Continuous improvement in the public school context: Understanding how educators respond to plan–do–study–act cycles

Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

“…However, defining problems at the system level also risks alienating teachers who have a different understanding of their most pressing needs. A fairly common challenge among RPPs that bring formal expertise to bear on a district- or network-wide problem of practice is that there are typically some practitioners who are less bought in to the framing of the problem or the pathway forward (e.g., Hannan et al, 2015; Penuel et al, 2007; Redding et al, 2018; Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017).…”

“…This approach is vulnerable to political fragmentation. At the school level, educators’ take-up of inquiry processes is frequently constrained by a multiplicity of other initiatives (Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017), lack of ongoing access to relevant data (Hannan et al, 2015), and districts’ history with past reforms (Scribner et al, 1999), which can create a climate of distrust that makes inquiry and learning more difficult (Allen & Calhoun, 1998; Ingram et al, 2004). For example, despite a competitive application process, coaches in Russell et al’s (2019) study struggled to document their PDSA cycles due to the number of other expectations they had to manage.…”

“…Given the tacit and relational dimensions of change, building a shared driver diagram or coordinated approach to improvement does not necessarily ensure that teachers and those actually implementing the reforms are fully on board with the change. Indeed, a persistent difficulty across NICs and NCSUs is for educators to connect their school-level improvement work with the broader aims of the network (Cannata et al; 2017; Martin & Gobstein, 2015; Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017). Understanding that these maps will be used in politicized contexts with multiple, competing interest groups, we also wonder if they privilege what is legible, politically safe, and representative of dominant interests.…”

“…In contrast, the PDSA process embedded in NICs and the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, as well as many data use protocols, helps make visible and challenge educators' assumptions but includes fewer explicit strategies for building shared norms and culture. For example, educators engaged in PDSA cycles often assimilate the cycles into their existing, less well developed, approach to improvement, which can prevent them from using the process to destabilize and address other assumptions about their practice (Hannan et al, 2015;Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017). PDSA cycles are a form of counternormative work (Hannan et al, 2015), and educators are not used to seeing their own successes and challenges as important knowledge that could guide others' work, if well documented (Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017).…”

Organizational diagnostics: a systematic approach to identifying technology and workflow issues in clinical settings

“…Health care is not alone in struggling to address work optimization and to resolve issues related to technology implementation. Multiple fields, including manufacturing, 10 financial services, 11 , 12 education, 13 , 14 and hospitality, 15 , 16 have applied a variety of process improvement approaches to identify organizational issues, to locate waste within processes, and to optimize service delivery. Although process improvement systems abound, major systems in widespread use around the United States include Business Process Management, 17 , 18 Kaizen, 19–21 Lean, 22 , 23 Six Sigma, 24–26 and Theory of Constraints.…”