Learning to Improve shows how a disciplined approach to inquiry, combined with the power of social learning in a network, can accelerate improvement in education. The text introduces Six Improvement Principles that organize the approach, and illustrates them in action with examples from documented improvement efforts.
With its publication in 2015, Learning to Improve introduced the [Six Improvement Principles] to a broad audience and offered educators a new way to “get better at getting better.” In the years since, it has encouraged a movement to strengthen how educators go about tackling the challenges of equity and excellence in their systems and advancing the critical work of improvement in schools and higher education institutions.
Using ideas borrowed from improvement science as it is applied in healthcare and industry, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers.
