Accelerating Culturally Responsive Leadership Practice to Improve Student Learning in a Networked Improvement Community

• In Event: Collaboration for Change: Multiple Voices and Stakeholders in School Improvement

Abstract

Despite decades of significant efforts designed to reform education, sustained improvement in learning outcomes, particularly for students in rural contexts who identify as members of historically marginalized subgroups, has been inconsistent. Attempts to scale up the successful cases of improvement have been particularly challenging (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015). This paper reports findings of a promising model of school improvement, a Networked Improvement Community (Bryk, Gomez & Grunow, 2011), in which university faculty partnered with rural school principals in the US and Australia who serve traditionally marginalized subgroups of students. The NIC model supports information sharing about the effects of such strategies across networks, and uses this shared learning to thoughtfully scale up successful practices.

Authors

• Kristina Astrid Hesbol, University of Denver

• Robert Kelly Crow, Western Carolina University

• Alan Scott Tinkler, The University of Vermont

• Bonnie Carol Fusarelli, North Carolina State University

• Kent Seidel, University of Colorado Denver