SCALE-UP 

is a learning environment specifically created to facilitate active, collaborative

learning in a studio-like setting. Some people think the rooms look more like restaurants than
classrooms.[1] The spaces are carefully designed to facilitate interactions between teams of
students who work on short, interesting tasks. A decade of research[2][3] indicates significant
improvements in learning. The approach taken during the development and testing of the
learning environment is an application of scientific teaching and has been discussed in several
books.[4][5][6][7] Although originated at North Carolina State University, more than five hundred
colleges across the US and around the world are known to have directly adopted the SCALE-UP
model and adapted it to their particular needs. Information about more than 400 of these
implementation sites is available on the SCALE-UP website.

Scaling Up Using The Five Dimensional Model

Evolving out of Dr. Colburn's work, the conference, and Dr. Dede's book, a
"scale framework" was developed. The framework presents a five
dimensional model for scaling up educational improvements. These
dimensions can be applied to all kinds of innovations and can be explored
sequentially or simultaneously. They are:

 Depth: To understand why an innovation works well, it helps to

discover the causes of its effectiveness. Then it is important to
establish what aspects are crucial and which parts can be altered
without reducing impact. Improving depth can make an innovation
more desirable to others by increasing its power.

 Sustainability: If adopters find that they lack some of the

conditions for success in the original program, they can develop
variations of the innovations that better fit their own situation. Their
adaptation may produce lesser, but worthwhile gains for their
population. The effective use of antibiotics illustrates this concept:
Antibiotics are a powerful "design," but worshiping the vial that
holds them or taking all the pills at once are ineffective strategies
for usage -- only administering pills at specified intervals works as
an implementation strategy.

 Spread: It may be necessary -- and desirable -- to modify a

program to reduce the expense and level of resources needed
while retaining effectiveness. For example, a highly effective
innovation may scale best when a somewhat less powerful, but still
 effective version requires a smaller and more affordable amount of
professional development.

 Shift: In adapting an innovation, it makes sense for those who

have evaluated, interpreted and redesigned that innovation to
claim ownership of their adaptation of the program and assume
responsibility for its success.

 Evolution: Once a program or innovation is adapted and moved

into a different classroom, school, district or state, it will inevitably
be adapted further by the new community of users. It is important
to scrutinize this process to gain insights that can further improve
the scalability and impact of the program.

 Over the past decade, I have developed and applied a framework for
designing successful educational innovations that can scale, which
builds on a foundational framework by Coburn (2003). This scaling
framework includes five concepts (Clark & Dede, 2009):
 1. Depth
 Depth concerns the quality or effectiveness of the innovation. An
educational innovation has depth to the extent that its implementation
and use leads to changes that are desired by the innovation designer.
 2. Sustainability
 Sustainability concerns the extent to which the innovation is maintained
in ongoing use. An educational innovation is sustained if those persons
who implemented the innovation continue to use it.
 3. Spread
 Spread is the extent to which large numbers of people or organizations
adopt an innovation. Spread is the sum of each adoption decision,
which can be measured by adopters trying an educational innovation,
going through training or licensing it, or buying it.
 4. Shift
 Shift is a decentralization of ownership over the creation of an
innovation. Adopters, through adaptation behavior, can significantly
change an innovation or come to share in representing it to other, later
potential adopters.
 5. Evolution
  Evolution concerns learning from adopters by the original creators of an
innovation. When creators change their own practice or work as a result
of others’ good ideas, they evolve.

