Instructional+Rounds

"Unconference" time: Instructional Rounds

Liz Perry, Director of Educational Design and Innovation at the Berkeley Carroll School, began by describing how they came around to using "Instructional rounds" and modifying it. In general, they are when a group of observers "pop in" on classrooms as observers with an overriding question and collect anonymous data (it is not important which teacher or which student) that is later discussed as a group and then used as feedback to be given to the administration at the school.

There are implementation nuances that are fleshed out over time, such as "focus on behavior patterns, not on personalities". Traditionally, Instructional Rounds were used to look at something that the district agreed to do, a particular technique, like literacy instruction.

Year one, they started with the notion of independence and tried to quantify that. They asked themselves questions such as: What are we looking for? How do we do an observation? Their goal was to give feedback for the whole school on the patterns they observed in the school. Berkeley Carrol used Teams of 4, and anyone who wanted to participate as observers were able to participate.

In her school, one set of rounds ended November. At the end of the day, the group sat and synthesized what they observed.

Their findings were that they didn't know what they meant when they said independent learning. Is group work independent? This led to a clarification of their initial question and a presentation to faculty of paradoxes, like class where they are going over questions to a test in economics and the expectation that that type of work would be the farthest thing from independent learning, yet students were challenging the questions and really evidencing critical thinking. Another consideration was what kinds of questions did students ask of others?

Another school did something similar, based on a Japanese learning study. Their findings were surprising, that academic independence, risk taking and academic choice were all lost as students progressed through their grades. They were then able to ask themselves what it was that they envisioned? What was the child's learning experience? What does independence mean?

The group then discussed the need to train the observers. There was also a book recommended, "Instructional Rounds in Education, A Network Approach" (Elmore, see below for link). Things recommended were to establish the goals, watch videos of teachers teaching, using a nerf football and throwing it around in a circle. Whoever caught it had to give some evidence they found in observing.

Other "nuggets": Faculty are informed that it is nonevaluative and clinical. Half of the class is observed. Try to have every class once over the course of one week. Second round of observations in February. It was found to affect all participants, but didn't generalize to the faculty at large. End of year teachers logged what they would change for the next year. They hired outside subs to fill in for observers.

USEFUL BOOK--includes history, overview, and training for faculty ideas Elmore and City's book: Instructional Rounds in Education http://www.amazon.com/Instructional-Rounds-Education-Approach-Improving/dp/1934742163