Examining an Evolving Partnership Through a Design-Based Implementation Research Lens: Insights for Supporting Instructional Reform

• In Event: Creating Systemic Change for Improvement and Transformation: Affordances and Limitations of Five Efforts to Improve Instruction at Scale

Abstract

Purpose
This paper examines the evolving relationship between a university-based research organization and a large, urban school district during a five-years effort to support elementary teachers’ use of formative assessment tools in mathematics instruction. Written from the perspective of the university research team and employing a designed-based implementation research (DBIR) lens, we examine cycles of design, analysis, and revision in our approach to working with district and school leaders and classroom teachers. By looking across these revisions we consider general insights about supporting instructional change within a complex and changing school system.

Theoretical Perspectives
The analysis is guided by a DBIR lens, a strategy increasingly taken up by researchers and practitioners seeking to support sustained, system level change in educational practices (Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, Sabelli, 2011). Like design research in classrooms, DBIR involves short cycles of design activities, followed by revision, but applies this approach to work within systems, where approaches to implementing new initiatives become the focus of the cycles of design and revision. These cycles are generally aimed at addressing “persistent problems of practice from multiple perspectives” (p. 331) with a commitment to iterative cycles of design, learning, and revision, as more is learned about the problem and the system.

Analytical Methods
Using a DBIR lens to examine the evolving partnership involved examining key shifts undertaken in the structure or organization of the partnership activities over five years, such as the tools introduced or how school leaders were positioned in the work. Using formal data (interviews and survey results) and informal artifacts (meeting records, informal conversations, school visits), we identified the problem of practice we sought to address and the strategies undertaken to do so. We then looked across them as a set to surface insights and dilemmas associated with supporting instructional reform within a large school district.

Results and Implications
Analysis of the key shifts revealed three interrelated evolutions that have implications for system-level instructional reform. First, over the life of the project, the focus of the partnership shifted from a district-centric approach to one that anchored the work in partner schools, leveraging their ecology to support instructional improvement. By building relationships with schools and locating our efforts at these sites, we were able to move the work closer to the heart of instruction (Cobb et al., 2018; Cohen, et al. 2003). Second, efforts to build capacity shifted from a focus on individual teachers, to supporting the school community to consider new instructional approaches and frameworks. Building the capacity of school leaders to support instructional change was critical to this work. Third, we found that new tools intended to support instruction had the most traction when they helped solve problems that educators believed they had (Cohen & Mehta; 2017).

Significance
These shifts had consequences for our relationship with district-level decision makers. Locating the work within schools allowed for greater support of classroom instruction, but provided challenges for participation in decisions that impacted the work. Partnering to support instructional reform involves navigating complexity at all levels of the system.

Author

• Janine Remillard, University of Pennsylvania