Bill Lucas

Getting the improvement habit

Healthcare quality improvement Quality improvement methodologies Health professions education Improving healthcare services can all too easily become synonymous with the use of certain in vogue tools for improving quality. Trigger tools, run charts and driver diagrams are just three examples of techniques used by frontline staff who are undertaking improvement work. Educators seeking to teach improvement are similarly faced with long lists of possible approaches and techniques with which to fill their course descriptions. As a consequence the temptation for improvement leaders and teachers is to include yet another technique in an already crowded curriculum, to add in more ‘stuff’.

Leadership for quality improvement — what does it really take?

While the importance of leadership in quality improvement is increasingly being acknowledged, we still do not know enough about what improvement leaders actually do and how they behave. This paper describes how Alder Hey, using a range of experimental approaches, has created its own model of change and concluded that certain habits of mind are at the heart of sustainable improvement leadership.

A Five-Dimensional Model of Creativity and its Assessment in Schools

ABSTRACT Creativity is increasingly valued as an important outcome of schooling, frequently as part of so-called “21st century skills.” This article offers a model of creativity based on five Creative Habits of Mind (CHoM) and trialed with teachers in England by the Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester. It explores the defining and tracking of creativity’s development in school students from a perspective of formative assessment. Two benefits are identified: (a) When teachers understand creativity they are, consequently, more effective in cultivating it in learners; (b) When students have a better understanding of what creativity is, they are better able to develop and to track the development of their own CHoM. Consequently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has initiated a multicountry study stimulated by CRL’s approach. In Australia work to apply CRL’s thinking on the educational assessment of creative and critical thinking is underway.