Finding Small Wins and Making a Large Impact: An Improvement Science Approach to Adult Learning at KAPPA International

Finding Small Wins and Making a Large Impact provides a window into how educators at KAPPA International High School used an improvement science approach to troubleshoot problems in their classrooms and how it resulted in tremendous growth in their students’ abilities to reflect, revise, and self-advocate. A form of inquiry that tests small interventions and measures their effectiveness, improvement science allowed educators at KAPPA to work out localized solutions to improve their students’ lack of persistence and fear of revision. What began with a few teachers eventually expanded into a schoolwide adoption of improvement science practices.

This report provides an overview of KAPPA’s approach and tells the story of how improvement science was implemented by teachers at KAPPA over three years, highlighting key lessons from their experiences. It ends with a Q&A with two teachers involved in the work and the assistant principal.   

Partner: Developed for the NYC Department of Education Division of Teaching and Learning by Eskolta School Research and Design