Gates case study

Understanding how school principals see their roles and address challenges is critical to the process of designing resources that support their efforts and achieve results. As a member of the Scansion team, we helped the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gain insight into these issues to inform their strategy.

In collaboration with Scansion, we interviewed school leaders and education experts from around the country to understand the needs, motivations, behaviors, and desired experiences of school leaders as they work toward solutions to accomplish their goals.

Based on the research, we identified the filters that principals use to vet solutions and make decisions. We also created a set of design principles to be used as high-level guidelines for the design of effective resources to aid principals in meeting their goals. Lastly, we created a set of hypothetical case studies to illustrate the application of these design principles to online resources.

The Gates Foundation has incorporated these learnings into their overall work toward advancing actionable knowledge and the adoption of evidence-based practices to improve education.