I had the honor and opportunity to represent MNPS’ Collaborative inquiry work and a Multi-State Data Use Standards working group at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement conference this past weekend. 
 
While following the conference hashtag, #ICSEI2017, on Twitter, one of my colleagues from Belgium shared the above quote.  Needless to say, I loved it and completely agree with it.
 
I remember June 4, 2014 when a diverse group of 41 educators and community partners across the district came together to begin discussing data use and the barriers to having effective data use practices in MNPS.  Several barriers (at least 33) were identified at this time.  Using a consensus building protocol, we narrowed the focus to the top 3, which were:

• lack of a common language
• lack of trust throughout the organization
• lack of leadership modeling (“walking the walk”)
  

After identifying these barriers, logic models were developed to create road maps for overcoming the barriers.  These roadmaps have served to inform the collaborative inquiry work for the past 3 years.

To address the common language issue, a committee was convened throughout 2015 to develop the MNPS Innovation Configuration (IC) Map for Collaborative Inquiry and was revised after 4 months of implementation where 5 middle schools (Haynes, Margaret Allen, Two Rivers, West End, and Wright Middle Preps) provided feedback to make it better.
 
Another committee was convened during 2015 to develop an evaluation plan for collaborative inquiry.  If we expected schools to use data for making informed decisions, then we needed to “walk the walk.”  A Teacher Data Use Survey, interviews, focus groups, and observations were used to collect data to answer the below questions:

• How and where is collaborative inquiry occurring in MNPS schools and with what fidelity?
• How does the culture of MNPS support collaborative inquiry and promote the integration of collaborative inquiry as essential to the work of the district?
• What preparation and support needed to implement collaborative inquiry are teachers and administrators receiving?
• Is collaborative inquiry making a difference for teaching and learning in MNPS?

Access the MNPS Collaborative Inquiry Evaluation Infographic HERE.  Read more about the complete evaluation plan HERE.
 
The MNPS Collaborative Inquiry has only been able to get as far as it has because we are doing it together.  If you have a collaborative inquiry success story to share OR need any collaborative inquiry support, please feel free to contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

Thank you for your participation in the Metro Nashville Public Schools Data Use Research Alliance. To ensure that our work remains timely and relevant to your needs we created a brief survey to ask for your feedback on our recent work together. The survey is anonymous and should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.

We would greatly appreciate it if you would provide feedback about the support activities and research studies listed below, as well as the general operation of the alliance in the survey. You can access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MNPS2016.

The survey will close on October 26th so please complete the survey before then.

Below is a listing of activities and research studies that REL Appalachia has worked on with the Metro Nashville Public Schools Data Use Research Alliance on in 2016.

If you have any questions or comments about the survey, please contact Rikesh Nana by email (nanar@cna.org) or phone (703-824-2886). Thank you for your participation and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

If you and/or your school would like more support with collaborative inquiry, please contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

This publication was not done alone.  I want to thank the following middle schools for their contribution in getting the survey developed and published: Haynes, JFK, Margaret Allen, Two Rivers, West End, and Wright.  I also want to thank Mary Laurens Seely and the district data coaches who helped.

Along with the survey, REL Appalachia evaluators created us some other tools that have made the data analysis of the survey easier.  They have a page with additional resources, which you can access here: http://relappalachia.org/products/rel-appalachia-reports/teacher-data-use-survey-tools-and-administration-guide/.

The TDUS will be administered in the Community of Practice schools from October 17-31.  Links will be sent to CoP school administrators and site leads to disseminate to appropriate stakeholders.  Please remember that the survey takes approximately 20 minutes or less.  It is voluntary and completely anonymous.  The data will be used to facilitate another collaborative inquiry working group meeting to discuss further support from central office for implementing collaborative inquiry.

If you have any questions or want to learn more, please feel free to reach out to Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

In the last blog post, I shared about the beginning of the MNPS collaborative inquiry journey, which included identifying barriers to implementing collaborative inquiry.  The IC Map (Innovation Configuration) Map for Collaborative Inquiry helped address the barrier of the lack of a common language.  Another barrier identified by the stakeholder group was lack of leadership modeling, or as we call it "walking the walk."

The identification of this barrier led to the development of an evaluation plan for collaborative inquiry.  When implementing a new idea or strategy, creating an evaluation plan before implementation helps with monitoring progress.  Through our partnership with REL Appalachia, MNPS received technical assistance for developing an evaluation plan and for building our capacity to use the plan to monitor our progress.

With the evaluation plan created, the next step was to pilot it with the MNPS Collaborative Inquiry Community of Practice schools in the spring of 2016.  To answer the evaluation questions, multiple sources of data sources were used.  REL Appalachia liaison, Dr. Stephanie Wilkerson, helped MNPS develop data collection protocols, including the Teacher Data Use Survey (to be released by IES soon), Collaborative Inquiry interview protocols, and Collaborative Inquiry Focus Group protocols.  Fortunately, the support did not stop there as Dr. Wilkerson and her staff worked with an MNPS team to build our capacity to collect the data necessary for answering the evaluation questions in the future when their assistance is no longer available.  Finally, the data collected this spring was triangulated and used to develop the Preliminary Evaluation Report for the Collaborative Inquiry Community of Practice and Infographic.

I thank Dr. Stephanie Wilkerson through the REL Appalachia partnership for her support.  We look forward to the continued use of the evaluation plan as the community of practice grows.

If you have any questions/feedback, please feel free to contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

If you have been part of the collaborative inquiry work long, REL Appalachia is a name that has been mentioned.  REL (Regional Educational Laboratory) Appalachia has been MNPS’ partner supporting the collaborative inquiry work for fostering effective data use practices.  REL Appalachia is one of 10 federally funded RELs and provides research-based support to KY, TN, VA, and WV.  MNPS is fortunate to be the only district throughout the US with a partnership with a REL.
 
During the first year of our partnership, time was spent bringing together diverse stakeholders representing middle school teachers, coaches, assistant principals, principals, and central office departments.  Time was spent with Dr. Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman building our capacity around collaborative data use practices and then taking deeper dive in discussion of two critical implementation questions:

• What are the barriers to implementing collaborative inquiry throughout the district; and
• What would be the ideal once the barriers are removed?

The top three barriers identified were lack of a common language, lack of trust, and lack of leadership modeling.  The logic models created to address these three barriers helped provide a roadmap for year 2’s work.
 
In year two, work began to address two of the barriers—lack of common language and lack of leadership modeling.  To address the lack of a common language barrier, a committee worked with national experts to develop the MNPS Innovation Configuration Map (IC Map) for Collaborative Inquiry.  This map provides a common language about observable behaviors when collaborative inquiry is occurring.  It has a progression, so teams can use the IC Map in a variety of ways.  The Institute of Education Sciences created two videos highlighting MNPS’ IC Map work:

• What is an Innovation Configuration Map?
• Example of an Innovation Configuration Map

To address the lack of leadership modeling barrier, a committee of MNPS stakeholders worked with REL Appalachia to develop an evaluation plan, which was then used during the community of practice implementation in Spring 2016 to collect data and monitor the progress of implementation.  This final report is still being reviewed by IES, but will be available soon.
 
If you want to learn more about this work and/or would like support implementing collaborative inquiry data use practices, please contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.