An Introduction to Networked Improvement Communities as a Form of Research Practice Partnership — By Angel Xiao Bohannon

Many policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have long noted the disconnect between research and practice in education, pointing to the limited implementation of research and research-based reforms in classrooms and schools (Tseng, 2012; Neal et al., 2015). One promising solution for bridging this gap is research-practice partnerships (RPPs), which are long-term mutualistic partnerships that use research to investigate and address persistent, complex problems in education (Coburn, et al., 2013; Coburn & Penuel, 2016). In this blog post, I introduce readers to one type of research practice partnership – Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) – which bring together researchers and practitioners from across different organizations, such as schools, districts, and universities, to engage in continuous improvement.

What is a Networked Improvement Community?

What are NICs? At their core, NICs bring together researchers and practitioners to address a persistent problem of practice (Bryk et al., 2015; Coburn et al., 2013). They support the implementation of research-based ideas across different contexts to iteratively learn about what works, when, and under what conditions.

They bring together researchers and practitioners in new ways

Like other RPPs, NICs are long-term collaborations between researchers and practitioners that draw on the expertise of both groups (Coburn, et al., 2013; Coburn & Penuel, 2016). NICs focus on problems related to educational practice that align with schools’ and districts’ needs and priorities. NICs blur distinctions between the traditional roles of researchers and practitioners, where researchers produce knowledge and practitioners use it (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2015; Bryk et al., 2015).  In the NIC model, researchers and practitioners need to take up new roles (Coburn et al., 2013; Cohen-Vogel et al., 2015). Researchers are actively involved in continuous improvement work, sometimes acting as continuous improvement facilitators, while practitioners engage in systematic cycles of inquiry where they collect and analyze their own data.

They are organized as a network for sharing knowledge across different organizations

NICs connect different schools, districts, and/or universities and provide opportunities for these organizations to share learnings with each other (Coburn, et al, 2013). Members within NICs focus on a common problem of practice; for example, member institutions in the Community College Pathways NIC agreed to engage in collective efforts to improve the outcomes and quality of learning of their developmental math students (Yamada et al., 2018). A focal organization(s), or what is formally called the network hub, has a bird’s eye perspective on the entire NIC and is responsible for consolidating, refining, and disseminating learning from participating NIC organizations (Bryk et al., 2015). These efforts are organized around a shared understanding of the problem, a working practical theory of how to address that problem, and measures for gauging progress towards the aim.

They engage in iterative cycles of learning 

NICs have educators engage in cycles of iterative testing or what are formally known as plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycles (Hannan, et al., 2015; Bryk, et al., 2015), where educators test a change idea and see how it works in their contexts.  For example, educators might “plan” how to test a research-based idea and what that might look like, “do” the test by enacting the change idea in their classrooms, “study” any data that they collected during the do/testing phase, and “act” on their learning by abandoning the change idea, revising it, or scaling it up (Langley et al., 2009). For example, Tichnor-Wagner and colleagues (2017) describe how educators in the urban school district Broward tested change ideas related to improving a professional development model in schools. In contrast, educators in Fort Worth tested change ideas related to growth mindset and problem solving and implementing behavior reflection sheets in classrooms. Testing these ideas enables educators to ‘learn by doing’ and develop practical know-how for enacting that reform idea in their own contexts.

What have we learned about how NICs operate in practice?

Schools, districts, and universities have leveraged NICs to address equity and instructional improvement in education, including equity centered teacher education (Sandoval & Van Es, 2020), the retention and recruitment of Black and Latinx male teachers (Colley et al., 2017), instructional coaching (Russell et al., 2020a), supporting beginning teachers (Hannan, et al., 2015), and improving student ownership and responsibility (Redding, et al., 2018).

