Traditional improvement processes often center quantitative data related to outcomes. While these kinds of data are important for understanding the health and performance of systems, meaningfully improving practice also requires that teams deeply understand the experiences that stakeholders (students, teachers, counselors, support staff, parents) have with the system.
These tools help identify those stakeholders closest to the problem, and how to work with them to collect rich qualitative data more suited to exploring systems and mechanisms.
This video and linked website can support teams as they think about how to identify the stakeholders closest to the problems of practice they hope to solve - including those traditionally marginalized or excluded in improvement processes.
Once you've identified the stakeholders closest to your problem, teams will find these tools useful in thinking about how they can see problems of practice through their eyes and learn from their experiences.