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As long as we can answer the five questions dealing with (1) objective, (2) actions, (3) time deadlines, (4) resources, and (5) evaluation, then implementation can proceed. If we cannot answer all five questions, the plan is incomplete. For example, if we know our objective but don’t know what actions, resources, or evaluation to use, then we are unsure of what to do. However, if we know our objective, actions, and resources but don’t know how to evaluate our success, we will be acting without any knowledge of results.

As we move from assessment and planning of personal change to assessment and planning of faculty improvement, the elements to be considered become more complex and planning becomes more detailed. Other techniques for planning may be necessary. Let’s use a “wild” analogy. When a naturalist is tracking a single elephant, she can basically track the beast by herself. But when the naturalist’s task expands to tracking three herds of 45 elephants each, she needs other people, more equipment (radios, binoculars, cameras, jeeps, and helicopters), and an awareness of potential obstacles (ill staff workers, malfunctioning equipment, rough terrain). This analogy can be extended only so far, as supervisors are not naturalists, nor are teaching faculties herds of elephants. But the point is that the larger the organizational effort, the more carefully one needs to account for the sequence and the relationships of activities, resources, and evaluation to overall objectives.

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Instructional Improvement within the Organization

Let us shift now from individual supervisor improvement to supervisors and teachers working together to improve instruction throughout the school. At the most general level, there are four components to any instructional improvement effort: (1) needs assessment to determine what the improvement objectives should be, (2) designing the improvement plan aimed at meeting the objectives, (3) implementing the plan, and (4) evaluating implementation and outcomes. Figure 13.4 shows the relationship of the four components. Instructional improvement efforts in new areas should begin with a needs assessment. Once the needs assessment has been completed, instructional improvement efforts should be cyclical in nature. The evaluation of implementation and outcomes should lead to renewed planning and the implementation of a revised plan. In the remainder of this chapter, we discuss the needs assessment and planning components; implementation and evaluation components are addressed in Chapter 14 .

Explain what the authors mean when they say that organizational instructional improvement efforts should be cyclical. Learning Objective 13.2

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Figure 13.4 Cycle for Instructional Improvement Within the Organization

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Ways of Assessing Need

For purposes of illustration in our discussion of needs assessment, we use an example of an elementary reading supervisor who is responsible for developing revised curriculum guides in reading. The first question for the reading supervisor is, What do we hope to accomplish with a new curriculum guide? To answer this question, we need to collect information about the past and present state of reading instruction. The supervisor can use multiple ways of assessing need: (1) eyes and ears, (2) schoolwide observations, (3) review of curriculum and instructional resources and materials, (4) review of student performance data, (5) third-party review, (6) multiple-choice survey, (7) written open-ended survey, (8) ranking survey, (9) the Delphi technique, and (10) the nominal group technique.

Eyes and Ears

Talk to teachers, administrators, aides, and anyone else who works directly with the task under consideration. In this case, the supervisor would want to ask teachers and aides individually and in small groups what they believe are the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum guide. How is it being used? Is it helpful, and in what ways? Where does it break down? When is it not useful?

Schoolwide Observations

This type of assessment goes beyond individualized classroom observation. It consists of the systematic, schoolwide gathering of quantitative or qualitative observation data. Chapter 12 provides an example of an observation system designed for a schoolwide classroom observation, and a number of other observation systems presented in Chapter 12 can be adapted for use in campus-wide observations to assess a school’s curricular and instructional needs. The classroom, of course, is where the curriculum comes to life, and

Enumerate at least six ways of assessing organizational instructional improvement needs. Learning Objective 13.3

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observing curriculum implementation at the classroom level is an important aspect of determining needed changes to the curriculum.

Review of Curriculum and Instructional Resources and Materials

Take a critical look at the curriculum guide. When was it last revised? What recent knowledge about writing curriculum guides, instructional approaches to reading, and reading topics are not reflected in the current guide? Is the curriculum guide designed to be culturally responsive to all students? Other instructional resources and materials to consider for this needs assessment could include unit and lesson plans, instructional technology, videos, handouts, and instructional games. How are each of these items being utilized and what impact is each having on student reading achievement?

