Planning, implementing, and strengthening collaborative, continuous improvement: Lessons from Scotland

• In Event: Can Continuous Improvement Work in the Turbulent World of Urban Districts?

Abstract

The paper builds knowledge of the improvement-oriented reform agenda in the Scottish education landscape and highlights the need to develop structures and organizational routines that support CI as an effective instrument for narrowing the achievement gap. From an organizational perspective, the study explores the need to restructure Scottish schools in ways that support long-term, impactful CI methods. The research offers findings from a multiple-district network of school leaders in Scotland who were engaged in CI as a way to build capacity and confidence in planning improvement within schools. Within this network, there was a focus on knowledge sharing through collaborative inquiry, with the aim of understanding the degree to which changes lead to improved learning outcomes.

Drawing on sensemaking (Weick, 1995), the analysis examines how school principals build research-based knowledge and capacity when implementing CI, while also considering district and state-level hierarchical structures and norms that influence their daily work. A case study approach (Yin, 2018) was employed to refine understanding of how school leaders define and use CI as a systemic approach to address the poverty-related achievement gap. Data sources include semi-structured interviews with 11 school principals across eight districts, and artifacts related to the tools and training material used in professional learning sessions and events organized by the network.

Findings suggest that local context and continuing tensions within the wider policy environment shaped the way in which these principals made sense of, interpreted and acted upon the use of CI methods. School leaders’ sense-making was influenced by the multiple overlapping contexts in which their work was nested, shaping the sense of improvement activity and agency to address implementation challenges. Their own values and beliefs about how to best meet local needs also shaped the level of engagement with CI tools and the enactment of CI routines. However, leaders’ experiences with and formal roles within their districts revealed important tensions that, in come cases, detracted from the work of CI. For example, those districts that served as the delivery arm of national policies had limited time to engage with CI methods, and minimal space to make strategic decisions regarding the implementation of coherent systems of measurement and evaluation.

The study demonstrates the way in which local cultures influence schools’ ability to use CI as a strategy for managing their increasingly complex environments. It further demonstrates how such responses will need to evolve in order to become embedded in schools’ daily routines. The study points to the importance of fostering a culture of collaborative engagement in CI-related projects, throwing further light on the complexities involved in efforts that build and advance knowledge and capacity into driving meaningful and lasting change.

Author

• Michalis Constantinides, University of Glasgow