Addressing complex educational problems using positive deviance requires detective work. The task: to discover “outliers” who have succeeded under conditions where most others fail; uncover the strategies they use; and design opportunities to share those strategies.
Variability is everywhere in education. Everything from a school’s location to the textbooks it uses impact student learning. The Six Sigma approach to improvement emphasizes data analysis to reduce variance and inefficiency in school processes to help all students succeed.
Everyone has a stake and a say in the Lean approach to improving educational achievement. The school improvement model evolved from Toyota’s philosophy of building a culture in which all employees were empowered and expected to be part of providing the best possible product.
The implementation science approach to improvement in education centers on how to accommodate local school variables and other contextual factors that can impede successful implementation of change ideas, by creating teams that include external facilitators and specialists.
A broad collaboration of stakeholders, from teachers and administrators to researchers and designers, is a key element of design-based implementation research, a school change approach illustrated by an effort to improve genetics instruction from kindergarten to high school.
When the Kentucky Department of Education wanted a strategy to significantly increase the number of high school students prepared for college and/or careers, it turned to deliverology, a method used by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make good on his campaign promises.
A special issue of the journal Quality Assurance in Education breaks down seven approaches to improvement in education, beginning with the networked improvement model. Explore key features and principles of this method through a successful example of helping new teachers.
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