Review of Student Performance Data

Assessors can review student performance data to assess need. But what types of performance data are most useful to teachers? Farrell and Marsh (2016) discuss four different types of student learning data along with teachers’ perceptions of each type in terms of its usefulness for informing and improving curricular and instructional decision making: state assessments, district benchmark data, common grade assessments, and classroom assessments and student work.

While teachers perceived that performance data from state and district assessments offered some useful data for grouping students and reteaching content, they found little other value in it and felt the assessments did not align with or impact their pedagogy. Common grade assessments were perceived to more closely align with instruction, though the impact on instructional practices remained minimal. It was classroom assessments and student work that were most valued by teachers and led to changes in instructional planning and delivery.

Why was this type of data perceived to be most useful to the teachers? Teachers reported they valued the alignment to their instruction, the timely results, and the fact that the assessments and assignments were tailored to their students and content standards. Most importantly, and most likely to inform future

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instruction, teachers believed that classroom assessments and student work— more than any other type of data—provided “insight into an individual student’s thinking and understanding” (Farrell & Marsh, 2016 , p. 447).

Third-Party Review

Having a neutral outside person review the task area can be helpful. The supervisor might contact a university or central office consultant, a graduate doctoral student, or some other person with expertise to do an investigation and write a report. The third-party person should be given a clear description of the task (to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the reading curriculum guides), and care should be taken not to bias the third-party person’s judgment. The report can then serve as an additional source of objective knowledge, not tied to any special interest in the forthcoming project.

Multiple-Choice Survey

This is perhaps the most common type of needs assessment survey. Multiple- choice surveys include the familiar Likert survey, with the possible responses to each item being strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree. A multiple-choice survey can have as few as two possible responses. For example, the respondent can simply be asked to agree or disagree with each item in the survey.

Written Open-Ended Survey

To document and add to the information already received through the methods previously discussed, a written open-ended survey can be administered. Send out a brief questionnaire that asks teachers, aides, administrators, and families what they think about the current reading curriculum. Keep the survey brief and word the questions simply, without education jargon. An example of a survey is found in Figure 13.5 .

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Figure 13.5 Survey of Reading Curriculum

Figure 13.5 Full Alternative Text

Ranking Survey

After gathering ideas of the strengths and weaknesses of the task at hand from many sources, the supervisor can ask staff to rank the ideas. The supervisor can then compile a group frequency and numerical priority for each idea previously mentioned. For example, if—through eyes and ears, classroom observations, and open-ended surveys—the supervisor has collected a list of ideas about perceived weaknesses of the current reading program, the supervisor then could disseminate the list back to teachers, aides, and others. The disseminated form might be as shown in Figure 13.6 . The supervisor can meet with the staff and show the frequency of numbers assigned to each idea and the average score for each item. Those items receiving frequent low scores and/or with the lowest average scores would be the first to focus on when discussing curriculum revisions. The ranking survey can be further refined by having the participants do two separate rankings—first, to see how all the ideas rank and, second, to re- rank a shortened list of prioritized ideas.

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Figure 13.6 Ranking Ideas for Improving Reading Curriculum

Figure 13.6 Full Alternative Text

Delphi Technique

Another written way to prioritize needs is the Delphi technique, developed by the Rand Corporation (Nworie, 2011 ). The technique, originally intended to forecast future trends, is often used for needs assessment. It is a combination of open-ended survey and ranking. The supervisor sends around a problem statement to staff: “We are looking at revisions in the reading curriculum. Write down what you believe needs to be done.” The supervisor retrieves the written comments, reproduces everyone’s comments, and returns all the comments to the participants. They read the comments and then individually write a synthesis of written comments, after which the supervisor reproduces everyone’s comments and returns all the comments to the participants. The participants rank the synthesized ideas. The supervisor collects and computes average and frequency of ratings and then returns the tallies to participants to re-rank. This procedure continues until clear priorities emerge.

Nominal Group Technique

The nominal group technique, made popular by Delbecq and colleagues (1975) , is an effective way to involve all individuals within large groups of

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stakeholders in needs assessment and goal setting (Kennedy & Clinton, 2009 ). The process is outlined here in eight steps:

1. The large group is divided into small groups. Each small group is assigned a facilitator to explain and coordinate the process.

