From initiation to dissolution: Learning from the unsuccessful launch of networked improvement

• In Event: Learning from “failure”: Exploring challenges in unsuccessful research-practice partnerships

Abstract

An increased interest in continuous improvement in the field of education coincided with a national awakening to the inequities inherent in our educational system. Improvement science broadly, and networked improvement communities (NICs) specifically, are positioned to address such complex issues. As a result, the past decade has seen a large growth in collaborations between university researchers and school district leaders looking to use NICs to support collaborative improvement efforts (Proger et al., 2017). These collaborations have contributed to the knowledge base regarding initiation processes and provided insights into the potential for disciplined inquiry (e.g. PDSAs). However we currently know little about how and why NICs dissolve, despite evidence that they do (Joshi et al., 2021). We explore and reflect upon the life cycles of two NICs developed through a collaboration between university researchers and two large urban districts in the Midwest. We examine the conditions that contributed to their dissolution in hopes of offering guidance to the field that may prevent such outcomes in future endeavors.

We begin with a description of our collaborations to develop NICs with two large urban school districts in the midwest. We detail the ways in which each NIC was championed by key central office leaders, as well as the different approaches to initiation and implementation utilized by each. Both efforts had early successes and both were embraced by district leaders and the classroom teachers involved, yet within the first two years of initiation, both NICs dissolved. We situate this description within the literature of NIC initiation (Russell et al., 2017) and implementation (Bryk et al., 2015; Rohanna, 2017; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2017) and the broader literature on systemic change implementation in education (e.g., Peurach et al., 2019). Drawing from recent scholarship on failure to change within the field of organizational management (e.g., McMillan & Overall, 2017) we frame the initiation and development of these NICs as both a dysfunctional and constructive process (Shwarz et al., 2021). This framing facilitates a discussion that illuminates the tensions that surfaced both within and across organizational levels during each stage of initiation, from engagement, establishment of norms and growth to decline and dissolution.

Notably, this paper responds to calls by other improvement scholars (e.g. Peurach et al. 2020) to widen the field of view by experimenting with frameworks that “explore interdependence and variation within and among macro- and micro-levels of organization” (p. 337). Failure is logically a source of variation within the field that merits further in-depth discussion. By understanding what precipitates a NIC to fail, we can thoughtfully identify actions that solidify commitment to the NIC; produce clarity around the problem of focus and communication processes that serve to recommit participants to this focus. Importantly, this analysis highlights that contemporary understandings of NIC initiation as largely a “learning by doing” process miss the mark and that other discussions might be fruitful in helping to illuminate what conditions must exist and why.

Authors

• Jennifer Karnopp, San Diego State University

• Chad Lochmiller, Indiana University