Implementation Themes & Issues

How did the process of Growth Project implementation unfold in 2020/2021? What was the experience of local leaders as they sought to engage schools, Guides, young people, and communities? To what extent were cluster networks designed and developed through their work?

In the sections that follow, general implementation themes and issues are described with emphasis on the reflections of the local leaders themselves. The intent is to build a narrative about what transpired over the course of the year, but to illuminate complex and perplexing issues that became apparent. Embedded throughout are video segments derived from interviews with YSI staff and local leaders to provide this “first-person” perspective.

The Impact of COVID-19

Year One of the Growth Project (2020/21) was impacted to a significant extent by the complex and pervasive ramifications of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Schools and youth settings in Ireland closed in March of 2020 and did not re-open until the following school year (August of 2020). While six local leaders were recruited in January of 2020, their start date was delayed until school-re-opening in 2020/2021, re-orienting the project from its outset.

Adverse effects associated with COVID-19 were felt from the outset as the retention rate of prior YSI sites from 2019-20 diminished in some target regions (although not as much as in non-target regions). It became more difficult to recruit and support projects as a function of competing demands on schools and educators, causing some registered projects to falter and others to withdraw during the year. Additionally, when schools opened again from January through April of 2021, engaging with schools, Guides, and students became much more challenging, requiring constant adaptations.

Remarkably, the Growth Project arguably attained most of its goals under these highly adverse conditions through persistent effort and flexibility.    

Recruitment and Retention

Within YSI, recruitment and retention are continuous processes that involve systematic efforts to engage with participating sites. There is no guarantee that, in a given year, a specific site or staff within that site will elect to participate. Thus, YSI marketing, communication, and support activities occur in a variety of formats and are revised to respond to the fluid environments within which schools operate. The YSI organisation is, in effect, a national effort, and the Growth Project must be understood in this context.

The Growth Project was established to expand (by scaling up in more sites and communities) and deepen (scaling out within sites to institutionalise methods and practices) its impact.  The process of upscaling has been described elsewhere as having four key dimensions: (1) spread, expansion of a programme to more locations, individuals, and within a single site, the spread of norms; (2) ownership, such that what was once an external change becomes an internal way of thinking; (3) depth, defined as going beyond structure to permeate the culture and beliefs of the setting; and, (4) sustainability, implying lasting change.[1] It was anticipated that by broadening its relationships, YSI could become even more sustainable and impactful at the national level. (Given its 20-year history of success, YSI had already demonstrated considerable success in this regard).

Thus, recruitment and retention efforts by the local leaders were intended to build on and enhance extant and co-occurring activities in Leinster and Munster (where the initial target regions were located) as they began their efforts.

As was demonstrated in the prior section, substantial effort went into these efforts during the first several months of the programme. The initial recruitment effort took up a great deal of energy, physically and emotionally. Not surprisingly, it was often difficult and disappointing for local leaders just starting out in their regions. Hundreds of “cold call” emails and phone messages were deployed with minimal response, at least at first. Of some concern was that they were unable to engage principals initially, despite extensive efforts. Quite possibly, in a more “normal” year, these efforts may have borne more fruit. But it also appears likely that the demands being made on schools attributable to the discontinuities of COVID-19 vastly complicated this process.

Senior Programme

It did appear that successful engagements were more likely to occur in the Senior Cycle when (and if) Transition Year (TY) coordinators and experienced guides were identified. Several local leaders perceived that the themes of curricular alignment with education department goals seemed to be persuasive. In the end, as will be shown in a later section, across the five regions, local leaders and YSI enlisted 51 new schools (relative to 2019/2020, meeting the cumulative target for the year. This was remarkable given all of the aforementioned difficulties.

Junior Cycle

It is notable that almost all of the engagements were for the Senior programme; very few were for Robotics for Good or Junior Cycle participation, a significant disappointment for the effort. This seemed to be partly attributable to not being able to find the right person or role group to “start the conversation”. Gaining entry at this level seemed much more difficult. It seems that this is highly idiosyncratic to a given school, and somewhat random in finding the “right person”. Also, persuasive messages about the “goodness-of-fit” of the Junior cycle relative to curricular requirements seemed to be an issue that could bear some further exploration in recruitment planning. R4G was given less emphasis, perhaps in part because it is so specialized.    

