Course Overview
This capstone course will feature knowledge, disposition, and performance assessments that examine growth along dimensions critical to the effective leadership of educational innovation and improvement.
Learners will apply knowledge and principles of ambitious instruction, logics of innovation, improvement science, and exemplary cases to case studies of large-scale, practice-focused innovation. In doing so, they will identify and explain strengths in these innovations. They will also identify problems and challenges faced by these initiatives and, then, propose means of organizing and managing in response to those problems and challenges.
This course is part of the Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement MicroMasters Program offered by MichiganX.
What You’ll Learn
- Applications of improvement science
- Knowledge of strategies for leading educational innovation and improvement
- Dispositions essential to organizing and managing educational innovation and improvement
- Capabilities to construct research-based solutions to core challenges that arise in organizing and managing educational innovation and improvement
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of schools and education systems as well as the political, policy, and public pressures to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students.

MicroMasters® Program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement
Become an innovative leader in the classroom
Meet Your Instructors

Donald J. Peurach
Course Overview
With principles of improvement science as a foundation, new knowledge about the continuous improvement of educational innovations is rapidly emerging among communities of educational professionals and researchers, as they work together in new ways to solve practical problems, improve student performance, and reduce achievement gaps.
Developed in collaboration with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, this course will use case studies to take learners deep into the design, organization, and management of three innovative approaches to large-scale, practice-focused continuous improvement that have currency in the US and abroad:
- Design-Based Implementation Research
- Implementation Science
- Networked Improvement Communities
What You’ll Learn
- To identify approaches to continuous improvement appropriate for specific schools and systems.
- To apply logics of innovation and principles of improvement science to authentic cases of continuous improvement.
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of schools and education systems as well as the political, policy, and public pressures to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students.

MicroMasters® Program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement
Become an innovative leader in the classroom
Meet Your Instructors

Donald J. Peurach

Paul LeMahieu
Course Overview
With roots in industry and in health care, improvement science is a disciplined approach to educational innovation that supports teachers, leaders, and researchers in collaborating to solve specific problems of practice. Improvement science brings discipline and methods to different logics of innovation by integrating:
- Problem analysis
- Use of research
- Development of solutions
- Measurement of processes and outcomes
- Rapid refinement through plan-do-study-act cycles.
For teachers, school leaders, and system leaders, improvement science moves educational innovation out of the realm of “fad” and into the realm of research-based, evidence-driven continuous improvement, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of educational practice.
What You’ll Learn
- Principles and methods of improvement science in education and other social sectors
- Means of introducing improvement science in schools and systems
- Approaches to accelerating improvement through networked improvement communities
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of schools and education systems as well as the political, policy, and public pressures to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students.

MicroMasters® Program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement
Become an innovative leader in the classroom
Meet Your Instructors

Donald J. Peurach

Anthony S. Bryk
Course Overview
Pursuing goals for ambitious teaching and learning requires that students, teachers, and educational leaders learn to work together in new ways. This course engages learners in exploring four leading logics of educational innovation: strategies and approaches to producing and using knowledge to improve educational practice and outcomes at scale, across many classrooms, schools, and systems. These logics include:
- Shell enterprises
- Diffusion enterprises
- Incubation enterprises
- Evolutionary enterprises
Each of these logics has been used successfully in different types of classrooms, schools, and systems, though each also features traps and pitfalls that complicate universal usage.
What You’ll Learn
- To think and reason about innovation as producing, using, and refining practical knowledge in schools and systems.
- To evaluate the alignment between innovation strategies and local contexts.
- To coordinate innovation strategies with goals for ambitious teaching and learning.
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of schools and education systems as well as the political, policy, and public pressures to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students.

MicroMasters® Program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement
Become an innovative leader in the classroom
Meet Your Instructors
