Studying Implementation within a Continuous-Improvement Process: What Happens When We Design with Adaptations in Mind?

Autor: Stacey A. Rutledge, Lora Cohen-Vogel, Ariel Tichnor-Wagner, Qi W. Xing, Danielle Allen, Allison Rose Socol
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education. 120:1-52
ISSN: 1467-9620
0161-4681
DOI: 10.1177/016146811812000506
Popis: Background/ContextThis study examines the implementation of an academic and social-emotional learning innovation called Personalization for Academic and Social Emotional Learning, or PASL. The innovation was designed, tested, and implemented using a continuous continuous-improvement model. The model emphasized a top-and-bottom process in which implementers played a central role in the innovation design, and adaptations were planned, tested, and refined based on local school contexts.PurposeThis study sought to understand what implementation integrity looked like in three high schools participating in a continuous continuous-improvement process that promoted deliberate, planned adaptations to PASL, and as well as to uncover factors that may explain differences in the integrity of PASL implementation across the three schools.Research DesignWe conducted embedded, qualitative case studies of three large, racially-, ethnically-, and linguistically- diverse urban high schools. Data collected and analyzed included interviews with school innovation design design-team members, student focus groups, and observations of teachers implementing PASL.FindingsEach school made site-specific adaptations to the PASL innovation before and during implementation. However, there was variation in the extent to which the schools demonstrated integrity to the PASL design and their own adaptations. A combination of local contextual factors helped explain differences in implementation integrity across the schools. These factors included the availability of resources and ongoing technical support, the will of local implementers, and perceptions about policy alignment.Conclusions/RecommendationsWhile PASL was implemented across the three school sites, the degree of implementation integrity varied, suggesting that encouraging program adaptation alone may not solve longstanding challenges associated with achieving depth of implementation. This is the first study of its kind in education, however, and more research is clearly warranted.
Databáze: OpenAIRE