School improvement efforts often do not result in sustained change in schools and improvement in equity in outcomes. The implementation and sustained effects of school improvement remain under-researched. This research focuses specifically on school improvement using improvement science approaches. Improvement science has seen a wide uptake in business and public health (e.g., Gawande, 2011; Langley et al., 2009) but also in the education sector (e.g., Bryk et al., 2015; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2017). An improvement cycle is a systematic approach to achieving continual improvement, emphasising the identification of problem causes, setting goals, and measuring and closely monitoring progress towards goals. Previous studies have documented the initial implementation of improvement science approaches (e.g., Meyers & Hitt, 2018; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2017). However, studies on sustained implementation and improvement are lacking. Further, some case study research points to general practices supporting improvement efforts using improvement science approaches (e.g., Peterson & Carlile, 2021). However, the specific practices, conditions, and enablers of sustained school improvement remain under-researched. Finally, implementation in schools is often supported through research-practice partnerships, which are time- and cost-intensive. There is no known research examining an online learning approach to support schools.

Addressing these gaps, the current study asked school leaders to reflect on three years in which they engaged in an online professional learning programme (PLD) supporting them in their implementation of a school improvement science approach, namely the School Improvement Cycle (SIC). It had three aims: 1) to investigate whether a new improvement science model results in sustained change and improvement; 2) to examine the specific practices, conditions, and enablers of sustained school improvement in schools; and 3) to test an innovative approach to engage with whole school leadership teams via online learning.

The PLD served a cluster of ten primary and two secondary schools, and about ten professional staff in South Australia. Data collected included interviews with five principals, seven middle leaders, two professional staff, and the school achievement data. Interviews gathered in-depth data on the implementation and effectiveness of the SIC and PLD. Following a theory of action framework, we investigated changes in leaders’ beliefs, how those translated into changed leadership behaviours, and the impact these changes had on school culture, which means on leaders’ and teachers’ ways of working and student learning. We also inquired into the level of implementation, the transferability of the acquired learning to other areas, and the challenges encountered. Finally, we explored leaders’ views on the delivery and impact of the PLD.

Leaders noted a range of changes in their leadership beliefs. They reported greater confidence in leading improvement as they had a clear and rigorous process to follow. This pushed them to formulate and test their theory of improvement, rather than jumping to solutions. They changed their focus changed from a teacher- to a student-centred one. Finally, the roles and responsibilities of middle and senior leaders became clearer, and leadership became more genuinely distributed.

Leaders reported changes in their leadership behaviour. They engaged in more data-driven practice, focussed on creating transparency in decisions and processes, and changed the use of meetings to enable more focused work and create more touch points between leaders and between leaders and teachers. This work led to changes in school culture. Leaders saw strong teacher buy-in, a strong sense of accountability and cohesion, more focussed in-school PLD, and a positive impact on student learning and results.

Finally, leaders reported positively on the content, structure, and online nature of the PLD. The online nature meant reduced travel time while still sharing learning with schools across the region, and time flexibility in booking follow-up meetings.

This research is a retrospective examination of a PLD programme facilitated online supporting school teams over three years in implementing an improvement science approach. For the first year, the PLD consisted of six 1.5 hours long webinars approximately every six weeks. In the webinars, the facilitator stepped school teams through the SIC. The webinars thus aligned with the steps in the SIC: (1) Defining the problem and the goal, (2) Developing quick wins and measures, (3) Developing the theory for improvement, (4) Implementing strategy: Professional learning, (5) Implementing strategy: Organisational, and (6) Sustaining progress over time. For each webinar, school teams had a pre-reading and a follow-up meeting in the same week to discuss progress and next steps. Webinars also included schools sharing strategies or challenges to implement the approach. In the second year, schools met with the facilitator to assess their progress and needs. A further four webinars were provided designed to address schools’ implementation challenges. In the third year, schools were offered up to six follow-up meetings. Most schools had three to four meetings. Six out of the twelve schools that took part in the PLD consented to the research, four primary and two secondary schools. Five principals, seven middle leaders, and two professional staff took part in a one-hour-long interview. The semi-structured interviews gathered in-depth data on leadership beliefs and practices, the implementation, enablers, and challenges in schools. A sub-set of questions examined participants’ perceptions of the online PLD. Interviews were conducted online via Zoom, audio-recorded, and transcribed. NVIVO was used for thematic analysis (Braun et al., 2018), which was informed by a theory of action framework (Argyris, 1974). Theories of action explain how people’s underlying beliefs, values, and understandings, together with the conditions they find themselves in, impact the actions they take to resolve problems. Theories of action further link these actions to intended or unintended consequences. Thus, the first round of coding focused on leadership beliefs, behaviours (actions), and consequences. Within these themes, we engaged in an inductive analysis. Themes and coding were reviewed twice by both authors in an iterative process to ensure trustworthiness in the analysis. The school cluster provided achievement data from three years prior to when the schools were introduced to the approach (five years in total). The data was analysed to see changes over time for each school as challenges with changes in measures made further statistical analysis unreliable.

This study constituted an in-depth study of school improvement using a novel approach to school improvement and supporting schools. First, leaders reported changes in beliefs, behaviours and school culture, including student outcomes, as a result of implementing the School Improvement Cycle. Improvement science offers a rigorous process for identifying problems, setting goals, identifying and implementing strategies, and closely monitoring the implementation and effects. Schools saw more cohesion, accountability and buy-in as the approach created clearer structures and resulted in positive outcomes for students. Our research attests to the effectiveness of sustained implementation of improvement science approaches (Meyers & Hitt, 2018; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2017). It however goes further in highlighting specific leadership practices and conditions for school improvement, providing valuable and detailed insights for schools, leaders, district leaders and professional development providers. Given the constant changes in education and the uncertainty that schools grapple with in today’s world, school improvement science enables schools to focus and reflect on the challenges and barriers pertinent to their students and school communities and trial and implement strategies to address these challenges. While the use of improvement cycles is increasingly lauded as a tool for educators, schools, districts, universities, and communities to work towards sustained and systematic change for improvement, such efforts often benefit or build on partnerships, networked communities, or collaborations with researchers or external facilitators to embed this work (Bryk et al., 2015; Coburn, & Penuel, 2016; Crow et al., 2019). Our research highlights the feasibility of an online PLD approach to supporting this work. The findings will have implications on how improvement science is executed in schools and how this implementation can be supported at scale and for geographically dispersed schools through online learning.

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