Guest Post: Making Space for Good Decisions

Rob Johnstone made a presentation at the July ATD/DEI State Policy meeting in Florida; we thought Rob’s work with the RP Group, and specifically a project called BRIC (Bridging Research, Information & Culture), would be of interest to the Accelerating Achievement crowd, so we asked him to guest post today. Below, Rob reflects on the importance of carving out time for crucial exploratory conversations—and introduces some tools to help you do the same.

Greetings from sunny California, where I sit in my office at Skyline College just south of San Francisco, with what the hotel industry would term a “partial ocean view.” This means, on the 45 days a year it’s not shrouded in fog, if I squint, I can see a sliver of blue between some trees.

The RP Group is a nonprofit organization that strengthens community colleges’ ability to gather, analyze, and act on information to improve student success. We provide research, evaluation, professional development, and technical assistance services that support evidence-based decision-making and inquiry. Because our work is defined and conducted by community college practitioners, the RP Group provides a unique, on-the ground perspective on complex issues within the California community college system, and, through our work on Completion by Design and the Aspen Prize, across the country.

The unifying thread is a desire to engage all of the groups working on a campus—faculty, staff, administrators, and IR professionals—in developing deep cultures of inquiry that serve as the foundation for improving student outcomes. We define “culture of inquiry” as the institutional capacity to support open, honest, and collaborative dialogue that strengthens the institution and student outcomes. In practice, this means we encourage a variety of people across the campus to ask a wider collection of questions, and then use the evidence gathered to inform campus decision-making. 

As I reflect on these projects, I’m struck both by the similarities in the issues we face and the vast array of structures and approaches colleges have put in place to address these issues. The problems we wrestle with in the community college sector are complex and challenging, and there are no silver bullets (at least none that we’ve found!). The analyses we conduct don’t speak for themselves, and there are no self-evident answers. Given this, the strongest take-away from our work is how critical it is to structurally create the time and space for deep conversations, to explore the available data and evidence, and to extract insight and meaning that forms the foundation for action. These conversations work best when a wide range of participants from different parts of the college are brought to the table to explore the data.

As important as it is, in our work, we’ve found that creating that time and space for critical inquiry and data exploration conversations is challenging. Colleges are already strapped for their most precious resource—time!—and creating yet another committee for this work can be difficult. We’ve seen colleges be more successful when they re-purpose existing venues for these types of discussions, such as department and division meetings; committees devoted to developmental education, college success, first-year experience, or institutional planning; academic senates, and even the President’s cabinet.  

In each of these venues, we’ve found that many participants actually welcome the shift, as these meetings tend to be bureaucratic and process-driven; re-focusing on research, evidence of student success, and outcomes is often energizing and engages the participants’ passion. This also has the benefit of weaving the work into the fiber of the college, rather than encapsulating it in one committee. Clearly, college leadership has to prioritize the importance of such a change in these meetings or committees, but we have seen it work in practice.

For ideas on the kinds of questions to ask and ways to translate the answers into decisions, take a look at some of the resources we’ve put together on our website. I’d start with the BRIC Inquiry Guides or the “Evidenced-based Decision-making” section of our resources page. Colleges have used the discussion questions from the Inquiry Guides in department meetings and other campus committees to start conversations that open the door to future inquiry into practices, structures, and student success data.

In the end, we have to translate the results of our collective inquiry into action. The type of research and inquiry in which we engage is directional. At some point, in the words of Elphaba from the musical Wicked, we have to “trust our instincts, close our eyes, and leap.” In our world, “instinct” refers to the collective and deep subject-matter expertise that we have amassed at the colleges, married with a deep process of inquiry into the data and evidence. In taking the leap, we add to our collective knowledge-base—and quite often, we learn more when our initiatives relatively fail than when they succeed.

Please feel free to contact me directly at rjohnstone@rpgroup.org with any comments or questions.

Rob Johnstone is senior research fellow, Research & Planning Group for California Community Colleges and dean of research and planning, Skyline College