MEDD8937 Chap.2 The Concerns-Based Adoption Model
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model
Probe before you intervene
The model places a change facilitator between a resource system and a user system, and it separates two verbs that schools routinely run together. Probing gathers information about what users are actually experiencing. Intervening acts on what was found.
The order is the whole point, and it maps directly onto the group task rubric, which asks for support strategies tailored to teachers identified through formative evaluation rather than chosen in advance.
A support plan written before anybody was asked anything has skipped the half of the model that makes the other half defensible.
Three instruments, three different questions
Innovation Configurations describe what the innovation looks like in practice.
An Innovation Configuration map breaks the innovation into components, which can be described by the materials used, the teacher behaviours expected and the student activities carried out, then lists the variations that occur for each component and orders them from more preferred to less preferred.
Stages of Concern describe how a person feels about the innovation, running from unconcerned through informational and personal, to management, and then to consequence, collaboration and refocusing, grouped as self, task and impact concerns. Levels of Use describe what a person is doing, from non-use, orientation and preparation, through mechanical use and routine, to refinement, integration and renewal.
The course asks directly whether someone can hold high concerns and low use or the reverse, and the answer is yes, which is exactly why two instruments exist rather than one.
Each finding comes with its own menu of moves
The value of the model for a curriculum leader is that every position carries published interventions.
At the unconcerned stage the moves are to involve teachers in discussion and decision making, share just enough information to arouse interest, and minimise inaccurate rumour. At the informational stage they are clear and accurate information through several channels, visits to schools that have implemented well, and comparison with existing practice.
At the personal stage they are legitimising the concern, person-to-person encouragement, realistic step-by-step expectations and support rather than pressure. At the management stage they are clarifying components, answering specific how-to questions, solving logistical problems and setting workable timelines, staying on the immediate demands.
Beyond those, making positive outcomes visible, creating professional community and sustaining continuous enhancement.
Levels of Use carry their own menu, from raising awareness at non-use to arranging access to experts at renewal.
What a published study of the model shows
An investigation of twelve secondary teachers adopting a bring your own technology initiative used these instruments and found that most teachers held self concerns rather than impact concerns, that most sat at mechanical or routine use, and that the technology was mostly used for teacher-directed activity.
The contributors named were a lack of clear expectations, an absence of professional development, and teachers not being involved in planning. Read that list against the intervention menus and the overlap is exact, which is the practical message of the chapter: the diagnosis names the omission, and the omission names the remedy.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The facilitator between a resource system and a user system
- 02
Probing and intervening as separate operations
- 03
Innovation Configurations and what a component has to be
- 04
Reading a configuration map from more preferred to less preferred
- 05
Seven Stages of Concern grouped as self, task and impact
- 06
Interpreting a concerns profile by its peak and its secondary peaks
- 07
Published interventions for each stage of concern
- 08
Levels of Use, and the branch questions that place a teacher
- 09
Why high concerns can sit alongside low use
Four teachers, four stages, four different moves
- 4Place each of the four statements on the published stages.
- 2Name the intervention the published menu attaches to each.
- 2Identify two moves that would be actively counterproductive.
Key terms
- Change Facilitator
- The person positioned between the resource system and the user system, whose work alternates between probing for information about users and intervening on the basis of what was found.
- Innovation Configuration
- The pattern of enactment an innovation takes in practice, described component by component so that different patterns of use can be distinguished from simple non-compliance.
- Stages Of Concern
- Seven positions describing what a person is preoccupied with in relation to an innovation, grouped as self concerns, task concerns and impact concerns.
- Levels Of Use
- Eight positions describing what a person is actually doing with an innovation, from non-use through mechanical use and routine to refinement, integration and renewal.
- Mechanical Use
- A level at which effort goes into short-term day-to-day operation with little time for reflection, and changes are made to meet the user's needs rather than the client's.
- Refinement
- A level at which use is varied specifically to increase impact on clients, based on knowledge of both short-term and long-term consequences.
- Impact Concerns
- The band of concerns covering consequence, collaboration and refocusing, in which attention has moved from the person and the task to what the innovation is doing for students.
The Concerns-Based Adoption Model FAQ
Can a teacher have advanced concerns and basic use at the same time?
Yes, and the course raises the question deliberately. Someone can be asking exactly the right question about student impact while still running the innovation mechanically, because concerns are about attention and use is about practice. When the two diverge that way, the finding is usually about conditions rather than about motivation, so the useful response is to remove an obstacle rather than to explain the innovation again.
How do I use a concerns profile without surveying everybody?
A short open question at a staff meeting, recorded rather than interpreted on the spot, places most people well enough to tier your support. The published expressions are what you listen for. Placement only has to be accurate enough to separate self concerns from task concerns from impact concerns, because those three bands are what the intervention menus are organised around.
What makes one variation on a configuration map more preferred than another?
A claim about what the innovation is for. If individual diagnosis using both tests and teacher judgement is preferred to teacher judgement alone, the innovation is asserting that instruction should be differentiated on evidence. Writing that claim down matters twice over: it justifies the ordering to sceptical colleagues, and it tells you what your monitoring data would have to show for the ordering to survive.
Assessment move
Write the seven stages and the eight levels from memory, then take three colleagues you actually work with and place each on both scales. The exercise is uncomfortable precisely where it is useful, because the person you cannot place is the one you have never asked, and that is a finding about your own probing rather than about them.
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