Building an Improvement Mindset: Implementing and Learning from Short-Cycle Planning in Chile

In Chile, School Improvement Plans (SIPs) are mandated by policy. However, research has shown that these plans are often perceived as bureaucratic requirements rather than as meaningful tools for fostering organizational learning. This study explores a complementary approach; short-cycle improvement planning, implemented by 20 schools participating in a two-year, improvement-oriented program (2023–2024). Through qualitative analysis, we examine how school and district leaders compare traditional yearlong approaches to SIPs with short-cycle planning, and how their improvement mindsets evolve in the process. The findings suggest that short-cycle planning fosters greater agility, collaboration, and more authentic engagement with improvement goals; however, not all schools demonstrated deep shifts in improvement mindset. This study makes both practical and theoretical contributions by highlighting the difficulty of changing the improvement mindset at the moment of planning.