2. Each individual within a small group silently generates and writes perceived reading curriculum improvement needs.

3. In round-robin manner, participants orally share with their small group one perceived improvement need at a time. The facilitator records each idea on a flip chart. At this point, there is no discussion—only a listing of perceived improvement needs.

4. Small-group discussions of each perceived improvement need are led by the facilitators. The purpose of the discussion is clarification of the perceived improvement needs, not debate on their validity.

5. Individuals within each small group rate all of the perceived improvement needs that were listed in step 3. This step usually takes the form of participants assigning each perceived improvement need a numerical value. For example, the facilitator might instruct group members to rate each improvement need from 1 to 5, with an item assigned a value of 1 considered to be unimportant and an item rated a 5 perceived to be an extremely important improvement need.

6. Each small-group facilitator collects all group members’ ratings and calculates a mean for each perceived improvement need. The facilitator rewrites the perceived improvement needs in rank order by mean and shares the results with the small group.

7. Each small group submits its list of ranked improvement needs (without the means) for large-group consideration. By preagreement, each small group might submit only its top-ranked improvement needs (perhaps its top five) to the large group.

8. A lead facilitator then takes the large group through steps 4 through 6. In the large-group version of step 4, any participant can ask for clarification of any perceived improvement need, with the appropriate small-group facilitator providing the requested clarification. In the whole-group version of step 5, each participant rates all perceived improvement needs

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presented to the large group. The product of the large-group version of step 6 is a list of reading curriculum improvement needs in rank order.

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Analyzing Organizational Needs

Some organizational needs are easily understood and addressed by supervisors and teachers. Others are more complicated; they require analysis to determine their underlying causes before a plan can be formulated.

For decades, W. Edwards Deming (1986) argued for the use of data displays to examine factors that may contribute to organizational needs and problems. In this section we discuss a few types of charts suggested by Deming and his colleagues. We do this by applying each chart to a school situation. The words of Mary Walton (1986) should allay any anxiety concerning the use of such charts that the reader without expertise in complex data analysis might be experiencing:

Some of the most useful statistical tools are neither difficult nor complicated to

master. The level of mathematics necessary is no more than a seventh or eighth

grader might learn. Several of the basic tools are merely ways of organizing and

visually displaying data. In most cases, employees can collect the data and do

much of the interpretation, and they are happy to do so because it gives them

more responsibility. (p. 4)

The types of data displays discussed in this section, with examples analyzing different types of school needs, include cause-and-effect diagrams, flowcharts, and Pareto charts.

Cause-and-Effect Diagrams

Figure 13.7 is an example of a cause-and-effect diagram, often referred to as a fishbone diagram. In our example, a newly formed staff development committee has received feedback from teachers throughout the district that recent staff development programs have been ineffective. Based on a series of

Summarize the specific purpose and design of a data display used to analyze organizational needs. Learning Objective 13.4

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interviews with representative groups of teachers, the committee constructed the cause-and-effect diagram in Figure 13.7 .

Figure 13.7 Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Figure 13.7 Full Alternative Text

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Four general causes were identified for the ineffective professional development: (1) poor planning, (2) low-quality staff development sessions, (3) inadequate support for the program, and (4) unsatisfactory program evaluation. Contributing causes within the poor planning category included failure to involve teachers in the planning process, the fact that the professional development plan was not based on teacher needs, and the absence of alternatives for staff from different grade levels, content areas, and specialty areas.

The poor quality of the staff development sessions was attributed to several issues: too many teachers were present, each session was a one-shot workshop unrelated to the other workshops in the program, and the workshop presentations were of poor quality. The workshops were perceived to be substandard because the outside presenters did not have a good understanding of the school culture or the purposes of the program, and their presentations were too abstract to evoke teacher interest.

Problems with support included a lack of funds to purchase instructional materials necessary to implement ideas introduced in the workshops and a failure to provide support for teachers attempting to transfer workshop concepts to the classroom. Finally, the committee found that the district’s evaluation of the program had been inadequate. The evaluation forms used by the district were the same ones used for all staff development workshops; they were not relevant to the specific content of the workshops being assessed. Additionally, the wording of the evaluation questions was so general that teachers were not sure what the questions were asking. Since no formal analysis of evaluation data took place, no information on program outcomes was available and no program revisions were made.

