Making Improvement Continuous: How Network Hub Leaders Plan for the Sustained Impact of Educational Improvement Networks

• In Event: Making the Invisible Visible: Dynamics, Processes, and Outcomes of Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

Educational improvement networks (EINs) catalyze learning within and among educational organizations by leveraging improvement science to collectively solve practical problems (Bryk et al., 2015; Russell et al., 2025). EINs are unique from other types of RPPs in that they are temporary organizations: A hub organization coalesces a group of schools and/or districts to improve upon a common problem within a predetermined time frame (Peurach et al., 2020; 2025; Russell et al., 2025). Consistent with the literature on temporary organizations (e.g., Bakker, 2010; Goodman & Goodman, 1976; Sydow & Windeler, 2020), the inter-organizational ties between hubs, schools, and districts typically do not sustain beyond the network’s lifespan (Joshi et al., 2021). Thus, network hub leaders encounter a perennial challenge facing temporary organizations but often invisible in the literature on RPPs: How can they sustain the learning from this temporary organization (i.e., EINs) within enduring organizations (i.e., schools, districts, and hubs)? In this paper, we make visible the strategies hub leaders leverage to plan for the sustained impact of EIN learning beyond network dissolution. We conceptualize the sustained impact of EINs as individual, organizational, and system learning that endures beyond the network’s lifespan. Such learning may be evident in continued use of network practices including: 1) Continuous improvement processes, 2) Change ideas (i.e., the strategies and tools that result from continuous improvement processes), 3) Network aim (i.e., a focal practice problem), 4) Collaboration for improvement within schools and/or districts, 5) Collaboration for improvement across schools and/or districts, 6) Teachers’ professional networks (i.e., relationships with educators from other network schools). We draw on two primary sources of data: Quantitative survey data from network hub leaders and network members focused on the aspects of EIN practice they believe will sustain, and semi-structured interviews with hub leaders in EINs focused on planning for sustained network impact. Results suggest three primary strategies by which network hub leaders sought to sustain learning: 1. Hub leaders prioritized knowledge codification. By reflecting on and packaging network learning, hub leaders could more easily spread ideas within and beyond the network. 2. Hub leaders gradually released responsibility to key school and district actors who could champion the work. Such efforts sought to increase local capacity and decrease reliance on the hub organization. 3. Hub leaders embedded network learning within enduring organizational structures. By embedding, for example, network data tools within existing school and district data systems, hub leaders sought to better align network practices with existing structures to support sustained use. Hub leaders perceived these strategies would be mediated by support (or lack thereof) from school and district leaders, who were critical to providing time, resources, and legitimacy for sustaining network learning. This study contributes to RPP scholarship by making visible the strategies partnerships leverage to support the sustained impact of their work despite partnership dissolution. It further expands upon common conceptions of sustainability by moving beyond a focus on partnership structures to how partnerships can support continued learning that outlives the formal partnership.

Authors

• Megan Duff, UNC Chapel Hill

• Jennifer Lin Russell, Vanderbilt University

• Jennifer Zoltners Sherer, University of Pittsburgh

• Chris Matthis, Partners for Network Improvement