Resources: Continuous Improvement
Discover resources to help you with your continuous improvement in education.
Practical Tools
AMI PDSA Planning Guide & Toolkit
Follow this planning guide to address a current problem in your system. The guide and PDSA tool will help you to plan, implement, and study a possible solution to create lasting improvements.
AMI PDSA Planning Tool (with an example)
Use this tool to plan your actions before implementing a Plan-Do-Study-Act (cycle) in order to solve a problem you’re facing. The document guides you through the process with prompts.
AMI PDSA Identify the Problem
Use this tool to help you better understand the problem you are trying to solve.
Fishbone Diagram
Use this tool to brainstorm and categorize all of the potential causes contributing to the problem you are trying to solve. Once completed, you can choose which cause or category to prioritize initially.
5 Whys Protocol
This tool follows the fishbone exercise and allows you to uncover the root cause of your problem.
Driver Diagrams
Use this driver diagram tool (with example) to reflect on and visualize the links between your improvement goal and all of the structures and processes that affect it. This practical tool helps you to organize a theory of improvement that you have generated, by identifying meaningful actions towards achieving your goal.
Setting Goals & Indicators
Once you’ve identified the cause of the problem or area of improvement, use this tool to help create achievable goals and decide how you’ll know you’ve reached them by identifying indicators of success.
AMI Planning Tool - Planning & Doing the Change
This tool is designed to support you to create an action and data collection plan before implementing your change idea.
AMI Planning Tool - Study & Act
In the final stages of the PDSA process, use this tool to facilitate the studying of your data as well as deciding how to act on the results.
Resources
Continuous Improvement in Education
A white paper from the Carnegie Foundation, this paper provides examples of how continuous improvement is being applied in education toward the goals of making education more efficient, effective, and equitable. The examples are organized in three broad categories: at the level of classroom instruction, system-wide, and improvement efforts with collective impact.
A Primer for Continuous Improvement in Schools and Districts
This brief provides an overview of the continuous improvement process in educational contexts. It features a summary, references and resources.
Data-based decision-making for school improvement: Research insights and gaps
This research article discusses how school leaders and teachers can use different sources of data to improve the quality of education.
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
This guidebook is designed to demystify continuous improvement and help you build capacity to effectively engage in the process.
Putting Evidence to Work - A School’s Guide to Implementation
A guide to implementation applicable to any school improvement decision.
Useable knowledge
This resource, a website from the Harvard Graduate School of Education bridges research to practice by making education research accessible to educators.