The “anatomy of a failure” depicted in Figure 13.7 is not the most pleasant project the planning committee could have undertaken. Yet the completed diagram was a valuable tool in planning future professional development programs.

Flowcharts

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A flowchart can be used to review a process when either the process or conflicting perceptions of the process are resulting in unmet needs. When different parties involved in a process draw their own flowcharts, the charts often are dissimilar. Figure 13.8 shows a flowchart tracking what happens from the time a student is sent to the office for misbehavior until the student returns to class. This chart was drawn by the principal’s administrative assistant. Flowcharts of the same process drawn by the principal, the teacher, and the student might be very different from the administrative assistant’s and each other’s!

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Figure 13.8 Flowchart

Figure 13.8 Full Alternative Text

Pareto Charts

A Pareto chart illustrates in descending frequency of size those factors that cause a need or problem. Displaying the relative impact of causal factors gives planners information to help them set priorities and allocate resources. Figure 13.9 illustrates a Pareto chart with bars showing the percentage of teachers leaving a school district for each of several reasons. Above the bars, a cumulative percentage line runs across the chart. These data would be valuable to a planning team designing a teacher retention program.

Figure 13.9 Pareto Chart

Figure 13.9 Full Alternative Text

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Planning

After assessing needs, planning proceeds. We might think of planning as a recipe. A plan for direct assistance, professional development, curriculum development, group development, or action research has the same elements as a cooking recipe. We decide our objective: “To bake a sweet potato soufflé.” (Thanks to Donna Bell for providing this culinary example.) Knowing our family’s previous history of food preferences, we are confident that if we cook the soufflé correctly, they will enjoy it and we will be held in positive regard for at least 10 minutes. Next, we determine the activities and when they will take place:

Activity 1: Mash 6 cups of cooked sweet potatoes.

Activity 2: Beat into the mashed potatoes: 4 eggs, 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Activity 3: Spread out in unbuttered pan.

Activity 4: Mix in a separate bowl: 1 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup flour, 1 cup butter, 1 cup chopped pecans.

Activity 5: Spread this mix (Activity 4) evenly over the potatoes (Activity 3).

Activity 6: Bake at 350° for 1 hour.

With the activities and times determined, we need to identify resources. Equipment resources are an oven, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a large bowl, a pan, a mixing fork, and a spreading knife. Food resources are sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, sugar, vanilla, brown sugar, flour, pecans, and milk.

Finally, we plan to evaluate the success of our cooking endeavor by the following criteria: Everyone in our family will eat the sweet potato soufflé. At least two of

Describe one of the planning techniques for organizational instructional improvement. Learning Objective 13.5

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the three members will ask for seconds. All of them will tell us we’re wonderful cooks, and they will volunteer to wash the dishes.

If the supervisor tries acting as a gourmet of instructional cookery and planning recipes for success, all staff members will delight in the soufflé of instructional improvement. The food analogy has run its course (by now, you are probably heading for the refrigerator), and we can turn to assessing and planning within the school context. Techniques of planning discussed in this section include the PATH model, affinity diagrams, process decision program charts, Gantt charts, and the Teaching About, With and For framework. This section concludes with discussion of force field analysis, a process that combines needs assessment and planning.

PATH

The PATH model—Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope—was introduced by Pearpoint et al. (1993) as a planning tool for schools, other organizations, and families. In schools, PATH initially was used for plans to assist students with disabilities, but eventually it also was employed as a process for organizational change. Several different versions of PATH have been developed in PreK–12 education (Hughes et al., 2019 ; Morgan, 2016 ; Wood et al., 2019 ), and we offer a variation of the model here intended for a supervisor to use when working with teachers and other stakeholders to develop a curriculum or instructional program. PATH consists of the following steps:

Step 1: Create a vision of the future. What will the program look like a year from now? How will teachers, students, and other stakeholders be engaged in the program? What will be the benefit of the program for students? Teachers? Families? The community? Step 2: Establish specific goals. These goals, if met, will mean the program vision has been achieved. Step 3: Describe the current situation. What factors have created the need for the program? What factors will assist in program development and success? What factors will hinder program development and success and will need to be addressed?

