Building Systems for Community-Centered Education in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Case of Iowa BIG

• In Event: Transforming Education Systems for Holistic Student Development: Learning From Case Studies Around the World

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine local efforts to build an educational system in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (called “Iowa BIG”) that supports students and teachers in advancing its vision for improving holistic student outcomes.
Perspective
In Iowa BIG, the central analytic matter lies in understanding the complexity of local efforts to build an educational system focused on holistic outcomes within a complex and decentralized local educational environment.

Educational governance in the US delegates the fundamental responsibility for public education to states. With variable (and often limited) capacity to support improvement at the state-level, local districts are responsible for organizing, managing, and improving classroom instruction.

In the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the journey toward holistic student development began in 2013, with the launch of Iowa BIG as a locally managed initiative supporting student-driven, community-embedded, project-based learning for high school students. In contrast to large, cross-national initiatives for holistic outcomes, Iowa BIG emerged from community efforts to recover from catastrophic flooding in 2008 that devastated the city and that created the opportunity to rebuild civic institutions to support a more sustainable, globally-connected community.

Methods
This paper draws on digital and material sources, including program descriptions on the Iowa BIG and XQ websites, 18 podcasts, promotional videos, and written and oral perspectives from Iowa BIG students and staff. These materials provided perspectives on the history of Iowa BIG and its development over time. Digital and material sources were complemented with a member checking interview with an Iowa BIG executive who has perspective on the historical and contemporary development of the program.

Results
The Iowa BIG initiative proceeded as a series of small steps aimed at building essential infrastructure and capacity to advance a niche local initiative focused on holistic outcomes.

For Iowa BIG leaders, system-building involved three key matters:

1. Establishing and managing a vision for student-centric learning: Iowa BIG’s essential ambitions are student learning in context through student-driven, community-embedded, project-based learning. This vision pushed against mainstream educational paradigms by reimagining the learning conditions under which students thrive.

2. Building and managing a school system comprised of a federation of organizations: Iowa BIG has grown from a single school into a small system of two high schools and one affiliate high school. Operating as a local educational ecosystem, Iowa BIG now connects four school districts, their students, and community partners in ways that span conventional boundaries and is also a part of a national educational ecosystem focused on redesigning US high schools.

3. Building and managing an educational system: This system binds a constellation of organizations (i.e., a school system) into an educational system through an established infrastructure and supports for capacity-building that supports students and teachers in organizing, managing, and improving instruction to advance holistic outcomes.

Significance
The analysis provides evidence of the possibility of local, homegrown efforts to build educational systems that center holistic student outcomes, and it underscores the complexity of reform working across local jurisdictions.

Author

• Angela Lyle, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author