The article presents “Reflex”, an online self-reflection tool designed for Italian schools to evaluate and monitor their systemic innovation processes. Developed by Indire, Reflex helps schools assess their innovation integration (systematization) and cultural adoption (rooting) over time.

Systemic innovation refers to comprehensive educational transformation that goes beyond isolated changes in classrooms or individual teachers. It involves two key dimensions: “systematization” (an organizational process led by school leadership to structure innovation) and “rooting” (a socio-cultural process that occurs when innovation is embedded into the school community).

Reflex is a survey-based platform that collects data from school principals and the staff and from (hopefully) all teachers through two online questionnaires:
1) School leadership survey with a focus on systematization efforts;
2) Teacher survey, with a focus on the “rooting diffusion”, namely how deeply innovation is embedded in the school's culture.

The two questionnaires investigate the state of innovation as perceived by the two different respondents (school leadership and staff, and teachers) across the following dimensions: Leadership & Governance, Teaching and learning practices, Content and curricula, Assessment, Collaboration, Well-being, Learning environments, School schedule, Internationalization, Professional development.

The article also presents the first results of the pilot experiment conducted on a sample of 70 schools, form primary to upper secondary, in the provinces of Turin, Genoa, Savona and Vercelli as part of the Education City project of the Fondazione per la Scuola, in collaboration with INDIRE. The analysis of the aggregate data makes it possible to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the tool, as well as opportunities and possible risks in its large-scale application. The results provide useful insights for further refining the Reflex framework, with particular attention to item validity and response scale calibration. The article also presents preliminary findings as to the overall state-of-the art of the sample schools concerning their innovation processes in the perception of school leaders and teachers, as well as for the priorities they assign to the 10 dimensions.

Based on these results, Reflex will subsequently be implemented in INDIRE's Educational Vanguards and Small Schools networks, with the aim of supporting an increasing number of institutions in self-reflection and enhancing their innovation strategies. Moreover, the administration of Reflex will help INDIRE to have an overall understanding of how the processes of scaling-up innovation - being it a more top-driven process - and its adoption by the whole school community - as a bottom-up one - are proceeding in the two national networks as well as nationally.

Keywords: Whole-school approach, self-reflection, systemic innovation.