Leading for Instructional Improvement E-Book

Stephen Fink

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 450

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Leading for Instructional Improvement Educational experts agree that quality teaching is the single most important factor in improving educational outcomes for all students. Teaching is a highly sophisticated and complex endeavor requiring deep expertise on the part of teachers and school leaders. This book shows how teacher, school, and district leaders can cultivate the expertise of teachers to deliver high quality instruction for all students. Leading for Instructional Improvement captures the nationally acclaimed work conducted by the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington in its effort to improve the quality of teaching and leadership in schools across the country. The book provides extensive practical guidance grounded in theory and research, along with powerful stories and examples from classrooms, schools, and districts. Many of the tools, protocols, and frameworks contained in this book can be accessed electronically by visiting the Center for Educational Leadership website at www.k-12leadership.org. Praise for Leading for Instructional Improvement "This book offers insights that are invaluable to educators who seek to enhance teacher effectiveness now. The ideas presented are practical and applicable to schools in a variety of settings." --PEDRO A. NOGUERA, Ph.D., Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development and executive director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education "A deep and thoughtful look at how the issue of expertise is cultivated. Seizing upon their Center's research-based instructional framework, the authors provide important insights and tools." --DR. BEVERLY HALL, superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools "In this age of intense focus on how we evaluate teachers, we have to remember that any evaluation is only as good as the evaluator. This extremely useful book provides an excellent roadmap for how principals can become more effective in the most important aspect of their work, instructional leadership." --JERRY D. WEAST, Ed.D., superintendent of schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland "Fink and Markholt offer practitioners a guide to effective teaching. Leading for Instructional Improvement asks us to heed the lessons within and support the kind of teacher education that will improve student achievement for today's schools and those of tomorrow." --BARNETT BERRY, president, Center for Teaching Quality

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

If Students Are Not Learning, They Are Not Being Afforded Powerful Learning Opportunities.

Teaching Is a Highly Complex and Sophisticated Endeavor.

Practice on Sophisticated Endeavors Only Improves When It Is Open for Public Scrutiny.

Improving Practice in a Culture of Public Scrutiny Requires Reciprocal Accountability.

Reciprocal Accountability Implies a Particular Kind of Leadership to Improve Teaching and Learning.

Leaders Cannot Lead What They Don't Know.

The Authors

About the Center for Educational Leadership

Part One: Making the Case for Instructional Expertise

Chapter 1: The Leader's Role in Developing Teacher Expertise

It Takes Expertise to Make Expertise

Building Shared Understanding

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Part Two: Developing an Expert Instructional Eye

Chapter 2: The Five Dimensions of Teaching and Learning

Purpose

Student Engagement

Curriculum and Pedagogy

Assessment for Student Learning

Classroom Environment and Culture

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Chapter 3: Applying the Five Dimensions of Teaching and Learning

Analysis

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Part Three: Leading for Instructional Improvement

Chapter 4: Observing Classroom Practice

Leadership Begins with Purpose

The Learning Walkthrough

The Goal-Setting and Implementation Walkthrough

The Supervisory Walkthrough

Conclusion

Discussion Question

Chapter 5: Responding to Observations

Observations, Interpretations, and Feedback

Classroom Observations and Honest Conversations

The Development of Shared Vision: A District Case

Organizing Thinking: A Middle School Case

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Chapter 6: Orchestrating Professional Learning

Leaders as Conductors

Orchestrating Professional Learning

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Chapter 7: Coaching to Improve Practice

What Is Coaching?

Why Does Coaching Matter?

Modes of Coaching

Peer Coaching and Mentoring

Cognitive Coaching

Instructional Coaching and Content Coaching

Expertise in Content Coaching

Research-Decide-Coach

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Part Four: Embracing New Opportunities for Leading and Learning

Chapter 8: The Leader's Role in Improving Teacher Practice

Reciprocal Accountability

Leading with an Inquiry Stance

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Chapter 9: A New Vision for Improving Learning for All

Discussion Questions

Appendix A: 5D Framework

Appendix B: Types of Classroom Observations

References

Index

Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fink, Stephen L.

Leading for instructional improvement : how successful leaders develop teaching and learning expertise / Stephen Fink, Anneke Markolt; foreword by John Bransford.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-54275-0 (pbk.); 978-1-118-03174-2 (ebk.); 978-1-118-03175-9 (ebk.); 978-1-118-03176-6 (ebk.)

1. Educational leadership–United States. 2. School administrators–United States.

3. School management and organization–United States. 4. Teacher effectiveness–United States.

5. Effective teaching–United States. 6. Educational change–United States.

I. Markolt, Anneke. II. Title.

LB2805.F456 2011

371.2–dc22

2010049430

For my father, Bob Markholt, whose life work inspired my own.