How misconceptions about scaling-up can hurt high-quality implementation

Going to scale is the Holy Grail of donor-funded international education
development projects. Scale is seen as both a requisite for and the logical
culmination of any “successful” donor- or government-funded education
program.
The focus on scale makes sense: Who doesn’t want the greatest number of
teachers instructed in the most cost-efficient manner or every child in every
region to receive the same high-quality literacy approach? Yet, from what
I’ve seen, our notions of scale are grounded in a series of myths—
misconceptions about what scale is, how easy it is to do, and what types of
interventions should be scaled—that paradoxically serve to undermine the
quality outcomes we say we want. Below I explore what I see as the five
most common myths associated with “scaling up” in international teacher
education projects.
Myth #1: We know what “scale” is
The most common definitions of “going to scale” or “scaling up” typically
focus on replication, expansion and quantification—synonyms that beg a
number of questions.  If an NGO introduces a reading program to one
primary school and later expands it to all schools in a region, is that an
adequate definition of scale? Should we scale quality projects that are
complex or simple projects that may lack measurable indicators of quality
but that seem easy to replicate? Are we scaling up, down or out?
The most comprehensive definition of scale includes such components of
depth, spread, shift, and sustainability (Coburn, 2003). This is a far more
complex definition than the simpler ones to which we often adhere in
international education projects. Further, this focus on changing behaviors,
norms and beliefs, and cultivating ownership implies an intense dedication
of efforts and resources that are long-term, responsive, and
multidimensional.
Myth #2: Our project is worth scaling
In fact, many of our educational projects do not undergo the kind of
meaningful or rigorous impact evaluations that determine whether they are
indeed worthy of being scaled (1). There are often two other “worth”-related
issues. First, acquiring evidence of success in education is often
challenging because impact and change take years to accrue. Next, in
addition to “why,” there is often confusion about “what” exactly we are
scaling. Is it the innovation itself (a particular literacy approach)? Is it the
program (our particular variation of this literacy approach)? Is it a practice
associated with an innovation (guided reading)? Or is it everything?  (World
Bank, 2003:11) Again, are all of these “pieces” of the overall literacy
approach equally impactful—and how do we know?
Myth #3: We know how to do it
Scaling innovations is hard to do, in part because “scale” itself is so poorly
understood; in part because we don’t often know what exactly we are
scaling; in part because the notion that a good model alone is sufficient for
scaling has not been proven (Carrig et al. 2005); and in part because
ministries of education and NGOs simply may not have the personnel,
resources, time or know-how to carry out and manage everything needed
to scale an innovation.
Effective replication often depends on standardizing the context within
which a program operates (Bradach, 2003). Yet transplanting a successful
initiative to another area is difficult because every context is different. It
doesn’t help that we triage many of our initiatives, starting in the “easiest”
locations (e.g., capital cities) where technical and organizational capacity
exist and then attempt to scale initiatives to far more difficult locations (for
example, rural areas) where such capacity is limited or non-existent. (This
is the “New York, New York” approach to scale—If (we) can make it here,
(we) can make it anywhere, it’s up to “us”…etc.).
Myth #4: Scale disseminates best practices and standardizes quality
implementation
Given the almost fetishization of scale, quantity—versus quality
implementation— becomes an end in and itself for many educational
projects. Because we often begin with the notion of going to scale, donors,
policymakers, and implementers often undermine the very quality we say
we seek by draining the complexity and richness from an intervention to
simplify it in order to make it scalable.
As an example of this quantity-quality paradox, one need look no farther
than the ubiquitous “cascade” (train-the-trainers) approach of teacher
training and capacity building. We all use the cascade approach for teacher
professional development despite research showing that it has no impact,
despite its extremely low rates of implementation, and despite the fact that
it often disseminates, not good practice, but malpractice (Ono & Ferreira,
2010; Navarro & Verdisco, 2000).In contrast, far more quality-based and
proven approaches, such as coaching (Fixsen, et al. 2005; Joyce &
Showers, 2002) are often ignored because they are deemed “complex” and
expensive.
Education (especially teacher in-service education) is primarily about
changing practices and beliefs—particularly complex things to scale. If
complexity makes replication difficult, we should ask ourselves a most
fundamental question—is the goal of our intervention quality or is it scale?
Sometimes the two are incompatible.
Myth #5: Scale is good because more is always better
But in fact, more is often less when it comes to our focus on scale.
The focus on “more” often results in a sort of “Through the Looking Glass”
approach to teacher professional development where inputs (teachers
trained) are outcomes, quantity is quality, training is implementation, more
is less, and where we expend more energy trying to meet numbers than
promoting quality program implementation.
This obsession with scale often leads us to ignore small, successful
programs with quality impact in favor of large-scale projects with little
proven impact. Because so many donor-funded programs work in highly
diverse countries, professional development programs must respond to
local teacher needs, which may mean these programs need to stay small to
effectively respond to these needs. But failure to scale is not equivalent to
failure to thrive.

