Improvement Science in the Field (Paperback)

Since Bryk et al. (2015) published their groundbreaking book on how educational stakeholders can take up improvement science as an approach to systematically and collaboratively addressing problems in education, there have been at least ten books on improvement science and counting. Scholars have authored books laying out a step-by-step approach to using improvement science in education (Crow, Hinnant-Crawford, Spaulding, 2019; Hinnant-Crawford, 2020); books on how to teach improvement science to practitioners (Spaulding, Crow, Hinnant-Crawford, 2021); and books on how to evaluate continuous improvement efforts (Christie, Inkelas & Lemire, 2017; Rohanna, 2021). Many of the books published on improvement science have been largely conceptual/theoretical and pedagogical about how to undertake improvement science in education. While many books have been instructive, theoretical, and conceptual for higher education institutions graduate programs, faculty, students, and educational leaders (Bryk, 2021; Perry, Zambo & Crow, 2020, Peurach et al., 2022), the voice of the practitioner is seldom heard in how they are actively taking up improvement science to lead change in their school settings. Bryk (2021) also presents large-scale efforts that benefit from lots of funding which many practitioners, unfortunately, do not have available. Our aim is to holistically and specifically present the practitioner‘s voice, their uptake of improvement science, and how they use the tools to lead to educational change. Our goal in this book is to share how practitioners are making sense of and are using improvement science to lead to actual educational change. This book, therefore, shifts from previous books to highlight the work and voice of practitioners using improvement science in their own settings. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents real problems of practice authored by practitioners leading continuous improvement efforts that address the disproportionate discipline of Black students, increasing enrolling of Black and Latinx students in gifted programs, teacher stress and mental health amidst COVID-19 and the aftermath, closing the achievement gap, and creating a welcoming and collaborative school district. These cases will inform how we answer pertinent questions about challenges practitioners might face in the field while undertaking continuous improvement efforts. The questions are important to answer as stakeholders in education may be divided in the current political climate on how to address problems of practice in schools. While the first part of the book presents cases of practitioners that have gone through a full cycle of improvement, the second part of the book follows a tradition of case-based teaching where authors only provide part of their journey of improvement in order to invite readers to practice, discuss, brainstorm, and reflect on how they will address the problem presented. Therefore the second part of the book also presents multiple practice cases, authored by practitioners that are based on real problems of practice. The case narrative provides enough detail about a problem of practice including relevant contextual information, secondary data, and data from empathy interviews. Readers, students, and groups will be invited to explore and discuss the next steps to addressing the problem using tools of improvement science. The book will include diagrams and illustrations such as process maps, system maps, fishbone diagrams, PDSA cycle charts, driver diagrams, etc. These illustrations and diagrams are helpful ways of capturing succinctly how contributors/educational leaders inquired into, thought about, and addressed their problems of practice. It would also provide templates for readers to adopt/adapt to their own continuous improvement activities and efforts.

Edwin Nii Bonney earned his Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Missouri in 2021. His research centers on how educational leaders and educators disrupt and/or reinforce the marginalization of their minoritized, vulnerable, and racialized students’ languages, cultures, and histories. Dr. Bonney pays particular attention in his research to moments of disruption in and beyond educational spaces where students and community members are centering their own languages, cultures, and histories and are reshaping what is considered “normal” or standard. He has published several articles, book chapters, and policy briefs on decolonizing educational leadership, discourse analysis of educational policies and programs, refugee and immigrant education, school-community partnerships, and school-family engagement. Dr. Bonney teaches courses and advises students in the doctoral education program. He is interested in learning and working alongside educational leaders in tackling problems of practice so that their students can be equitably served. Sarah Capello earned a Ph.D. in Administrative and Policy Studies in 2018 from the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh and has nearly ten years of experience teaching in higher education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. One strand of Dr. Capello’s research focuses on transformative EdD education and supporting the growth and development of educational leaders who are scholarly practitioners through practitioner inquiry, doctoral assessments, and dissertation writing. A second strand of research focuses on instructional supervision for pre-service and in-service teachers. Dr. Capello has published articles in the Journal of Educational Supervision, Action in Teacher Education, College Teaching, Impacting Education, and has a forthcoming article in Teaching and Teacher Education. She currently teaches practitioner inquiry courses in the EdD program as well as chairs and serves on EdD dissertation committees. Maxwell Yurkofsky obtained his Ed.D. in Educational Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2020. He teaches in the Doctor of Education program and the Master’s in Educational Leadership program, and is committed to preparing school and system leaders to strategically utilize improvement science, organizational theory, evaluation, and design principles to inquire into and address high-leverage problems of practice. His research centers on understanding how school systems can organize for continuous improvement towards more ambitious and equitable visions of learning. Dr. Yurkofsky has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Educational Researcher, Educational Administration Quarterly, Review of Research in Education, The Harvard Educational Review, Teaching and Teacher Education, Computers & Education, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, and the Peabody Journal of Education. His dissertation won the “Dissertation of the Year” award from the Leadership for School Improvement Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association in 2021.