This past week I participated in the Network of Inquiry and Innovation (NOII) Symposium: Stories of Change: Pictures of Possibility. My presentation was entitled Innovation That Sticks – Real Examples from Real Schools. I think we can easily get caught up in the theoretical of what schools could be and fail to recognize the shifts occurring right in front of us. In our district (and I know of others), teachers and administrators are finding new ways to connect to students. The experiences for our students are quite different from even five years ago.
One notion that seemed to particularly resonate with those in attendance was my latest thinking around scaling. I openly admitted, over the last seven years in West Vancouver, I have often considered the idea of “scaling” — how do we take an idea from one school, which is clearly making a difference for learners, and replicate it in our other schools? The following two slides from the presentation reflect my most recent thinking on this:
I have moved away from the language of “scaling our work,” to “networking our work.” We are not trying to create ‘sameness’ in our classes and schools; rather, we are trying to support the good work in one site by connecting it to the good work in another. I have written before about the power of networks in West Vancouver and British Columbia and I believe this is one of the characteristics that differentiates B.C. education from so many other regions — it is the connection across schools, districts, levels and disciplines — all focused on improving student learning.
So, rather than seeking to scale work, our focus is on diffusion. At some point, there are so many connections with the ‘new’ they become the ‘normal’. We are seeing this with our inquiry work in West Vancouver on all levels — we have teachers embracing the PYP / MYP International Baccalaureate approach; others, use the Spirals of Inquiry as a basis of their work, while others use Understanding by Design to ground their approach. They are all taking similar approaches to learning and connecting to each other as inquiry-based learning has taken hold in all of our schools. The learners are as diverse as the learning, and while I know some would appreciate the simplicity of “just doing it all one way” we are finding huge power in the autonomy of teachers and schools as part of the new learning network.
The work of innovation in our schools is not a program, it is not something we can announce, proclaim or implement. It is an ongoing shift to adjust our system to meet the needs of students in a way that is reflective of the world they are living in. The power of networks — connecting people and ideas as part of a community — is key to our story of success in West Vancouver.
The full slide deck from my presentation is below (if you receive this post via email you will have to open it in the site to view):
cultureofyes.ca 
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Love this post!
Thanks Sheelah – as we discussed at DPAC this approach also nicely applies to the work of our parents in the district.
Have just attended the Symposium for Growing Innovation on May 3rd (Rural Education at UBC Faculty of Education) so your post is especially timely! And here I am networking!
Thanks Sarah. So glad to have you part of my network!
Hi Chris,
I resonate with your language around ‘connecting and building’ rather than ‘scaling’. Are you familiar with the Two Loops – living systems view of change (from the Berkana Institute/Meg Wheatley)?
It’s a useful map and describes something similar to what you have shared here, along with highlighting the various roles of leadership along the two loops that can help a new system be born and hospice the old system. I’ve written about it here: http://amandafenton.com/2014/03/exploring-how-living-systems-change/
Cheers
Amanda
Thanks Amanda – I really appreciated your post and visuals on Two Loops and how we move to a new system. I hadn’t been familiar with the work – it nicely describes what I see happening in our district.
Thanks for this post Chris. After seeing your slides from the presentation and the comment about no one “model” I was curious to hear more of the story in your district. This nicely sheds some light on it. So, what does connection and diffusion look like for classroom Teachers in West Van? What does it look like for students? What do you see as some key events or initiatives that have fostered this shift in Teaching and Learning toward a networked approach?
Thanks again,
Steve
Hi Steve – good follow-up questions. For classroom teachers it looks like opportunities to network with colleagues around areas of common interest. In our secondary schools we have built common time into the timetable for collaboration over the last three years. We also have some models at work in our elementary schools. We also have “micro grants” to a total of $100,000 teachers can access for projects / questions. We have seen huge uptake on these grants as people meet both inside and outside the school day. For students it looks like trying to also network them together in areas of common interest. For example, we have a few cross-high school courses being offered that bring students with similar passions together for individual courses and then let them continue at their “home” school.
As for key initiatives I think having a small number of key common areas of focus has been crucial. While there are many important things, our continued, somewhat relentless focus on inquiry, self-regulation and digital access has been very helpful. I also think the innovation grants have helped to give ownership of our direction.
Thanks for following up Steve.
I agree Chris, diffusion rather than replication. Education has ‘talked endlessly’ about individual differences in learners – and they should add ‘of all ages’ – and spent countless millions on this. And yet the system is designed for replication and puts a great deal of effort into ‘scaling’.
(I am trying to think of what in our world can only replicate – single cell, uncomplicated ‘stuff’?)
Chris, I am wondering if you see a ‘core’ in a network – something that everything else hinges on – e.g. principles of learning? how the human brain learns?
Amanda: I looked you up and am glad to see that Wheatley’s work is still alive and well. I read her book “Leadership and the New Science” when it first came out and it has influenced my thinking about systems ever since.
Thank you Chris for your thought provoking posts.
Thanks Susan – like you I also really appreciate the addition of Wheatley’s work to this conversation.
I think the success of networks in education are often decided by whether teachers and administrators are working together side-by-side. I think networks of only principals or only teachers often sink – it is when we can get beyond these roles that the networks flourish. And I also think you can very easily tell with a network if they truly have students at the centre of the conversation or if it more about the adults.
Appreciate you always pushing my thinking Susan.
[…] there are great benefits to a decentralized, diffusion modelof change (described by Chris Kennedy here), it does not promote the quick implementation of systematic change. In my opinion, it is […]
this is all along the vision of big ideas. to build a creative collaborative community of educators, learners, artists and researchers. the big ideas in-school projects feed the big ideas digital contents with inquiry based unit plan provide resources to a wider community drawing them to join the circle.
Yes, absolutely Katherine. The work I have seen with Big Ideas allows each project to take on its own personality. It is part of the power that all projects are supported in similar ways but all end up so differently.
[…] I have heard him talk about the concept of program implementation success on several occasions. Here is a post from his blog “The Culture of Yes” that speaks to this very […]