The Promise and Fundamental Challenge of Systems Reforms

• In Event: 18.035 - Managing Complex Systems for Implementation and Scale

Abstract

One diagnosis of the problem of equal educational opportunities is for schooling systems to undergo systemic change. We invest a lot of policymaking, money, and other resources into implementing and scaling up ambitious systems reforms, such as Multi-tiered System of Supports. However, we’re still learning what promise this solution holds. What does it take to shift our existing schooling systems towards ideal, coordinated and coherent ones? Institutionalizing new ways of working requires shifts in people’s cultural-cognitive understandings. These are the most difficult aspects of practice to change. Building on studies of coordinated and coherent systems in the organizational learning literature, this paper examines whether the concepts of shared understandings, shared work, and heedful interrelating are applicable to constructing instructional systems.

Author

• Lok-Sze Wong, Northwestern University