Strategic Inquiry Initiative
Focused on knowing what to do – to ensure that all students learn at high standards – and knowing how to do it, are the twin foci of the Strategic Inquiry Initiative. Designed to assist schools and school systems in their daily work, the initiative has three central purposes:
- to assist in transforming the standards and quality of teaching and learning, and so raise the achievement of all students;
- to assist in the development of a generation of leaders, and of leadership and organizational cultures, that can secure the success of all of the schools in a school system;
- to serve as a lever to redefine the roles and improve the effectiveness of all those working within a school system to eliminate the achievement gap.
Strategic inquiry draws upon broad, yet deep, perspectives on teaching and learning, as well as on organizational, leadership, and systemic development, and on a clear understanding of the importance of culture(s) in learning. It develops thoughtful, and explicit, criteria for defining strengths and weaknesses in professional practice, as well as for defining strengths and weaknesses in organizational, leadership and systemic cultures. It continuously underscores impartiality in crafting perspectives.
In developing the Strategic Inquiry Initiative, the Center for Evidence-Based Education focuses sharply on the improvement of student learning, the nature, standards and quality of that learning, and most especially on eliminating the achievement gap. In maintaining this focus, the Center works to address current evaluation requirements for performance reporting while drawing upon practice-based evidence to design and achieve sustainable improvement in learning.
The initiative’s three purposes are achieved through strategically, and collaboratively, inquiring into practice – classroom, organizational, and systemic – and utilizing the resulting evidence to shape, and support, the detail of learning, capacity building, and sustaining improvement.
Drawing upon five main traditions of inquiry – appreciative inquiry, collaborative (participative) inquiry, evaluative inquiry, qualitative inquiry and quantitative inquiry – strategic inquiry engages participants in an initiative that integrates into a single, coherent, process with three interrelated dimensions:
- systemic inquiry
- organizational inquiry (self-evaluation)
- planning for action, capacity building, and sustaining improvement
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The process focuses rigorously on the essential enterprise of education – teaching and learning – and the leadership and organizational cultures within which it is embedded, both within schools, and within school systems. Guided by a framework that unambiguously emphasizes teaching and learning, and explores its interrelationship with leadership for learning, and culture, context and learning, the process utilizes strategies such as:
- case-in-point analysis
- data analysis
- exploration of students’ work
- interviews and focus groups
- organizational, leadership, and strategic mapping
- reflective observation
- shadowing (student and staff), and
- surveys
to assist participants in
- assessing in depth their current strengths and challenges
- ovecoming the knowing-doing gap
- building successful communities of practice
- transforming the performance of all their students.
Three workshops, approximately one month apart, are held to introduce participants to the work and to enable them to shape important aspects of the initiative in their own context. A period of fieldwork follows, focusing on week-long Systemic Inquiry visits by teams of participants, led, in the first instance, by a member of staff from the Center for Evidence-Based Education, to each others’ schools. In turn, each of these site visits results in a written, evidence-based, perspective on the work of the school, and is followed by on-site, reflective analyses of next steps for each school, focusing on the detail of how practice and performance might improve, breaking through from where it is to where it needs to be. In addition to this emphasis on breakthrough practice, an analysis of the school’s interaction with other schools within the school system, and with the district office, also takes place. Particular attention is given to each school’s school improvement planning process, and to the extent that planning is viewed as a basis for individual, and organizational, learning, capacity building, and sustaining improvement. These visits mark the beginning of the school’s engagement in Planning for Action, and are again lead by a member of staff from the Center for Evidence-Based Education, in conjunction with school district personnel, and involve each school’s leadership team. Following each of these visits, and in conjunction with the school district, consideration is also given to the district office’s work with each school. Thereafter, the school engages in a cycle of Organizational Inquiry (school self-evaluation) and further Planning for Action, before again hosting a visiting Systemic Inquiry team, usually three years after the first.
Each Strategic Inquiry Initiative also includes at least one week-long visit to the district office that focuses on the role and work of the district’s (i) educational/school improvement services, (ii) human resources and student services, (iii) business and legal services, and on the district’s improvement planning process. Again, this visit/these visits result in a written perspective on the work – this time on the work of the district office.
Throughout the initiative, staff from the Center for Evidence-Based Education engage the district’s senior personnel for school improvement, professional development and learning, and strategic development, in all aspects of the work, meeting them on a regular basis. The written, and reflective, perspectives produced by the visiting Systemic Inquiry teams form the basis not only for the subsequent site visits to the participating schools, but also for the regular meetings between the Center for Evidence-Based Education’s senior staff and the district’s personnel – meetings that focus on the detail of the work to be undertaken in ensuring that all students learn, and learn at high standards, and that staff, schools, and the school system learn also, in support of that learning.
For further information on this initiative, please contact us