—Anneke

To my parents, whose early lessons on leadership somehow instilled in me the strong sense that it is better to be the sheepherder than the sheep. And to my wife, Debbie, who long ago recognized my sheepherding tendencies and has never wavered in her support as I continually seek new land on which to graze.

—Steve

Foreword

Reading this book activated a range of emotions—from exhilaration to frustration. The exhilaration comes from reading the critical assumptions and insights about teaching and learning that the authors discuss based on many hours spent in classrooms and districts. I've seen CEL's work in action and I know that they truly “walk their talk.” Especially noteworthy is the respect they show for teachers and schools that are working mightily to help all students succeed. They understand the complexity of learning to teach and to lead well and understand that the development of expertise is necessary and doable. As learners, we are always on the edge of our own expertise. The authors illustrate how instructional leaders lead while in the midst of learning and developing adaptive expertise.

My frustration stems from two things: (1) wishing I had seen a book like this twenty or so years ago as I was beginning my career as a learning scientist and (2) wishing our current policy makers, documentary filmmakers, and talk show hosts, who in their effort to bring more attention to the current state of public education continue to promote a national discourse that is troublingly superficial in terms of what is needed to ensure quality learning for all students. First in terms of my own practice, I had the great privilege of being one of the first students to attend the Center for the Study of Human Learning, directed by James Jenkins at the University of Minnesota. It was a fabulous experience and one that I appreciate more and more as I continue to study processes of human learning. Our work in Minnesota started at the cusp of what has been called The Cognitive Revolution. We did laboratory experiments on processes that affected attention, memory, retrieval, problem solving, transfer, and other important phenomena but almost all of this work was in laboratories that used college sophomores as participants and experimenters as the ones leading the “intervention” or instruction. We constantly discussed and worried about the “ecological validity” of our research but the prevailing paradigms for most of us were still one-to-one sessions (one experimenter and one participant) that could be easily managed and controlled in order to ensure “treatment fidelity.”

Many of my cognitive friends were trained in a similar way in labs across the country, and eventually a number of us decided to move at least some of our work from pristine laboratory settings to actual classrooms. We were in for a shock. Teachers were dealing with twenty or more students simultaneously and that was a far cry from our one-on-one laboratory experiences. Teachers also had to be accountable to a number of different people including each of their individual students, along with other teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, school boards, state tests, and so forth.

As we worked in schools, we saw many of our laboratory-based research projects crash and burn because of the complexity and other priorities that teachers and schools had to meet. In looking back on this era of our early school-based research, I realize that work in the schools involved experimenters teaching some small lesson while teachers took on the role of saving us from our lack of classroom management skills, but they never had to learn to change their own instruction. Helping teachers improve their instruction never appeared on our to-do list. Discussions in this book advance many of the findings from laboratory research on learning and I am still an extremely strong advocate for laboratory experiments that allow people to carefully study important phenomena, but more is needed, and this is where the wisdom from this book kicks in.

The authors clearly respect the deep expertise needed for effective teaching and learning. Perhaps more important, the authors are fully aware that simply asking teachers and educational leaders to learn to change their practices by attending a professional development session or reading a book or article is not sufficient to support a trajectory of improvement. Schools need to create communities of learners that continually help one another improve. The authors not only cite important general principles for teacher and organizational change, they also give many specific examples—including tools and procedures for self-assessments of teaching and leadership proficiency.

It is precisely because of the authors’ deep and insightful treatment of teaching and learning that my frustration continues when I see those who are quick to offer the next most-important fix to public education, all the while remaining ignorant to the core issue facing public education in America, which is the issue of expertise—an argument the authors advance with eloquence.

Just recently, I was asked to suggest a team to work with a school district that is doing well but wants to do much better. My first step was to call Stephen Fink and Anneke Markholt and ask if they would join the team. The insights they provided in just a short amount of telephone time were invaluable and the insights in this book are even more impressive. I'm going to make sure that my learning science students read this book so that, unlike me and my early graduate school colleagues, my students will get a clearer picture of the complexities of initiating and sustaining successful organizational change that enhances learning for educational leaders and teachers (including parents) so that they can better help their students learn.

It is a great privilege and honor to know the authors of this book, work with them, and see the key ideas from their work that this book communicates with such clarity. There are a lot of pieces to the educational puzzle and this book represents a huge advance in identifying and providing tools to manage the inherent complexity of instructional improvement. I read it and wept a bit because this book was not around when I started my career. I hope you can read it and enjoy.

John Bransford

Shauna C. Larson Professor of Education and Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle

Acknowledgments

This book has been years in the making. Since our beginning at the Center for Educational Leadership, we have been honored and humbled to work and learn alongside many educators. The ideas and tools found in this book are the result of our collective efforts and learning with our colleagues and district partners. We have been fortunate to work and learn with people who are willing to put towering ideas, scholarly research, and theory into practice. They pushed our thinking and allowed us to push theirs. We are indebted and grateful for their willingness to partner with us to bushwhack through uncharted terrain until we arrived at plans, strategies, and qualities of professional learning that worked in their unique district context.

