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Session Submission Summary

Improving school leadership post Covid-19 using through an improvement science approach across three countries: Kenya, Philippines, and Chile

Wed, February 15, 4:15 to 5:45pm EST (4:15 to 5:45pm EST), On-Line Component, Zoom Room 107

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

School leaders are increasingly acknowledged to be key change agents in improving equity in education systems (Rincon-Gallardo, 2018). But in many countries formal school leadership preparation and in-service provision includes little on developing problem solving capabilities including the use of multiple forms of data (Su, Gamage & Mininberg, 2003; Bush, 2013). Much provision is focused on management, administration, monitoring and accountability mechanisms with an emphasis on performance management approaches to improvement (Eacott & Asuga, 2014). School leaders frequently have few conceptual tools or approaches to draw on to cope with multiple uncertainties and new unique problems of practice which arise in their schools and communities.
Improvement science methodologies have been suggested to offer an approach to enhance school leaders’ capacity and capabilities to bring about sustained continuous improvement in practice (Milder & Lorr, 2017). Improvement science is one of a series of continuous improvement approaches which have evolved over the last century. The idea is that developing problem solving capability through systematic approaches to experimentation utilizing the rigor and structure of data driven improvement cycles in an organization, can help to build resilience to unplanned events or changes in the environment (Teece and Psiano, 1994). This approach has recently been utilised in education systems or organisations, often in combination with Networked Improvement Communities (NICs). NICs are conceptualized as intentionally formed structured collaborations that aim to address practical problems (Bryk, Gomez & Grunow, 2011). Their operation is guided by a focus on a common improvement aim drawing on participants’ deep contextual understanding with prompts from researchers on ideas for experimentation. This approach has shown promise in high income contexts (Bryk et al, 2015) but to date there has been little exploration of how it might support local innovations for practice improvement in low resource geographies and less stable systems.

Between March 2021 and August 2022, this Covid response research project has been exploring the development of a NIC and the use of improvement science with small groups of school leaders (primary or pre-primary) in marginalized communities in three very different contexts: Chile (Santiago), Kenya (Limuru and Mukuru), the Philippines (Mindinao). In all these settings aspects of the education system are undergoing rapid change (new structures, new curricula etc) and school leaders are also coping with varied and contextual challenges - climate, conflict, elections, economic instability and so on. In the Philippines, Chile, and Kenya all schools were closed for differing periods of time and as a result each government implemented varying policies to address learner and system needs.

Across the three geographies, three different non-profit education organizations worked with school leaders, district officials and researchers and fostered collaboration via NICs to identify problems in current practice. Through joint analysis of the causes of these problems, school leaders identified and enacted small changes in multiple experiments based on plan, do, study, act cycles (PDSA), to see if the change brings about improvement in the practice or process for their school or community. The activity focus of all the NICs is increasing equity in pupil participation in learning in the conditions during and after the pandemic. The project NICs took very different forms and ways of working, depending on the conditions of the context, expectations of school leaders in the context and their previous histories of collaboration. In Kenya many of the school leaders had prior experience of peer networks or communities and drew on these experiences in their NIC working. In the Philippines, the NIC working was initially strongly influenced by the Department of Education agenda but through the project school leaders developed greater agency and autonomy in their collaboration. In Chile, at the start of the project the participating early childhood centre principals expressed feelings of isolation and lack of connection with other pre-primary centres and to the wider education system, hence the focus of the NIC activities became the working and building of the NIC itself - their development of a collective identity and mutual collaboration with the new local authority.

Our research sought to understand the extent to which this participant -driven practical methodology could strengthen school leaders’ capabilities to analyze problems of practice and organize action to address these in different contexts. A multi-modal interdisciplinary research design adapted for the restrictions of the pandemic included in-depth interviews with school leaders at varying points during the project fieldwork; observational notes from the NICs and our own project meetings, regular conversations with the school leaders (Whatsapp or phone) to co-create a set of ongoing reflections and data from the improvement cycles. Ethical clearance was through in-country institutions.
Our data analysis draws on a sociocultural approach whereby the how and extent of practice change with the use of improvement science approaches by the NICs, is influenced by a range of different factors derived from the improvement science methodology: aspects of the local context (including educational priorities and policy changes); management practices (including the roles and current practices of school leaders); the nature of the improvement network and its complexity; the purpose of the changes and the way in which the PDSA methodology has been realized.
This panel will first focus on our experience of using improvement science with school leaders in the three countries and then summarize key findings/experiences from each country drawing on data generated through August 2022 at the close of the project. It will also consider opportunities and challenges to future use of this bottom-up methodology to support school leaders in under-resourced contexts to become more agentive in continuous improvement in teaching and learning, and thereby contribute to more resilient education systems.

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