Collaborative team meetings provide essential opportunities for teachers to analyze student needs, share strategies, and refine their instructional practices. One of the most crucial aspects of these meetings is the key issue process, which helps teams shift their focus from individual students to broader, collective challenges that can enhance collective efficacy across the school.
But what makes an effective key issue, and how can schools improve their ability to craft them over time? Let’s explore the essential elements of the key issue process and practical strategies for refining it within your school.
Why the Key Issue Process Matters
The key issue process distinguishes collaborative team meetings from traditional discussions about students. Rather than focusing on a single student’s struggles, history, family dynamic and more, this process encourages teams to identify recurring challenges across multiple students, classrooms, grades and subject areas and addresses them with shared instructional strategies.
A well-crafted key issue:
- Is not about an individual student but instead highlights a broader instructional or behavioral challenge.
- Avoids placing the focus on a single teacher’s practice and instead fosters shared problem-solving.
- Encourages collective learning by identifying patterns across multiple students and brainstorming supports that can be widely applied.
The Key Issue Process in Action
The process of identifying a key issue typically unfolds as follows:
- Initiation: The facilitator prompts the group by asking, “Who has a student they'd like to bring forward with a key issue?” The goal is to define the issue in 30 seconds or fewer or eight words or fewer to keep it concise.
- Clarification: The facilitator may ask questions to refine the issue, ensuring it is specific yet broad enough to apply to multiple students.
- Connection: The facilitator asks the team, “Are there other students across the school that also experience this issue?” Expanding the conversation beyond one student turns the key issue into a shared focus rather than a single case study.
- Brainstorming: The team generates potential strategies, ensuring no idea is judged or dismissed prematurely. This encourages creative problem-solving and shared learning.
- Commitment to Action: Teachers select one specific strategy to implement with a designated student, along with a concrete timeline for trying it out.
- Follow-Up: In future meetings, teams reflect on the impact of the strategy, refining their approach based on observed outcomes.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls: The Goldilocks Principle
One of the biggest challenges in crafting effective key issues is finding the right balance—not too broad, not too narrow.
- Too Hot (Too Broad): If a key issue is too general, such as “student engagement” or “numeracy,” it lacks direction and makes it difficult to generate actionable strategies.
- Too Cold (Too Specific): If a key issue is too focused on a single student’s specific struggles, it becomes a crisis or complexity response rather than a scalable instructional strategy.
- Just Right: A well-crafted key issue should be broad enough to apply to multiple students but specific enough to guide targeted strategies for support (e.g., “difficulty getting started on independent tasks”).
Practical Strategies for Refining Key Issues
Use Probing Questions
Facilitators can refine key issues by asking questions like:
- When does this issue occur most frequently?
- Is it during independent work, group work, or direct instruction?
- Are there common triggers?
This support reference provides a facilitator with guidance in leading the key issues discussion with their teams. It provides the process of the meeting as well as potential probing questions to clarify key issues.
Develop a Key Issues Bank
Schools can create a living document where previously discussed key issues are recorded along with corresponding strategies. This allows teachers to access a repository of tested solutions rather than starting from scratch each time.
The sample to the left is a checklist for behavioural issues being experienced by high school students, to help inform discussions related to appropriate responses and supports. This tool developed by Peace River High, is intended to ensure we explore all possible reasons for behaviours so that the team can respond in an effective manner.
Visual Tracking Systems
Some schools use whiteboards with magnetic sheets or post-it notes to track key issues and the students impacted by them. Different colored notes can indicate different grade levels, providing a clear, real-time snapshot of student needs and supports.
Scenario-Based Practice
Staff meetings can incorporate practice exercises where teachers analyze hypothetical student cases and generate potential key issues. This helps teachers hone their ability to identify effective key issues quickly in real meetings as well as supports them in completing their pre-meeting organizers.
We have designed an activity for school teams to engage in exploring the refinement of key issues. The following protocol is intended to support leaders and teams in refining their key issues for their collaborative team meeting.
Link Key Issues to Data
Schools can incorporate data analysis into their key issue process by reviewing student performance trends and categorizing common challenges. Maintaining a spreadsheet with identified key issues from data reviews helps teams pinpoint instructional gaps and focus their collaborative problem-solving.
This example, Focus Elementary CTM Data Overview provides a Grade 5 sample of examining data and identifying key issues from the analysis.
An effective key issue process transforms collaborative team meetings into high-impact professional learning experiences. Instead of placing individual teachers or students in the spotlight, it fosters a culture of shared responsibility, professional growth, and student-centered solutions.
By continuously refining this process—through clear facilitation, practice, and structured tracking—schools can build a sustainable system for addressing common student challenges in a meaningful and collaborative way.
Are you ready to enhance your school’s approach to key issues? Start by evaluating your current process and implementing some of these strategies to take your team meetings to the next level!
Please reach out to share your insights, challenges, and triumphs along with your questions, resources or suggestions related to this concept. Connect with us at or .
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