Getting Small: A Design for School Improvement Through Strategic Inquiry

• In Event: 35.027 - School-Wide Innovation: The Impact of Structure, Design, Methodology, and Data-Based Decision Making

Abstract

This paper presents findings of a seven-year evaluation of a successful school reform model called Strategic Inquiry with a focus on explicating its core design principle and strategy for change called “getting small.” The model was found to be especially effective in large high schools, where traditional cultures are typically most entrenched, because its design for “getting small” anticipates and strategically overturns the particular assumptions and habits that constrain change. This paper describes what is meant by “getting small” in Strategic Inquiry along with how it works to develop new skills and habits first for a small school team and then more broadly, as the team seeds the changes school-wide.

Authors

• Helen A. Panero, Baruch College - CUNY

• Joan E. Talbert, Stanford University