This empirical literature documents some challenges with participating with NICs. One challenge is that educators do not always have the capacity or will for doing continuous improvement work (Tichnor-Wagner, et al., 2017). For instance, although educators in one NIC saw value in the improvement work, some educators expressed concerns about the amount of time and effort it takes to carry out PDSA cycles (Tichnor-Wagner, et al., 2017). Additionally, continuous improvement is a complex intervention that can be difficult for educators to learn, particularly in the midst of multiple competing priorities in schools, districts, and universities (Gallagher & Cottingham, 2019). Another challenge is mixed levels of school and district leadership support for doing continuous improvement work. For example, district leaders in one NIC would at times express frustration that a continuous improvement approach had not been able to produce a more immediate impact on student outcomes, given the external pressures of federal accountability policy (Cannata, et al., 2018).

Given these and other challenges, the existing research also highlights enabling conditions of schools and districts that may facilitate the successful implementation of continuous improvement initiatives. These include: a culture of improvement that enables risk-taking and promotes psychological safety (Gallagher & Cottingham, 2019; Kennedy & Gallagher, 2019), the presence of a data infrastructure or system that collects formative data to guide improvement, in addition to outcome data (Cottingham et al., 2019), opportunities for horizontal and vertical collaboration between and across traditionally siloed groups (e.g., across different district departments) (Thompson et al., 2019; Gallagher & Cottingham, 2019), coaches with content expertise to support school teams (Kennedy & Gallagher, 2019), scaffolded learning opportunities for continuous improvement that include opportunities for educators to practice applying ideas to their own context (Gallagher & Cottingham, 2019), and sufficient resources (e.g., time, funding) for doing the work (Cottingham et al., 2019; Gallagher & Cottingham, 2019; Gallagher et al., 2019).

There are also many benefits to participating in NICs, particularly given the right enabling conditions. There is preliminary evidence of their efficacy, as NICs have contributed to improvements in mathematics outcomes in community colleges (Yamada, et al., 2018) and improvements in teachers’ mathematics (Russell et al., 2020b) and science instruction (Thompson et al., 2019). Practitioners have described many benefits of NICs: NICs allow them to step back from the day-to-day work demands and engage deep reflection around their work (Cannata et al., 2017), foster the development of professional networks across schools (Cannata et al., 2017) and contribute to a sense of teacher efficacy and agency (Kennedy & Gallagher, 2019), among other things. In fact, NIC members in our research study on research-practice partnerships (Penuel et al., 2020) described valuing the cross-site and cross-district collaboration and knowledge sharing, researchers’ perspectives on math teaching, learning and mindsets, and the support that the network hub provides. 

 Ultimately, NICs are a relatively new form of research-practice partnership, and there is still a lot to learn about how they work. For instance, there is limited research documenting the impacts of NICs on what teachers actually do in classrooms. Given that many NICs are funded through short-term grants, we also have limited knowledge of how continuous improvement work in NICs sustains itself once the initial funding runs out (Yurkofsky et al., 2020; for an exception, see Joshi et al., 2021). However, the emerging research suggests NICs are a promising effort at harnessing educators’ and researchers’ collective expertise and resources around complex and challenging problems of practice. In doing so, NICs have the potential to facilitate connections between research and practice.

References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L.M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.

Cannata, M., Cohen-Vogel, L., & Sorum, M. (2017). Partnering for improvement: Improvement communities and their role in scale up. Peabody Journal of Education,92(5), 569–588.

Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research–practice partnerships in education: Outcomes, dynamics, and open questions. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48-54.

Coburn, C. E., Penuel, W. R., & Geil, K. E. (2013). Practice partnerships: A strategy for leveraging research for educational improvement in school districts. William T. Grant Foundation.

Cohen-Vogel, L., Tichnor-Wagner, A., Allen, D., Harrison, C., Kainz, K., Socol, A. R., & Wang, Q. (2015). Implementing educational innovations at scale: Transforming researchers into continuous improvement scientists. Educational Policy, 29(1), 257-277.

Colley, K.E.,Alford, J.E.,Fuentes, D.and Bundy, A. (2017). How does network improvement science (NIS) impact the recruitment and retention of Black and Latino male teachers? NERA Conference Proceedings, 16.

Cottingham, B. W., Gong, A., & Gallagher, H. A. (2019). A Student-Centered Culture of Improvement: The Case of Garden Grove Unified School District. Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE.