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Affinity Diagrams

Let us assume that a needs assessment has identified a number of specific needs, with many of those needs appearing to be related to each other. An affinity diagram is a way of clustering needs and identifying broad goals that address a set of related needs. One way to begin the building of an affinity diagram is to list each identified need on a separate card or sticky note. Figure 13.10 displays the results of a curriculum needs assessment. In the assessment, teachers, parents, and community members stated that students should attain each of the outcomes in Figure 13.10 . The affinity diagram in Figure 13.11 clusters the curriculum needs and identifies a broad goal common to each cluster. Enfolding specific needs within larger categories enables the planning team to focus on a few broad goals while retaining information on specific needs.

Step 4: Identify partners. Decide who will be directly involved in program development and who will be recruited to provide support for that group. Step 5: Identify needed capacities. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions will those designing the program need to engage in program development? Which of those capacities are already present? Which capacities need to be acquired? What learning activities will be provided to acquire needed capacities? Step 6: Visualize progress. What progress on program development will be made at each of the following points in time:

Six months from now? Three months from now? One month from now?

Step 7: Design an action plan. This step involves creating a specific plan for program development:

What specific program development activities will take place? Who will be responsible for each program development activity? What is the timeline for completing each program development activity? How will program development activities be monitored?

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Figure 13.10 Curriculum Needs, to Be Clustered in Affinity Diagram

Figure 13.10 Full Alternative Text

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Figure 13.11 Affinity Diagram

Figure 13.11 Full Alternative Text

Process Decision Program Charts

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Members of the school community often anticipate problems with the implementation of instructional innovations. Sometimes these problems come to pass, and sometimes they don’t, but it is wise to identify and be prepared to address potential landmines. The process decision program chart (PDPC)—and the reflection that goes into creating it—is designed to do just that. A PDPC has four levels. The first level states the school’s instructional improvement goal. The second level briefly summarizes the tasks that need to be carried out to reach the goal (which are detailed in a separate and more extensive program plan). The third level describes potential problems with implementation; and the fourth level outlines anticipated solutions for each potential problem (again, detailed in a separate planning document).

An example of a PDPC is shown in Figure 13.12 . The goal of the school (top of chart) in the example was to implement problem-based learning (PBL) schoolwide. Major tasks the supervisor and teachers planned to complete (second row on chart) included converting the school’s traditional curriculum guide to one that focused on PBL and collaborating to assist each other in the use of PBL in all classes. Potential problems anticipated by the faculty (third row on chart) included the new PBL curriculum conflicting with the state achievement test; the teachers were concerned that the new curriculum would not “cover” all of the content measured by the test. Another concern was that the school’s planned curriculum guide would conflict with the district guide that the central office expected all schools in the district to follow. Regarding the task of implementing PBL in all classrooms, many teachers reported that, while they had been provided an overview of PBL and saw its considerable potential, they did not believe they possessed the skills to implement it effectively in their classrooms. Finally, a number of teachers noted that the instructional resources and materials they had been using in their traditional teaching would be of little value in PBL.

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Figure 13.12 Process Decision Program Chart

Figure 13.12 Full Alternative Text The bottom row of entries in Figure 13.12 summarizes the solutions that the faculty identified with respect to each of the potential problems. The state test objectives would be enveloped into broader objectives more appropriate for PBL, and the new curriculum guide would show which test objectives were addressed by each PBL unit. A liaison group would work with the central office to make sure the new school curriculum guide was aligned with the district curriculum, and the new school guide would consist of two columns, showing the congruence of the school guide (one of the columns) with the district guide (the other column).

To address concerns about the instructional skills necessary to implement PBL, the teachers would be provided several all-day sessions of initial skill training, and ongoing support would be provided through collaboration within the school’s already established professional learning communities and a new peer coaching program. The problem of a scarcity of resources and materials for PBL

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would be addressed through a series of “make-it, take-it” workshops led by experts on PBL in which teachers would both learn how to apply existing resources and materials to PBL and design new materials specific to their content areas. Also, if necessary, the school would purchase additional resources and materials to assist teachers with PBL, and those resources and materials would be available for teachers to check out from the teachers’ resource room.

