As districts go through the all-important process of developing implementation plans to guide the operations of their initiatives, they look to exemplars from other districts or ideas from the business community to guide this process. When districts borrow ideas from other districts or different sectors, they may stumble upon context-specific road-blocks that stymie the implementation. So, how should a district avoid these potential roadblocks and more likely benefit from exemplars or research during their implementation planning?
I recently read a set of inter-related reports that shine light on the implementation planning process. The research suggests three broad steps that may help districts create plans that more readily utilize exemplars and research.
1) Study who will implement this plan: The teams developing the implementation plans may or may not include all the people actually implementing the plan. Therefore, whoever develops the plan needs a strong sense of empathy and understanding of the “target user” as a means to understand the context in which this plan will be carried out.[1] This approach “[c]enters the knowledge and experiences of those on the front lines-in the same spirit as student-centered learning, differentiation, and other user centered approaches in education.”[2] The implementation team needs to collect data about the target user through interviews, observations, and documents to better understand the thoughts and feelings of who will be implementing the plan. This will also allow the target user to feel like their previous work and ideas are reflected in the plan, and may be more inclined to carry out the plan with fidelity.
2) Leave room for revising the plan: While time is of the essence, develop the plan in such a way where the team has time to reflect and revise the plan prior to implementation. Penuel, Fishman, Cheung, and Sabelli describe what they call “design-based implementation research” as an iterative approach.[3] With researchers, they have the luxury of time to go through processes in a repetitive fashion, running analyses again and again, or in Penuel, et al.’s examples, testing and adjusting theories stemming from practitioners insights. For practitioners developing their plans prior to implementation, I would also recommend using this iterative approach, so that new insights and deductions from your target user research, as well as district exemplars and other research, have time to be incorporated into the objectives and actions outlined in your plan.
3) Provide coaching during the plan’s development: Fullan and Knight argue that, “Without coaching, many comprehensive reform efforts will fall short of real improvement.”[4] While Fullan and Knight apply this theory to the day-to-day operations of implementing the reform, I would argue that this theory should also relate to the development of the implementation plan driving the reform. Ideally, the implementation plan will be developed with an inter-disciplinary team that comes to the table with various strengths. Team members more experienced in developing an implementation plan need to take time to coach the other members of the team with less experience incorporating exemplars and referencing target user research into the objectives and actions. This coaching will help the team access the multitude of resources, and build team members understanding of the plan. When this team revisits the implementation planning process, they will start with a more advanced level of expertise and be prepared to use resources in an even more thorough way.
Improving districts’ abilities to reference exemplars and research during the implementation process will help districts develop more robust implementation plans that have a stronger chance of being successful.
[1] The term “target user” is borrowed from the concept of “Design Thinking” developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.
[2] Rice, E. (March 2011). “Design Thinking: A Process for Developing and Implementing Lasting District Reform.” Knowledge Brief, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Retrieved on November 14, 2011 from http://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/design-thinking-process-developing-and-implementing-lasting-district-reform.pdf
[3] Penuel, W.R., Fishman, B.J., Cheng, B.H., Sabelli, N. (October 2011). “Organizing Research and Development at the Intersection of Learning, Implementation, and Design.” Educational Researcher. V. 40, N. 7. P. 331-337.
[4] Fullan, M. and Knight, J. (October 2011). “Coaches as System Leaders.” Educational Leadership. V. 69, N. 2.
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