Gallagher, H. A., & Cottingham, B. W. (2019). Learning and Practicing Continuous Improvement: Lessons from the CORE Districts. Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE.

Gallagher, H. A., Gong, A., Hough, H. J., Kennedy, K., Allbright, T., & Daramola, E. J. (2019). Engaging District and School Leaders in Continuous Improvement: Lessons from the 2nd Year of Implementing the CORE Improvement Community. Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE.

Hannan, M., Russell, J. L., Takahashi, S., & Park, S. (2015). Using improvement science to better support beginning teachers: The case of the Building a Teaching Effectiveness Network. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(5), 494-508.

Kennedy, K., & Gallagher, H. A. (2019). Leadership That Supports Continuous Improvement: The Case of Ayer Elementary. Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE.

Joshi, E., Redding, C., & Cannata, M. (2021). In the NIC of Time: How Sustainable Are Networked Improvement Communities?. American Journal of Education, 127(3), 000-000.

Langley, G. J., Moen, R. D., Nolan, K. M., Nolan, T. W., Norman, C. L., & Provost, L. P. (2009). The improvement guide: a practical approach to enhancing organizational performance. John Wiley & Sons.

Lewis, C. (2015). What is improvement science? Do we need it in education?. Educational researcher, 44(1), 54-61.

Neal, J. W., Neal, Z. P., Kornbluh, M., Mills, K. J., & Lawlor, J. A. (2015). Brokering the research–practice gap: A typology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 56(3), 422-435.

Penuel, W.R., Farrell, C.C., Anderson, E.R., Coburn, C.E., Allen, A.R., Bohannon, A.X., Hopkins, M., & Brown, S. (2020). A Comparative, Descriptive Study of Research Practice Partnerships: Goals, Activities, and Influence on District Policy Practice and District Decision Making. (Technical Report No. 4). Boulder, CO: National Center for Research in Policy and Practice.

Redding, C., Cannata, M., & Miller, J. M. (2018). System learning in an urban school district: A case study of intra-district learning. Journal of Educational Change, 19(1), 77-101.

Russell, J. L., Correnti, R., Stein, M. K., Bill, V., Hannan, M., Schwartz, N., Booker, L., Pratt, N., & Matthis, C. (2020a). Learning from adaptation to support instructional improvement at scale: Understanding coach adaptation in the TN Mathematics Coaching Project. American Educational Research Journal, 57(1), 148-187.

Russell, J. L., Correnti, R., Stein, M. K., Thomas, A., Bill, V., & Speranzo, L. (2020b). Mathematics Coaching for Conceptual Understanding: Promising Evidence Regarding the Tennessee Math Coaching Model. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(3), 439-466.

Sandoval, C., & van Es, E. (2020). Complexifying the Process of Generating an Aim in a Teacher Preparation Networked Improvement Community. In Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.), The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 5 (pp. 2523-2529). Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Thompson, J., Richards, J., Shim, S. Y., Lohwasser, K., Von Esch, K. S., Chew, C., Sjoberg, B., & Morris, A. (2019). Launching networked PLCs: Footholds into creating and improving knowledge of ambitious and equitable teaching practices in an RPP. AERA Open, 5(3).

Tichnor-Wagner, A., Wachen, J., Cannata, M., & Cohen-Vogel, L. (2017). Continuous improvement in the public school context: Understanding how educators respond to plan–do–study–act cycles. Journal of Educational Change, 18(4), 465-494.

Tseng, V. (2012). The uses of research in policy and practice and commentaries. Social Policy Report, 26(2), 1-24.

Yamada, H., Bohannon, A. X., Grunow, A., & Thorn, C. A. (2018). Assessing the effectiveness of Quantway®: A multilevel model with propensity score matching. Community College Review, 46(3), 257-287.

Yurkofsky, M. M., Peterson, A. J., Mehta, J. D., Horwitz-Willis, R., & Frumin, K. M. (2020). Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change. Review of Research in Education, 44(1), 403-433.