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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Andres Alonso video from Case Study Review Meeting
Watch Andres Alonso, Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning, reflect on the Richard R. Green and Cardozo cases-in-progress:
This is Bob McNergney from CaseNEX and the University of Virginia... The two clips of Dr. Alonso raise ideas that might usefully be examined more closely. For example, I am intrigued by the idea of looking for "levers of success." The notion reminds me of Robert Yin's strategy of successive replication. In a nutshell, Yin argued for an investigative strategy that made explicit a set of propositions about successful practice. These propositions were carried forward into the first case (in this instance case=school). Investigators sought data that supported and refuted the propositions. At the end of the first investigation, the propositions were modified (some dropped, some added, some left intact). The revised set of propositions was carried forward to the second case, and the investigation was replicated. The strategy was meant to produce evidence on the nature of "success." The final set of propositions might be the "levers of success" that Dr. Alonso speaks of. It seems important to remember that all of these cases are "outliers" in the sense that they are succeeding where other schools do not. There may, however, be outliers in the set of Beat the Odds schools--or instances where things fail even though they are embedded in a school culture where leaders pull the levers of success. Once again, as Alonso suggests, it would be interesting to know when, why, and where these failures occur... As we work on these cases we have been mulling over some of the same ideas, but using different terminology. We are seeking as rich and complete a set of "levers" or "propositions" as possible. To do so, it is necessary to focus on every school individually but to step back periodically and view the collected and growing body of work as a whole. It will be helpful to us if others continue to offer insights into individual cases and thoughts about patterns that seem to be emerging across cases, as Dr. Alonso does.
Watch Andres Alonso, Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning, reflect on the Richard R. Green and Cardozo cases-in-progress:
1 comment:
This is Bob McNergney from CaseNEX and the University of Virginia... The two clips of Dr. Alonso raise ideas that might usefully be examined more closely. For example, I am intrigued by the idea of looking for "levers of success." The notion reminds me of Robert Yin's strategy of successive replication. In a nutshell, Yin argued for an investigative strategy that made explicit a set of propositions about successful practice. These propositions were carried forward into the first case (in this instance case=school). Investigators sought data that supported and refuted the propositions. At the end of the first investigation, the propositions were modified (some dropped, some added, some left intact). The revised set of propositions was carried forward to the second case, and the investigation was replicated. The strategy was meant to produce evidence on the nature of "success." The final set of propositions might be the "levers of success" that Dr. Alonso speaks of. It seems important to remember that all of these cases are "outliers" in the sense that they are succeeding where other schools do not. There may, however, be outliers in the set of Beat the Odds schools--or instances where things fail even though they are embedded in a school culture where leaders pull the levers of success. Once again, as Alonso suggests, it would be interesting to know when, why, and where these failures occur... As we work on these cases we have been mulling over some of the same ideas, but using different terminology. We are seeking as rich and complete a set of "levers" or "propositions" as possible. To do so, it is necessary to focus on every school individually but to step back periodically and view the collected and growing body of work as a whole. It will be helpful to us if others continue to offer insights into individual cases and thoughts about patterns that seem to be emerging across cases, as Dr. Alonso does.
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