In the face of persistent challenges within Aotearoa New Zealand's education system, "Building on our Strengths" offers a fresh perspective on ways of improving the system by focusing on what we are good at. With the OECD highlighting our system's high quality but low equity, this book shifts focus from mere problems to uncovering what…

Evidence-informed change (EIC) has gained attention recently because it is seen as a lever to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of educational change. Important questions are: how is EIC conceptualized, what counts as evidence, and what factors can support EIC in practice? Because of the complexity of EIC, we aimed to understand these…

The need for change in the education system is obvious and overwhelming. But each stakeholder group has its own ideas about why the system is broken and how to fix it. Competing priorities, political inertia and diminishing budgets maintain the dysfunctional status quo. This essential text examines the underlying causes behind the key challenges…

By considering the interconnectedness of various elements, such as curriculum, instruction, assessment, and school organization, systems thinking provides a framework to understand the underlying patterns, feedback loops, and leverage points that shape educational outcomes. Frick's (1993) systems view of restructuring education supports the notion…

The educational technology field is at a critical juncture, facing the dual pressures of rapid technological advancement and a pressing need for research that genuinely addresses educational challenges. Despite increasing awareness of these issues, a significant amount of educational technology research remains entrenched in superficial or…

Quality enhancement projects in universities frequently rely on short-term, fragmented studies implemented in response to snapshot data linked to student feedback. Such projects may not address the complex interplay across stakeholder groups and do not always acknowledge the unintended consequences of change. This article, focused on systems…

School change is difficult and is both leveraged and hindered by interactive influences within complex systems of social practice. Whole-school STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a growing trend with unique aspects of change required of educators. A qualitative case study was used to analyze educator perspectives of the…

Ecosystemic cooperation among the state, municipalities, and commercial actors is evident in the public education of Finland. The edu-ecosystems can include firm interdependences, value creation, co-specialisation, and co-evolution with an aim to sell products and services to the global market as well as to open up markets in a particular country.…

The rights of approximately seven million students with disabilities in the United States are secured via the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Despite these protections, consequential inequities still need to be addressed. Racialized inequities in special education outcomes persist across classifications, placements, and…

Science reforms in the United States' education systems have been ongoing for over the last 50 years. These reforms are continually revised in response to the demand to increase employment in STEM careers. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) released in 2013 are the most recent standards-based science reform effort created using years of…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused extreme hardships for K-12 schools throughout the United States, exacerbating existing challenges such as rising mental health concerns among students, teacher fatigue, and workforce shortages. This article examines the enduring impacts of the pandemic on students, school professionals, and school systems, and…

Scholars have argued that problem formulation is an important part of successfully initiating a Networked Improvement Community (NIC/s). Yet, few scholars have studied the problem formulation process at the beginning of a NIC. This study draws upon problem formulation literature to examine how district initiators in one NIC identify and make sense…

Systems coaches provide support to teams responsible for improving the implementation of schoolwide service delivery framework such as multitiered system of supports (MTSS). This article first summarizes key findings about what systems coaching is, the goal systems coaches work toward, who these coaches support, and what systems coaches do. The…

The conventional perception of Information Systems (IS) in educational systems, focused on improvement, often confines its role to the technical management of dashboards and performance indicators. Its transformative nature has, however, a profound impact at different levels: individual, institutional and even systemic. Thus, education systems'…

This paper discusses engineering praxis ethos (EPE), a proposed framework for constructing a STEM learning environment embedding interrelated components of learner experience and design activity, which can support curriculum and instructional design and evaluation in STEM education. The authors propose that STEM is a meta-discipline that relies on…