Adaptive Positive Deviance: Getting Started: How to make big improvements through small (and maybe a few large) changes Paperback – October 21, 2016

This field guide from Plexus Institute is a clear, thorough and easy-to-navigate handbook for making BIG system improvements through small changes. It describes a powerful bottoms-up process that engages people at all levels of a system in productive conversations aimed at solving intractable problems. The Adaptive Positive Deviance (APD) process is an inquiry-based method for creating and facilitating generative, emergent and iterative collaboration.. APD is based on the idea that solutions can be found within the community itself rather than relying on outside "experts" to tell people what to do. APD has been used successfully in health care where participants reduced the spread of resistant infections and in schools where teachers and staff addressed issues such as reducing chaos in the halls between class periods. This field guide is packed with checklists and How To instructions covering the social/cultural as well as the technical components of every stage of the APD process. The guide is designed to support each unique teacher-driven community in discovering promising practices already in pace, or latent, in the wider school community and creating a systematic plan to share these practices across the community.