Launching Innovation in Schools

by MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab

Every great teacher and every great school constantly work towards creating better learning conditions for students. Just as we hope our students become lifelong learners, we as educators should be constantly learning and improving. This education course is for school leaders of all kinds (from teacher-leaders to principals to superintendents) who are launching innovation in schools—starting new efforts to work together to improve teaching and learning." from the MIT Teaching System Lab.

Download Course Guide PDF

Download Classroom Templates

Download Video Resources

• Resources for Innovation Course

  Content Handouts

  • Cycle of Launching Innovation

  • Cycle of Experiment and Experience 

  • Relating the Two Cycles

  • Three-legged Stool

  • Ladder of Inference

  • Four Fields of Listening 

  • 5 Ways of Gathering Data (Click here for PDF)

  •  PDF & Google Slides of Initial Action Plan Template (parts 1-3)

  Take-Out Packages

  • Four Corners Take-Out Package

  • Rightboro Scenarios Take-Out Package

  • Left-Hand Column Case Take-Out Package

  • Evaluation Scenarios Take-Out Package

  Featured Schools/Organizations

  (in the order they appear in the course)

  • Mashpee Public Schools in Mashpee, MA

  • Shrewsbury Public Schools in Shrewsbury, MA

  • Phillips Academy Andover in Andover, MA  (and their Tang Institute)

  • Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School in Cambridge, MA  

  • Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, New Hampshire 

  • Blake Middle School in Medfield, Massachusetts 

  • The Community Charter School of Cambridge (CCSC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts 

  • EdVestors

  Readings and More

  Unit 0 - Welcome

  • Barseghian, Tina. 2012. "Why Kids Need Schools to Change." MindShift, September 21. KQED.

  • Levy, Frank and Richard J. Murnane. 2013. Dancing with Robots: Human Skills for Computerized Work. Third Way Next.

  Unit 1 - Launching Innovation in Schools

  • Reeves, Douglas. December 2006/January 2007. "Leading to Change/How Do You Change School Culture?" Educational Leadership 64 (4): 92-94.

  • Learners may select one article (or more articles) from "Educational Eden: Imagining the Ideal School System," a series of articles from The Atlantic. 

  • For additional resources on systems thinking, we recommend looking into some resources from the Waters Foundation, including Habits of a Systems Thinker.

  • XQ Institute. 2017. Knowledge Module No. 1: Students in the 21st Century.

  Unit 2 - Bringing People Together Around Ideas They Care About

  • Evans, Robert. Spring 2000. "Why a School Doesn't Run -- or Change -- Like a Business." Independent School Magazine. National Association of Independent Schools. 

  • Pirtle, Sylvia Segura and Don Doggett. 2013. "Leadership Actions for Transforming Schools." SEDL Insights. SEDL (now part of American Institutes for Research). 

  • Schwartz, Katrina. 2014. "How Transparency Can Transform School Culture." Mindshift, May 19. KQED. 

  Unit 3 - Refining a Vision & Getting to Work

  • Bellow, Adam. 2016. "Doing More With Less: Start Small and Collaborate." Edutopia. 

  • Daccord, Tom and Justin Reich. Accessed November 2016. "Failure is Mandatory: Creating a Culture of Innovation." EdTechTeacher. 

  • Daccord, Tom and Justin Reich. 2015. "How to Transform Teaching with Tablets." Educational Leadership 72 (8): 18-23.

  • Harrison, Cindy and Joellen Killion. 2007. "Ten Roles for Teacher Leaders." Educational Leadership 65 (1): 74-77.

  • Reich, Justin. 2015. "Looking at Class Sets of Work with MathMistakes.org." Justin Reich's Blog. 

  • Mehta, Jal and Sarah Fine. 2015. The Why, What, Where, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools. Jobs for the Future. 

  Unit 4 - Working Together Through Ups and Downs

  • Jorgenson, Raymond. Meetings that Matter: Conversational Leadership in Today's Schools. The Systems Thinker.

  • Tormala, Alyssa. 2016. "Discomfort, Growth, and Innovation." Edutopia. 

  • Read sections of interest from: The Wallace Foundation. 2013. The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning. The Wallace Perspective. 

  Unit 5 - Measuring Progress & Adjusting

  From the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: 

  • Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "The Six Core Principles of Improvement." Accessed February 20, 2017.  

  • Harvard Educational Review. Book Note on Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Publishing Group. Accessed February 20, 2017. 

  • Professor Donald J. Peurach (University of Michigan) and Dr. Anthony S. Bryk (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) launched an edX MOOC titled Improvement Science in Education on May 30, 2017. 

  • If you’d like to dig deeper into a specific assessment framework, consider the Data Wise Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education: 

    • Boudett, Kathryn Parker and Elizabeth A. City. May/June 2013. "Lessons from the Data Wise Project." Harvard Education Letter 29 (3)

    • Steele, Jennifer L. and Kathryn Parker Boudett. January/February 2008. "Leadership Lessons from Schools Becoming 'Data-Wise.'" Harvard Education Letter 24 (1). 

    • The Data Wise Project has a self-paced MOOC on edX if you want to learn more.

  Unit 6 - Sustaining Innovation in Schools

  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2016. What Makes a School a Learning Organisation? A Guide for Policy Makers, School Leaders and Teachers. OECD. 

  • Schwartz, Katrina. 2016. "How One School Changed Culture From Within So Students Could Succeed." MindShift, November 21. KQED. 

  Microsoft

  Our course sponsor, Microsoft, has developed the Microsoft School Transformation Framework, a set of white papers and resources that summarize decades of research about school leadership and school change. Here are some of the resources that are relevant to this unit:

  • Microsoft. 2015. Education Transformation Framework: Leadership and Policy

  • Microsoft. 2015. Organizational Capacity, Strategic Planning and Quality Assurance - Enabling Transformation. 

  • Jensen, Ben. 2015. Enabling Transformation with Strategic Planning, Organizational Capacity and Sustainability. Microsoft. 

  • Microsoft. 2015. Establishing a Vision.

  • Langworthy, Maria. 2015. Vision for Anytime Anywhere Learning for All Transformation Framework. Microsoft. 

  • Microsoft. 2015. Teacher and Leader Capacity.

  • Jensen, Ben. 2015. Building Leader and Educator Capacity for Transformation.  

  • Microsoft. 2015. Organizational Capacity, Strategic Planning and Quality Assurance - Monitoring and Evaluation. 

  • Clark, Tom. 2015. Quality Assurance: Monitoring and Evaluation to Inform Practice and Leadership. Microsoft.

  • Microsoft. 2015. Developing a Learning Community. 

  • Sessums, Christopher. 2015. Learning Communities and Support. Microsoft. 

  "UnMOOCed" resources & Video Playlists

  Teaching Systems Lab's UnMOOCed video playlists