Posted by Mary Frances Street on Monday, November 18, 2019 in News.

A new paper from Christopher Harrison, John Wachen, Stephanie Brown, and Lora Cohen-Vogel, entitled “A View From Within: Lessons Learned From Partnering for Continuous Improvement,” explores continuous improvement and partner-based approaches that have gained popularity recently. These approaches use “structured, iterative processes for developing innovations” between practitioners and school contexts.

Published in Teachers College Record, this paper investigates NCSU’s work with research practice partnerships and offers recommendations for future areas of study and implementation in public schools. A review of 400 hours of recorded meetings, feedback forms, and cognitive interviews with participants makes up this case study of NCSU’s implementation of its improvement process in a large urban school district in the U.S.

After reviewing all that data, there are three main takeaways. First, collaborative, partnership-based continuous improvement requires partners to construct and adopt new cultures of improvement. Second, continuous improvement work involves responding to emergent, often hard to predict demands for new capacities and resources. Lastly, the mechanics of innovation are interwoven, “requiring an interlocking network of supports and structures to succeed.”

To access the full paper, click here.