In the last two posts in the Experiments in Networked Impact series (here and here), 100Kin10 Executive Director Talia Milgrom-Elcott wrote about how we mapped the underlying causes of the STEM teacher shortage. Since then, we’ve released the map in beta — what we call the Grand Challenges — identifying about 100 underlying challenges which can be summarized in overarching themes: prestige; teacher preparation; elementary STEM; teacher professional growth; teacher leadership; value of science, technology, and science; and instructional materials. We have also launched our Strategic Initiatives Team to lead the organization’s work in how we as a network will catalyze progress on the Grand Challenges.

Here’s the basic idea. We’ve developed a hypothesis about how to mobilize sustainable and systemic change, the kind of change that we suspect we need more of to address and eventually overcome the Grand Challenges. Our hypothesis is that changes stick and actually matter when the efforts that lead to them include the following six characteristics, which we are calling change elements:

• Coordinated: working together toward a common goal.
• Direct: addressing the root cause of a problem, as opposed to treating a symptom of the issue via a surface-level response.
• Diverse: engaging all stakeholders who are a part of the system to understand the problem and contribute to solution(s).
• Emotionally-resonant: building engagement, interest, and education in an issue by positively appealing to users’ empathy, perceptions, and personal connections.
• Knowledge-driven: designing and adapting solutions that build on both research (academic findings) and learning (what is and isn’t working in the field).
• Measurable: understanding progress toward the common vision by collecting and analyzing data against defined metrics.

We built this hypothesis on years of working alongside our partners to improve how STEM teachers are prepared and supported, and then gleaning from that experience what does and does not lead to successful collaborative problem-solving. It also comes from many interviews with partners and experts and deep desk research on a host of influencing areas, including change, collective impact, network design, systems, and social innovation.

These elements are already embedded in so many of our network tools, and partners are already bringing them to life across multiple initiatives and efforts. (Read more about these tools and efforts: Solution Labs and Collaboration Grants in this earlier post, and Project Teams here.) But, 100Kin10 and our partners are always hungry to do more, and to do more with greater effectiveness and efficiency to reach our goals. In response to this, we are committed to providing the space for our network to innovate and contribute to better applying these elements to move the needle against the Grand Challenges.

Beginning this year, we will run experiments to test and refine that hypothesis by engaging our partners in tackling the Grand Challenges. Each experiment will also include robust learning goals and related methods for evaluating them, to learn about both the impact of the experiment on the Grand Challenges and our hypothesis about how to drive change.

Our first experiments in 2018 will focus on two primary change elements as we explore how to better catalyze change against the Grand Challenges through our network. We will examine “knowledge-based”, working to identify how to overcome the limits of knowledge diffusion and facilitate the uptake of successful practices. We will also aim to better understand “direct”, investigating how to support action that gets at the heart of a root cause of the STEM teacher shortage, rather than addresses a symptom of it.

Another critical piece of catalyzing activity around systemic problems is deepening field-wide understanding of the challenges — in other words, continuously improving upon and growing the Grand Challenges map. One way will do this is by measuring progress against the Grand Challenges via user-friendly, non-traditional indicators that point to a “healthy” STEM teaching sector. We will also continue to expand the knowledge base that underlies the map, pointing to specific examples of how our partners and the network are successfully making inroads against the Grand Challenges and synthesizing the most relevant research.

If you want to dig deeper into the Strategic Initiatives approach, check out this deck. Otherwise, stay tuned for future posts about how we are mobilizing change against the Grand Challenges and what we are learning along the way.