Philippine education has been a target of reform for the past 100 years or so since the
arrival of the Thomasites. It has been said that our educational system is the most studied
sector of our society. Of course, the need for change in education has been a function of the
changing needs of people and society. Enhancing the quality of the products of education –
namely, our students; raising student test scores to be on a par with those of other
countries; improving the quality and standards of the teaching profession are some of the
motives for change/reform through the years. Collectively, these motives issue a call to
action. Educations, reformers, theorists, businesspeople, practitioners, parents and
administrators heard the call. They answered the call with a plethora of innovations,
programs, models, theories, policies, legislation, mandates, and so on. The result is
hundreds of educational innovations. Identify at least three (3) educational innovations
which should have been continued and adopted/adapted by the present government.
 
A. The Improved Emphasis on Extension (Outreach, Community-Oriented
Programs)
Providing knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a principle that had been abandoned by many
educational philosophers. Without concrete and evident benefits to the society, schools
would just be seen as impractical institutions.
          Rendering support, assistance, and services to people in the community, especially the
marginalized sector, has become part of many school’s co-curricular and extra-curricular
programs. Today, college students in the Philippines have to take National Service Training
Program (NSTP) subjects, in which two of the options are Literacy Training Service (LTS)
and Civic Welfare Training Service (CWTS) which are both geared towards helping people in
the community. Well established universities, especially the ‘elite’ ones, also have
foundations for outreach projects and provide assistance to poor public schools in far-flung
areas through ‘adopt-a-school’ programs.
          Not only does this undertaking inculcate in the hearts and mind of the students the
values of altruism, sympathy, compassion, and concern for others, it also conveys that
academic institutions are essential part of the society which is there always ready and willing
to extend a helping hand for the welfare of the people.
 
B. The shift to School-based management
School-based management, which is a form of ‘decentralization,’ improves the
administration of school system. As many responsibilities and decision-making over school
operations is transferred to principals, teachers, parents, some students, and other school
community members, school problems are addressed more closely and thoroughly by people
who have firsthand insight about the issues.  Educational supervision also becomes ‘better-
tuned’ as school systems and programs are better monitored and teacher performance and
student learning are better evaluated. Furthermore, school-based managers are better
motivated and get higher morale since they possess more independence to act and decide.
 
C) The Introduction of Alternative Learning Systems (ALS) and TESDA
programs
The importance of the different forms of Alternative Learning Systems (ALS) and various
TESDA programs cannot be overemphasized. In fact, a great way to convert a school to
become ‘customer-driven’ is to offer these educational innovations. For instance, since many
want to become call center agent, courses specifically for such a profession could be offered
through TESDA programs.
          ‘Ladderized’ education, Diploma courses, and the like cater to students whose
economic capacity cannot allow them to finish 4-year or 5-year courses. On the other hand,
ETAP and on-line education (distant learning) provide educational opportunity to those who
are already working.
          Indeed, through various ALS and TESDA programs, a) people can earn their diplomas
more quickly; b) students can repeat failed courses without the embarrassment of being in a
class with younger students; c) educational opportunities can be provided to people with
physical disabilities, those who have jobs during normal school hours, and those living in
remote regions; d) education can be offered despite shortage of classrooms, qualified
teachers, and instructional materials (especially through e-learning); and e) students can
have access to variety of enrichment courses, and can participate in internships, sports, or
work and still graduate with their class.