-facilitated protocols (such as the consultancy protocol and the question formulation technique [QFT]) disrupt recognition patterns, redistribute voice, and build professional trust – conditions that make high-impact practices evolve. Portraits (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005), presented as practice-based illustrative vignettes, highlight how educational leaders use protocols to navigate policy pressures and support adaptive risk-taking in ways consistent with what Fullan (2016) describes as leadership for deep, sustainable change in complex and uncertain environments. We conclude with design principles and leadership moves for stewarding protocol-based infrastructures that enable innovation to endure as a systemic, not episodic, phenomenon.