One of my goals for attending the Summit this year (that I wrote about last week) was to bring back an understanding of starting a NIC. What I’d like to do here is compile my notes, link resources, and highlight key ideas from the sessions. I’ve attempted to categorize them roughly into foundational/big ideas, what to do first, and then later considerations.

Foundational/Big Ideas

1. Formation of the network initiation team

• Develop a theory of practice improvement
• Understand the problem of practice – be there to observe, user-centered – take the test! What actually touches students as they learn?
• Decide on a common and measurable aim (craft aim statement, more detail below)
• Specify high leverage drivers (root cause analysis tools)
• Attend to power relations (particularly supervisor/evaluative relationships) and other contextual politics
• Do we have people from outside education?
• Learning to use improvement research methods: the NIC team needs to support each other in building common practices. everyone gets the book!
• Get an office staff person – someone to book rooms, schedule site visits, manage calendars, order coffee… this is a key role.

2. Focus on the Problem, or face “solution-itis.” Resource: Carnegie blog post

• Solution-itis = get more enamored of a particular approach or philosophy with an unclear way that this will address the problem
• The problem is the “anchor”
• Not all questions are worthy of inquiry! (Ex. Having students turn homework in on time is not a meaningful problem to work on.
• What is the unit of analysis? Okay to have it be one teacher’s classroom.

3. Crafting a “Network narrative”

• Metro-map activity – help people talk about how they got here
• Narrative as a way to mobilize people for the work (it’s not always just about the problem)
• Networks are about influence, not control: Who we are and why we exist must be compelling

4. Thinking about Meetings

• Improvement science as a social practice (Tony Bryk, opening keynote) – the meetings are where the network is instantiated
• Meeting in person at first (commonly a multi-day summer institute) gives people opportunities to connect, around more than just the focus of the work – give people money to go out to dinner in inter-organizational groups
• Schedule regular times, like weekly google hangouts
• Use meeting protocols – this prevents one person from always speaking for a group or those traditionally empowered from dominating/controlling the conversation
• Provide actuation spaces. We generally do not have problems that can be solved by more information. People need time and space to make sense together.

5. Building a Measurement System for Improvement

• Evaluate short term needs, long term goals
• Measurement is attached to the change process
• Noncognitive measures resource from the Chicago Consortium on School Research
• Traditional research methods (video/audio recording + coding) vs. 5 minute survey
• Limit the amount of data

6. Role of the content expert

• Bring in information to guide action once the problem is defined, ex. bring in literature
• Balance between research, capacity building, and implementation
• Role is different – need to provide opportunity where experts want to get involved (i.e. they get something out of it) but where they get on board with the direction it’s going and not just where they want it to go

7. Role of the network hub

• Everyone needs to learn to use improvement research methods, but it’s the role of the network hub will be to support network members
• Lots of strands running
• Do the analytic work
• Attend to social motivation

8. Leadership thoughts

• You invent the work as you do it – being open about the complexity
• A paradoxical mindset – engage with opposing interpretations, suspend judgement
• Be eclectic about methods
• Attend to both social pieces (facilitating a meeting) and technical pieces (cycles, due dates, action steps)
• “Definitely incomplete and possibly wrong” mantra
• This is the ANTITHESIS of strategic planning!

What to do first

Get into the schools!

• Bias towards action. Get out and do something. Anything that gets done is going to be incomplete and partially wrong, so get started.
• Test something – hunches, theories, ideas. Scale comes later.
• This test might just be with one classroom – have initiation team be there

While you’re there,

• Listen. This is a social practice. It’s about people and relationships first.
• Listen to students!
• Ask questions to understand the problem of practice

Research has to be rapid: 90 day cycles

• First 30 days – be user-centered
• Next 30 days – what does the literature say? Pareto 80/20 principle. focus on good theory with empirical warrant.
• Last 30 days – PDSA begins – small interventions. where did it work, for whom, and under what circumstances? Report out

Later considerations

Build structures for local ownership

• The role of the network hub may change over time. Think about a gradual transfer of leadership – building the agenda may be housed at the university at first, but eventually want to transfer this to the school.
• Sometimes, get out of the way and let teams do their work

Build cross-team connections

• make the network visible, reiterate the aim statement
• find a common language, be sensitive to and aware of local politics
• develop team norms, ex. assume everyone is doing the best they can
• measure network health, ex. social network analysis – quick survey after every meeting with simple list of people asking who they have interacted with and how – trackable over time

Build “intervention bundles”

• Everyone tried different things… what shows promise? How can these be combined?

Other resources

R+P Collaboratory webinar series – I have to go back and watch these! They cover topics such as “getting a partnership started” to “negotiating roles”.

Obviously, the Carnegie blog has a ton of resources, but they specifically have a series on starting a NIC. The first one by Jennifer Lin Russell  offers a framework and cool diagram. Also coming soon in article format: Russell, Bryk, Dolle, Gomez, LeMahieu, Grunow – A framework for initiation of NICs, Teachers College Record (in press)