Gantt Charts

A Gantt chart is simply a graph that portrays the beginning and completion dates of each activity involved in completing the overall task (Owen, 2002 ). As shown in Figure 13.13 , activities for revising curriculum guides are placed on the left-hand side of the chart. The beginning and ending time for each activity is shown by a bar across the timeline. The supervisor can refer to the chart at any time to check on the progress of the project and be reminded of what groups and what subtasks should be receiving attention.

Figure 13.13 Gantt Chart

Figure 13.13 Full Alternative Text

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The Teaching About, With, and For Framework

The Teaching About, With, and For framework for planning that we discuss here is based on an idea put forth in Wager (2008) and Stinson and Wager (2012) . Teaching about applies to lesson plans and activities designed to address the selected focus area, teaching with refers to embedding principles associated with the selected topic into pedagogical practices and daily classroom life, and teaching for supports students to apply their concomitant learning in authentic ways to their worlds in and out of school.

An example of a Teaching About, With, and For plan is shown in Figure 13.14 . The goal of the school in this example was to implement the ideals and practices of restorative justice, defined by Darling Hammond and associates (2020) as “non-punitive, relationship-centered approaches for addressing and avoiding harm” (p. 295). The chart lists ideas for teaching about, with, and for restorative justice.

Figure 13.14 Teaching About, With, and For Restorative Justice

Teaching About

Restorative Justice

Lesson Content

Teaching With

Restorative Justice

Embedding the Principles

Teaching For Restorative

Justice

Social Impact

Community-building

circles to set classroom norms

(Katic et al., 2020 )

Elements of dignity

(High, 2017 )

Community service project:

students teach about restorative justice at a

community center for youth in the community served by

the school

Proactive circles to set

behavioral expectations for

Building

relationships and connectedness

Back-to-school night: students

share successful restorative

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academic goals and tasks

(Acosta et al.,

2019 )

(Gomez et al., 2021 )

justice experiences with their families

Inquiry-based and

collaborative learning projects

Culturally

responsive restorative

discipline

(Lustick, 2020 )

Peer mediations: students

mediate conflicts within their school community

(Katic et al., 2020 )

Role plays of restorative

conversations using restorative questions

(Katic et al., 2020 )

Shared decision making and

equitable dialogue

Affective language

Restorative justice was selected as the school’s focus area when the school’s needs assessment indicated that many students did not feel safe or connected at school and that the school’s disciplinary practices disproportionately displaced Black students from the classroom. The school committed to “a shift in focus from exclusionary discipline to emphasis on reparation and reconciliation” (Gomez et al., 2021 , p. 453). As educators and families worked together to plan for this transition, they decided to incorporate community- building circles as a regular classroom activity across the campus. These circles would represent and support inclusion and connectedness and could be used for many purposes, such as setting classroom norms or discussing academic goals. These lesson ideas were part of the school’s plan for teaching about restorative justice.

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The planners also wanted to ensure that their approach to restorative justice was not perpetuating any biases or systemic inequalities, so the teachers and school administrators engaged in professional learning about culturally responsive restorative discipline and included this in the plan for teaching with restorative justice. They committed to an approach that “mends interpersonal harm and one that also addresses institutional harm” (Lustick, 2020 , p. 556).

Finally, the planners wanted students to have opportunities to apply their learning about restorative justice in real-world situations. As a part of its plan for teaching for restorative justice, the school arranged for students who had experienced success with restorative justice to discuss and demonstrate the process at a community center for youth in the community served by the school. The school in this example aimed to create a culture of dignity and restoration, where students learn to heal and understand about harm, how it is caused, and how to reduce harm.

Combining Assessment and Planning: Force Field Analysis

Thus far we have considered assessment and planning as separate entities. Force field analysis combines these functions. This process can help educators define goals, analyze competing forces, and plan how to bring about needed change. A force field analysis consists of 10 phases:

1. Describe the desired state of affairs (what should be). 2. Describe the current state of affairs (what is).