The reality of low enrollment of Junior Cycle schools in 2020/2021 became of immediate concern because recruitment of schools for the Junior Cycle was initially a priority goal for the Growth Project. The intent had been that greater developmental and educational continuity across the curriculum could be achieved by creating a pathway from Junior to Senior Cycle.

Withdrawals

An additional reality was that not all schools that applied to participate continued and completed the programme. Withdrawal of schools over the course of the year occurred at a significantly higher rate that would normally occur, almost certainly due to the impact of the Pandemic on schools, Guides, and young people. Of the 125 schools or sites that initially applied to participate in the target regions, 29 (23.2%) had withdrawn before years-end. For the subset of 51 schools that were new to YSI as compared to the prior year, 17 eventually withdrew (33.3%).

By its very nature, the process of recruiting, retaining, and supporting schools (especially new schools) is non-iterative and non-linear; each circumstance is different and often unknown or unknowable. In this particular year, it appears that for local leaders the work commonly experienced as progressing in “fits and starts” rather than as a steady progression toward goals. In some situations, things could change rapidly with schools or Guides dropping out unexpectedly for unknown reasons. Less experienced Guides were especially vulnerable to frustration and drop-out, and it was hard to connect with them or help them process the experience, so that may have accelerated some initial losses. Also, given the lockdowns that occurred, schools were more prone to drop “groupwork”. A programme such as YSI that is so reliant on experiential, interactional learning would be especially vulnerable to implementation challenges.  

Engaging with Schools, Young People, Guides, and the Community

Gaining Entry

Following the recruitment phase, the primary activities of local leaders focused on establishing and building relationships with people in the schools that had applied to participate and in their communities. As with any consultative or support process, the initial challenge can be construed as “gaining entry”, which is not just about physical access but also about the psychological process of beginning a new relationship and finding common ground. The experiences of local leaders varied considerably across the regions in terms of gaining entry. There were nonetheless common elements to their successes, which typically began with listening, and then finding opportunities to offer assistance.

Interacting with young people

Local leaders were creative in their efforts to support young people. Because it was inefficient or impractical (and sometimes not even possible) to spend time in classrooms interacting directly with students, they had to be strategic in these activities, but it was also clear that this aspect of the work paid dividends not just for the Guides and young people, but also in terms of their own satisfaction.

Interacting with Guides

Engaging with the Community

Connecting to community resources was often difficult, in part because there were more layers of complexity in large organisations such as Education and Training Boards(ETBs) or City/County Councils. Finding the “right” person to connect with was often not a function of the specific role or organisation represented, but rather the individual’s interest and availability. It appeared that County Councils were sometimes more difficult to negotiate and ETBs were more responsive, but this was not always the case. An additional complication was that target region assignments did not always conform to the boundaries of County Councils (e.g., in County Cork) or ETBs. And given that leaders were not able to fully connect with youth-led projects as much as they would have liked, it was then more difficult to connect with community resources. But despite these complexities, much was learned through creative processes and interactions such as community mapping.   

How do local leaders reflect on what was learned during this first full year of the Growth Project? Did anything change? What are the implications for the upcoming year?

There were huge differences across the target regions in terms of characteristics, needs, issues, geography, schools, accessibility, challenges in gaining entry, responsiveness and engagement. Not only was each region unique, but local leaders approached their work in unique ways based on their individual skill sets and backgrounds. As they discussed and reflected on their experiences in 2020/2021, it became apparent that to be successful, each needed to remain highly flexible and responsive. In one way or another, each local leader thoughtfully read the “landscape” of what was required by the systems they were transacting with, understood what transpired as they had to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, deployed various approaches and learned what work best for them, and perhaps most importantly, learned to tolerate a lot of ambiguity.  

A common experience that all local leaders seemed to acknowledge was occasional discouragement (e.g., when all schools closed for an period extending through April), which had the effect of disconnecting them from processes they had begun.  at the extent of their own social isolation and disconnection. The complexity and “all-consuming” nature of the local leader role made it especially vulnerable to high stress and a sense of not progressing sufficiently toward goals.   

What emerged, however, was to some extent unplanned for but highly evident in the reflections of the local leaders. The close bonds of mutual support and resultant resilience that developed within the group kept their efforts vital and helped re-establish a sense of purpose and commitment. Perhaps more than any other “learning” from 2020/2021, the need to provide for these kinds of support processes for local leaders themselves may be the most important predictor of long-term success.

Thinking about Change

[1] Coburn, C. (2003). Rethinking scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational Researcher, 32(6), 3.