Donald Peurach, Associate Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the School of Education
@dpeurach

This is the second of a series of blog posts celebrating the launch of the Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement MicroMasters program. The aim of the program is to catalyze a world-wide community of professionals committed to engaging educational innovation and improvement as a field of study and a domain of practice.

Led by the University of Michigan School of Education, Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement has been developed in collaboration with individuals and organizations with deep experience in innovation and improvement, and with the support of funders aiming to advance innovation and improvement in educational practice and research. Our collaborators and supporters include:

• The Microsoft Corporation.
• The Spencer Foundation.
• The Office of Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.
• The Center for Positive Organizations in the University of Michigan’s
• Ross School of Business.
• The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
• LearnDBIR and the University of Colorado-Boulder’s School of Education.
• The Success for All Foundation.
• The MIST project: Middle-School Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching.
• The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools.
• The National Implementation Research Network.
• Researchers from George Washington University, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago Consortium for School Research.
• And over 30 practicing teachers, school leaders, and system leaders leading educational innovation and improvement in their own contexts.

In the first blog in this series, we introduced a special initiative running from January – April, 2018, in which a cohort of collaborators will participate in the two courses that form the nucleus of Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement:

• LeadEd502x: Designing and Leading Learning Systems, a six-module course that supports learners in developing a theoretical foundation for organizing in novel educational networks to address problems, needs, and opportunities in large numbers of schools.
• LeadEd503x: Improvement Science in Education, a six-module course that supports learners in developing a practical foundation for addressing problems, needs, and opportunities in their own educational contexts.

Existing online resources will be complemented by supplemental instructional guidance, online office hours, guest webinars, and blogging opportunities, all aimed at enriching learners’ experiences and supporting their success through deep engagement with University of Michigan faculty members and learning specialists.

Together, we will be using this experience to explore new approaches to developing foundational understandings of cutting-edge educational theory and practice, new ways of using open-access instructional resources to support place-based professional development, and new ways of collaborating to accelerate the redesign of graduate programs in response to dynamic policy environments.

We have a remarkable group participating in this initiative.

Our 2018 Winter Cohort launched on January 08, 2018, as a team of 103 collaborators: 23 from the University of Michigan and 80 from other parts of the country and the world. Participants range from undergraduate students to senior professors; from early-career teachers to veteran system-level leaders; and from aspiring reformers to senior developers in leading reform enterprises.

Our US-based learners are joining us from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

Our international collaborators are joining us from Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Qatar, Russia, Syria, South Africa, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

In addition to engaging completing these courses together, members of the Winter 2018 are organizing into four study groups, with the aim of studying and writing about our experiences in this initiative from the perspectives of:

• Participants in a path-breaking, trans-institutional, trans-national professional development experience.
• Practice leaders driving educational innovation and improvement in diverse schools, systems, and nations.
• Faculty members developing courses and programs focused on educational innovation and improvement.
• Researchers and designers seeking to advance the use of information technologies in support collaborative learning among educational professional around the world.

As our work proceeds through the Winter and into Spring, we will be blogging from each of these perspectives, with two goals: to enrich understandings of other professionals seeking to advance educational innovation and improvement; and to invite them to join our community.

Thank you for joining us in celebrating Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement, and…

Stay tuned!