Gap Analysis in a School Setting

When I was working as a teacher aide, one of the greatest challenges was trying a huge number of strategies to try and help a struggling learner never feeling like progress was being made. This happened all the time with the neurodiverse learners I was working with. Occassionally you would have a small breakthrough and find a way to get a concept across to a learner, or succeed in setting up a positive behaviour change.  

So often as a reaction, I would end up blaming the students. This came from a feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness. After long meetings with specialists and the families, management and other aides, there was always a feeling of frustration as the conversations hardly ever led us to meaningful solutions.  Then, it became much easier to blame a 'problem child' than admit that we are incompetent in some way and that our best efforts have not been effective.

I've been learning about something called "The Gap Analysis" framework. This is a evidence based research method for guiding us to effectively and efficiently identify needs and goals. It looks like this:

Everything starts with goals. These are distinguished between problems, causes, and solutions. Causes are then diagnosed and solved based on extensive evidence in educational, social and organizational research.

The first step is defining the problem. For example, the student keeps wetting themselves instead of using the toilet. 

The next step is to translate the problem into a goal. For example, get the student to recognize they need to go the toilet at least once a day and communicate this effectively.

We would then need to consider the levels of goals. We have to think about the overall team goal, family goal, and broader community goals. Who are the stakeholders? Other staff and TAs, other students/peers, teachers, management staff and the principal.

Then, we need to consider the stakeholder goals and write a broader statement to reflect this. For example, in the situation I described, ours could be something like the following:

 "The whole teacher aide and teacher whanau will engage all ORS funded students in a way that allows them to demonstrate their learning and advance effectively in all of their learning domains."

The next step involves developing data in order to 'triangulate' this data. We can do this through surveys, observations and documents. This can be tricky in the school system, where resources are scarce. Ideally, it involves looking at all the resources that are being used, their workbooks, observing some of the lessons (and even filming via video), measuring what the current rate of inappropriate urination is on a data sheet.

Following this, we need to consider causes. This involves considering knowledge, motivation and organization. In order to do this effectively, our system would need to have the resources to be able to gather adequate data prior to meetings with all of the stakeholders. 

Knowledge is about whether the student can do something, do they know how to do it and do they know when, what they are doing and why. Do they understand what is expected of them? In the case of a child on the specturm who has extremely high and complex needs, we would need to perform tests according to a list of skills to see where their gaps are. Then we would consider different explanations for why these gaps are there. This is often much more challenging than simply ticking a box. In cases where we are assessing comprehension, we have to ask are they not copying an action because they haven't learned how to imitate? Or is it that their is a cognitive difficulty that inhibits language comphrension? It is vital that we check in with the student that it is a meaningful, socially relevant task for them. They might not be able to communicate this, so we must consider their broader context, their non-verbal cues and consider whether the skill they supposedly need is going to increase their autonomy in a meaningful way for where they are currently at.

Motivation is hard to see and is internal for the most part. It's about how much the student values the goal. There are three aspects to it - choice, persistence and mental effort. Have they started to perform the goal you want them to achieve and do they persist or do they give up in the face of challenge? Are they working 'smart'? Are they using mental effort? Where is intrinsic motivation guiding them? What are the external motivators that have helped in the past? For the example we are exploring, I would figure out what their current favourite reinforcers are by performing a preference assessment. I would perform a functional analysis to see what is motivating any problem behaviours. I would consider what their overall motivational profile looks like - what tasks are they engaged with the most? What does engagement look like for this student? Are they more motivated with some people than others? Why might this be the case?

Organization is about whether they are prevented from pursuing the goals. Do the stakeholders and students have the necessary materials they need? Is there something blocking them from achieving it? Are there conflicts in the culture or in the procedures that are currently being implemented? Are all other stakeholders all on board or are there conflicts about values and beliefs? The culture permeates all stakeholders and permeates the organiztion. If the student in our example has motivation and knowledge in some contexts and not others, we can be sure that there is something more environmental at play. Is there one teacher who the student doesn't like? Are there some sensory triggers in a particular space? Etc.

The next step in the Gap Analysis is to consider solutions. 

First of all, knowledge gaps involve things like gaining information and content knowledge, job aids (for example, reminders from management about strategies we already know are effective and a schedule for checking in with progress), training to learn strategies for engagement to maintain attention and interest. 

Next, to grow motivation, we need to grow confidence and self-efficacy (sense that something is achievable and we are capable of doing it). You are likely to be persistent if you know you can achieve. Success breeds greater success. The goals need to be concrete - this greatly increases achievement. They need to be valuable. In other words, the learner needs to know that the investment will be well worth it. Does our learner believe they are capable of what we are asking? Or have they developed a fixed mindset that has been reinforced by our poor instructional expectations and methods?

Organizational changes involves ensuring transparency and communication. Is the appropriate time given to be able to plan and communicate to ensure that everyone is working together and on the same page? Or have we been working in enclaves?

If any one of these elements is weak, it is going to impact our ability to increase performance and wellbeing. This needs to be evaluated along the way.

Using the Kirkpatrick model allows us to do this. All stakeholders need to be involved in the whole of this process. There are four levels to this model:

Level One: Reaction

• How are people reacting motivationally to the activity you have planned out in the implementation. Do they like it? Do they have a positive mood?

Level Two: Learning

• Did they actually learn something? Did they change their attitude or learning? Did it have an effect?

Level Three: Behaviour

• Did people actually use it? Did the behaviour of the teacher change?

Level Four: Effect

• Did it allow us to achieve the goal based on the data?

Level Five: ROE

• Return on expections - was it worth the effort?

Level Six: Implementation

• We need to have a plan for further implementation

Level Seven: Evaluation

• We need to consistently evaluate how our plan is working.

Sadly, in my experience there were simply no resources to carry out all of these stages effectively. However, with all the changes happening at NZEI and to the role of the teacher aide over the last few years, there is great hope for the future.