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Title
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Traditions of Quality Improvement in Education
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Abstract/Description
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The past twenty years have seen increasing interest in the tools, processes, and methodologies of improvement research in education. Variously termed continuous improvement, quality improvement, and the like, these approaches to systematically improving practice comprise (in their best instantiations) a science of educational improvement. Collectively, these approaches put good ideas into practice effectively (producing positive impact as improvements against persistent problems of practice), reliably (providing improvements from all practitioners and for all students), and at scale (realizing improvement across widespread and diverse contexts). To the framers of these approaches to improvement, it is important that they realize the stature of a scientific enterprise. This is because of the rigor and consistency that a scientific approach can impart but also because it produces knowledge about the improvement of practice that will have impact and benefit at scale and provides knowledge that is held in high regard beyond the boundaries of just those who produced it. This requires adherence to the essential elements of a bona fide scientific endeavor: shared definitions and understandings of foundational concepts and the relationships amongst them; epistemic practices for inquiry that are public, transparent, and open to widespread inspection and understanding; and communal curation of the scientific knowledge thusly produced. For the purpose of this article, we apply the definition of improvement science offered in Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better by Bryk, et al. The defining characteristics include: (1) make the work problem focused and user centered—focus on understanding the problem to be solved and its root causes: (2) variation in performance is the problem to solve—identify and work to eliminate unwanted variation in processes and outcomes; (3) see the system to improve it—see how local conditions shape work processes to define (and tolerate) the problem, understand the system within which improvements must succeed; (4) you cannot improve at scale what you cannot measure—collect common measures of outcomes, processes, and secondary consequences to see if changes are improvements, track progress toward aim; (5) accelerate improvement by embracing rigorous inquiry—engage in rapid cycles of inquiry to learn fast and improve quickly; and 6) accelerate learning by tapping the power of networks—use the wisdom of the collective to learn, accomplish, and spread improvements. In this article, the authors have identified six major traditions of IS that have garnered considerable interest and application in education. These include: networked improvement; design-based implementation research; Implementation Science; Lean for education; Six Sigma; and Positive Deviance. For each of these traditions, we offer a brief description of the approach followed by annotated bibliographic references that include germinal writings and at least one case example of its use in education.
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[Excerpted from Bibliography Webpage]
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Date
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February 26, 2020
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IRE Approach/Concept
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Networked Improvement Community (NIC)
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Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR)
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Implementation Science
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Lean for Education
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Six Sigma
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Positive Deviance
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Open access/full-text available
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en
No
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Citation
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Bush-Mecenas, S., & Anderson, E. (2020). Scale and Sustainability of Education Innovation and Improvement. In Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0240
Peurach, Donald J.
Oxford Bibliographies: Continuous Improvement in Education [Special Series]
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