Identifying critical components

1. Identifying critical components To answer “What is the status of implementation of each STEM school’s model and to what extent does the model reflect the OSLN Platform School Initiative’s design principles?

2. The process to articulate school models • Identifying, organizing, and defining school critical components. • Critical components taken from the program developers, written materials, and program implementers themselves.

3. Review of school documentation • Online and print materials about the OSLN Platform schools • Eg., OSLN website, school website, school handbooks, presentation materials, news stories, etc.

4. School conversations • Interviews with school personnel knowledgeable about the intended model and its components. • Question – What are the critical elements that make your school what it is? • Critical component list generated for each school.

5. Critical component confirmation • Follow-up meeting with school personnel to confirm identified components were essential elements of the school model.

6. Reconciling critical component lists

7. Grain size and grouping similar components together • Challenge – determining grain size for a coherent and comparable master list. • Group the small, unpack the broad components. • This allowed for compatible comparisons and appropriate analyses.

8. Critical component classification framework • Adapted existing CEMSE implementation conceptual framework (for fidelity of implementation project) for focus on STEM schools. • Broad categories of components – Structural and Interactional. • Each broad category has sub-categories.

9. Critical components - the essential elements of an innovation. Two broad types of critical components: • Interactional Critical Components • Examples: staff participate in decision making, staff spread practices, students participate in early college activities, teachers facilitate discussion, students demonstrate autonomy Structural Critical Components Examples: intersession, mastery learning, partnerships, collaborative governance structure, open physical space

10. STEM school critical component framework

11. STEM school critical components