Empowering Educational Excellence

Part 1 of the Edmentum publication, School Improvement Guide: The Building Blocks of Outstanding Schools. To access the full guide, click here.

Central to our approach is the understanding that education is an organic, rather than mechanical, process. Fostering human potential is akin to cultivating a garden—our role is to create an environment conducive to growth and flourishing. Our guide will assist you in nurturing these conditions, emphasising quality teaching, effective leadership, collaboration, and data-informed decision-making. By harmonising research insights with practical wisdom, we aim to facilitate transformative learning experiences for all students. Drawing inspiration from Bryk et al.'s (2015) Learning to Improve, our guide focuses on transforming educational groups into high-performing teams, embedding continuous improvement practices directly into classrooms and schoolwide initiatives.  

Our guide provides practical tools and strategies to help you:

• Identify specific problems in your educational context
• Analyse root causes through a user-centred approach
• Understand and address variability in student outcomes
• Develop a systems view of your school or district
• Implement effective measurement practices for continuous feedback
• Foster a culture of disciplined inquiry and evidence-based decision-making
• Build and leverage networked improvement communities

A key component of our approach is the implementation of the improvement cycle. This simple, yet powerful, testing cycle ensures that schools are nimble enough to reflect, revise, and scale improvements effectively. By providing a concrete framework for implementing and testing changes, the improvement cycle enables educators to make data-driven decisions and continuously refine their practices (Bryk et al., 2015). 

Furthermore, our guide emphasises the formation of network improvement communities (NIC). These communities are crucial in accelerating learning and improvement by connecting educators to expert researchers and theorists. NICs provide access to ideas and research needed for thoughtful and credible improvement, fostering a collaborative environment where best practices can be shared and refined (Bryk et al., 2015).

“Change is a journey, not a blueprint.” - Fullan, 2001

Leaders who foster professional trust and model visible learning practices have the greatest long-term impact. "Instructional Leadership" and "Collective Teacher Efficacy" both rank high in Hattie's research (effect sizes: 0.84 and 1.57, respectively). Our guide will equip you with the tools to both ignite and maintain this transformative process. It contains a suite of strategic tools designed to bolster your improvement initiatives. Incorporating insightful blog posts, articles, rigorous research reports, compelling case studies, interactive webinars, and engaging events, we're committed to providing wraparound support for your efforts.  

Reflection Questions: 

• How does your leadership team model learning?
• Are teachers encouraged to reflect and take instructional risks?
• How is a culture of collective efficacy developed and sustained?

Read Next: Continue to Part 2, Redefining School Improvement Through Collective Purpose

References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America's schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED568744

Bryant, J., Child, F., Demirdag, E., Dorn, E., Hall, S., Jayaram, K., Krishnan, C., Lim, C., Liss, E., Onabanjo, K., Panier, F., Rebolledo, J., Sarakatsannis, J., Scott, D., Tschupp, R., Ungur, S., & Vigin, P. (2024, February 12). Spark & sustain: How all the world’s school systems can improve learning at scale. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/spark-and-sustain-how-school-systems-can-improve-learning-at-scale

DuFour, R., & Reeves, D. (2016, March 1). The futility of PLC Lite. Phi Delta Kappan. https://kappanonline.org/the-futility-of-plc-lite/

Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. Jossey-Bass.