Critical Perspectives on Educational Innovation and Improvement Science
In recent years, education has undergone an improvement and innovation revolution; where reformers, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have been undertaking efforts to do education better and differently. Innovation in education often focuses on understanding and providing pathways that will prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s economy. Innovation efforts include STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics), edtech, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence that are able to accelerate student learning, and school competition that promotes organizational efficiency. At the same time, educational improvement efforts have focused on enhancing school policies and practices. Modern improvement measures in education have centered on implementing systematic changes that would revamp the delivery of education, the services necessary for students to succeed, organizational structures, human or social capital, or curriculum and assessments that would increase student outcomes. Both improvement and innovation have come to symbolize and usher in a new wave of educational practice and policy, one that focuses on student learning outcomes and teacher quality and disrupts the traditional ways that schools operate and are organized. However, improvement-focused educational research has paid limited attention to how race, class, and gender fit within this emerging canon. The schools and districts that are often the targets of improvement efforts have student and teaching populations that are diverse, including large proportions of low-income families and people of color, yet the individuals and organizations promoting and funding improvement science are more often white and affluent. Indeed, the field of improvement-focused educational research has yet to attend to issues of race, class, and gender to its fullest potential. The next phase of improvement science research would be wise to understand how issues of race, class, and gender should be measured, implemented, and accounted for within improvement science processes, models, and practices. Recent research in STEM, and school improvement indicates that there is potential to explore issues of educational equity and diversity. To create sustainable changes that expand opportunities and experiences for students of color, the theory and practice of improvement-focused educational research must move beyond a narrow focus on reducing achievement gaps. This means that improvement-focused educational research will have to evolve in ways that incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy, address issues of re-segregation in schools and districts, and increase the democratic participation in education and educational improvement. There is potential for improvement-focused educational research to draw from traditions in critical policy analysis, the geography of opportunity, and the role of elites in education reform to highlight the potential for improvement efforts in education to be inclusive and collaborative among diverse stakeholders, and to interrogate issues of race, class, gender, and power that can create sustainable change. Efforts such as collective impact galvanize multiple stakeholders in an improvement science process. To this end, we explore what it means to engage historically marginalized and disempowered people as active collaborators in serious educational efforts, as well as the issues around race, gender, structural inequality, power, and democratic control in the context of educational innovation and improvement.
Oxford Bibliographies [Special Series]: Continuous Improvement in Education
Jabbar, H., & Childs, J. (2020). Critical Perspectives on Educational Innovation and Improvement Science. In H. Jabbar & J. Childs, Education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0243
Getting Ideas into Action: Building Networked Improvement Communities in Education
Oxford Bibliographies: Continuous Improvement in Education [Special Series]
Ethical and Professional Norms in Community-Based Research
More than a Network: Building Professional Communities for Educational Improvement
Research–Practice Partnerships in Education: Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions
What Is Improvement Science? Do We Need It in Education?
Innovating at the Nexus of Impact and Improvement: Leading Educational Improvement Networks
Participatory Design Research and Educational Justice: Studying Learning and Relations Within Social Change Making
Taking Design Thinking to School: How the Technology of Design Can Transform Teachers, Learners, and Classrooms
Pathways to Improvement: Using Psychological Strategies to Help College Students Master Developmental Math
(Un)Commonly Connected: A Social Network Analysis of State Standards Resources for English/Language Arts
Irrational Exuberance for Market-based Reform: How Federal Turnaround Policies Thwart Democratic Schooling
Building Capacity for Continuous Improvement of Math and Science Education in Rural Schools
Beyond Ritualized Rationality: Organizational Dynamics of Instructionally-Focused Continuous Improvement
Designing Inter-Organizational Networks to Implement Education Reform: An Analysis of State Race to the Top Applications
The Learning Sciences in a New Era of U.S. Nationalism
Rethinking Race and Power in Design-Based Research: Reflections from the Field
Introduction to Postracialism in U.S. Public School and Higher Education Settings: The Politics of Education in the Age of Obama
Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground
Participatory Design Research as a Practice for Systemic Repair: Doing Hand-in-Hand Math Research with Families
Introduction to New Frontiers in Scaling Up Research
A Model of Continuous Improvement in High Schools: A Process for Research, Innovation Design, Implementation, and Scale
Supporting Continuous Improvement in California's Education System
Working to Improve: Seven Approaches to Improvement Science in Education
Networked Improvement Communities: The Discipline of Improvement Science Meets the Power of Networks
A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory's Controversiality
Replacing Representation With Imagination: Finding Ingenuity in Everyday Practices
Transforming Out-of-School Challenges Into Opportunities: Community Schools Reform in the Urban Midwest
Community-Based Equity Audits: A Practical Approach for Educational Leaders to Support Equitable Community-School Improvements
Toward a Critical Approach to Education Policy Implementation
Comprehensive School Reform in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts: Implementation and Outcomes from a Four-Year Study
Power and Politics in the Adoption of School Reform Models
Collective Impact and the New Generation of Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education: A Nationwide Scan
Putting Collective Impact in Context: A Review of Literature on Local Cross-sector Collaboration to Improve Education
Contemporary Federal Education Policy and Rural Schools: A Critical Policy Analysis
Assessing Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Macroeconomic Effects in the Education of African Americans
Network Governance and Regional Equity: Shared Agendas or Problematic Partners?
Student-Led Improvement Science Projects: A Praxiographic, Actor-Network Theory Study
Breaking the “Adopt, Attack, Abandon” Cycle: A Case for Improvement Science in K–12 Education
The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy
Questioning the Global Scaling Up of Low-Fee Private Schooling: The Nexus between Business, Philanthropy, and PPPs
“Geography of Opportunity”: Poverty, Place, and Educational Outcomes
The Modern Cult of Efficiency: Intermediary Organizations and the New Scientific Management
Democratic School Turnarounds: Pursuing Equity and Learning from Evidence
Equity-Oriented Reform Amid Standards-Based Accountability: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of an Intermediary’s Instructional Practices
The Privatization of Education: A Political Economy of Global Education Reform
Improvement Science as a Promising Alternative to Barriers in Improving STEM Teacher Quality through Professional Development
Introduction: Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis
Doing Critical Policy Analysis in Education Research: An Emerging Paradigm
With Scale in Mind: A Continuous Improvement Model for Implementation
Generating Improvement Through Research and Development in Education Systems
Framing the Problem of Reading Instruction: Using Frame Analysis to Uncover the Microprocesses of Policy Implementation
Using Research to Improve Education Under the Every Student Succeeds Act
The Rise of Intermediary Organizations in Knowledge Production, Advocacy, and Educational Policy
Putting School Reform in Its Place: Social Geography, Organizational Social Capital, and School Performance
Diverse Schools in a Democratic Society: New Ways of Understanding How School Demographics Affect Civic and Political Learning
Networked Social Enterprises: A New Model of Community Schooling for Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Facing Challenging Times
OB Citations - Critical Perspectives on Educational Innovation and Improvement Science