Leveraging Collaboration for Supporting Student Achievement

“….collective efficacy, or the shared belief that the group will successfully achieve its goal, is a prime resource for sustained improvements in student learning”
(Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004).

On December 6, 2016, representatives from MNPS had the opportunity to present at the Learning Forward conference.  The presentation, Leveraging Collaboration for Supporting Student Achievement, shared the three-year journey of MNPS’ partnership with the Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia (REL AP) for building middle school educators’ capacities to engage in the collaborative inquiry process for raising student achievement.  The presentation provided evidence-based, practical tips for translating collaborative inquiry from theory at the national level to implementation at the district, school, and classroom levels.
 
While you can access the presentation below, here’s an overview of what was shared:

• Dr. Stephanie Wilkerson, REL AP liaison, provided an overview of RELs and the technical assistance that REL AP provided MNPS in helping us support evidence-based data use practices.  She shared about the fishbone used to identify barriers, the logic models created to overcome the top three barriers, and how that data informed the district creation on the MNPS Innovation Configuration Map (IC Map) for Collaborative Inquiry.  To learn more, go HERE.
  

• Dr. Margie Johnson, MNPS Business Intelligence Coordinator, shared the Data-informed Decision Making Ecosystem, the model created to drive the data use capacity building work here in MNPS, and modeled the collaborative inquiry process for participants during the Tale of Two Data Meetings using data provided by Dr. Mary Laurens Seely, MNPS Data Coach Coordinator.

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• The school level tips and tricks were shared by three building principals—Dr. Craig Hammond, West End Middle; Dr. Erin Anderson, Wright Middle; and Dr. Shelly Dunaway, Two Rivers Middle.  They shared how they implemented the collaborative inquiry process in their schools.  By using the IC Map for Collaborative Inquiry as a common language, each principal was able to provide differentiated professional learning supports, such as a book study, modeling, coaching, etc. 

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Whitney Akin, 5th grade literacy teacher at Dupont Hadley, shared how she took the idea of innovation configuration map and the collaborative inquiry process into her classroom.  She has her students create an IC Map for data chats, so they know the expectations of them.  She also uses the collaborative inquiry process as a literacy strategy for helping students process text.  Check out her literacy handout HERE.

If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to reach out to one of us at

• Whitney Akin: [email protected]
• Dr. Erin Anderson: [email protected]
  
• Dr. Shelly Dunaway: [email protected]
• Dr. Craig Hammond: [email protected]
• Dr. Margie Johnson: [email protected]
• Dr. Mary Laurens Seely: [email protected]
• Dr. Stephanie Wilkerson: [email protected] 

References:

Goddard, R. G., Hoy, W.K., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2004).  Collective efficacy: Theoretical development, empirical evidence, and future directions.  Educational Researchers, 33, 2-13.

Johnson, M. (2016).  Experience from the field. Excerpt obtained from How to Make Data Work: A Guide for Educational Leaders, pp. 171.

Lipton, L. & Wellman, B. (2012).  Got data? Now what?   Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

dec_6_mnps_collab_inquiry.pdf
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