The SERP field site Design Team

A third, and also unique, SERP structure is the design team: a group of interdisciplinary researchers, designers, and practitioners who bring “state of the art” knowledge from a variety of fields related to the task of improving student achievement in the targeted areas. The design team addresses one of the most difficult challenges of effectively linking education research and practice. Education problems as they arise in real school settings cross many fields. Improving achievement in any area requires, at a minimum, expertise on the design of instructional materials, on pedagogy, on the design and use of assessments, on data management and use by school staff, and on features of school context. Those with high level expertise in any of these areas tend to be specialized.

Doing work that advances the field in any single area, therefore, is in some respects at odds with doing work that can improve student achievement in real school contexts. The design team resolves this dilemma by supporting the work of the local research team with a broad range of expertise that contributes to the design of the research, and to the development of instruments and interventions. It provides a venue for bringing the most successful ideas and experiences to the field site district from elsewhere, so that the field site can use them as a jumping off point, or as benchmarks, in designing approaches to improvement.

The design team meets once every few months (3-4 times/year). Redundancy in expertise is intentionally sought under the assumption that, when confronted with design challenges, people with similar frames of reference are likely to be highly productive in pushing each other’s thinking in innovative directions. Subgroups of the design team (for example, on assessment, instruction, or school organization and coherence) work on specific problems, and members became more deeply engaged in the work as opportunities arise.

For example, the Superintendent in the Boston Field Site described a need for an assessment tool for middle school reading comprehension that teachers can administer to whole classes of students to determine which students have which instructional needs. Members of the design team’s assessment subgroup who are among the nation’s leading literacy assessment experts engaged in developing and piloting an instrument for this purpose in short order. Improving and validating the instrument has become a component of the ongoing work in with the Boston Public Schools.