Our colleagues at CEL have been our thought partners and have taught us much about the development of instructional leadership. The Five Dimensions (5D) of Teaching and Learning is the brainchild of Dina Blum and we are fortunate that for over a year she spearheaded our meetings where we hunkered down with the 5D framework, deliberated, argued, and wordsmithed. Dina and Mike Copland took our collective thinking and created a tool that has helped us and our partners get smarter about the definition of high-quality teaching and learning and understand just how sophisticated teaching can be. Our colleagues who spend their time in our partnership districts work hard to put compelling theory into practice and we have been privileged to work alongside them since 2003. Wilma Kozai, who had just retired from San Diego Unified School District before joining CEL, has taught us how to teach instructional leadership. Wilma is a consummate learner and her passion for equity fuels a fire deep within her that is contagious. The intellect and energy that Sandy Austin brings to CEL and to the partnerships with which she works is inspiring. A number of the tools and protocols throughout this book are Sandy's brainchild. Sandy is the epitome of one who practices a work ethic with pizzazz. Max Silverman recently joined CEL, although we worked with him in one of our district partnerships beginning in 2003. We are fortunate to have his smarts and sensibilities and you will see examples of his work throughout this book in the form of instructional letters and other tools. Lara Lyons has performed multiple roles at CEL, always providing a keen eye to ensure that our materials speak to our audience. You will see examples of Lara's thinking in several chapters. Since 2007 Rita Lowy has been CEL's lead project director for the 5D assessment. Her thinking and the rest of our CEL directors’ thoughts can be seen in the latest edition of the 5D framework (Version 3.0). We also appreciate her thorough review of Chapter Three, where the 5D framework is applied to classroom practice.

We want to acknowledge the superintendents, executive directors, principals, coaches, and teacher leaders from our district partnerships who have allowed us to learn with and from them. These district leaders have been courageous enough to invest in the long-term proposition of developing teaching and leadership expertise. In the face of pressure for quick test score gains, these districts recognize that although they need to address the urgency of adequate yearly progress (AYP) demands, they also need to invest in building their district's capacity.

We have also been fortunate to have several consultants who have worked steadily with us since 2004. Jenn McDermott’s brilliant thinking is exemplified in Chapter Seven on coaching and in the discussions and examples of separating observation from interpretation. She has taught many of us about how to avoid conflating our observations with our interpretations and how to coach in ways that honor the extant knowledge of our learners while pushing their practice. Since the beginning of our school district partnership work in 2003 Katherine Casey has taught us how to study instruction while understanding the strengths and needs of teachers. Early in our work, Lesley Gordon reminded us that we should help our district partners learn to be “hard on the work, gentle with one another.” Her wisdom has become part of the bedrock of our efforts and you will see Lesley’s words repeated throughout this book.

The fact is, each time we have the opportunity for a conversation, a classroom visit, a study session, a think-tank gathering, or the privilege to be invited into a school to coach, we learn something from the experience and from our peers. The nature of constant learning, of still trying to “get it right” urges us to continuously learn and to continue to grow our own expertise. We are indebted to the many people who continue to work alongside us and help us figure it out along the way!

Introduction

Every year we spend many hours in classrooms teaching leaders how to observe and analyze teaching and learning and how to help teachers improve their instructional practice. In fact, along with our colleagues at the Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) at the University of Washington, we spend thousands of hours in hundreds of classrooms each year. We are in schools and school districts—dozens of them each year as well. We are not at all surprised that too many of our students are still not learning at high levels and that long-standing academic achievement gaps that divide our nation's children along lines of race, class, language, and disability continue to persist. In fact, we believe that any astute observer of teaching, learning, and school leadership who spends ample time observing classroom teaching and talking with school and district leaders about their leadership strategies and actions would come to the same, inescapable, two conclusions:

1. The quality of teaching in the vast majority of our schools is inadequate to ensure quality learning for all students. By quality learning, we mean not only what is measured on a standardized test, but also learning that is reflected by students’ access and opportunity to engage deeply in the sciences, language arts, and the arts, which is manifested in ways of thinking and communicating. By all students we mean just that—each and every student, including students academically behind, students still developing the English language to make sense of their academic subjects, and students who have adapted some form of behavior to cope but not learn.

2. The prevailing leadership strategies and actions employed in many districts and schools across the country are inadequate to improve teaching practices at the scale necessary to ensure quality learning for all students.

It is important to state at the outset that the inadequacy of teaching and leadership practices we observe is not due to uncaring, unmotivated, lazy teachers and school leaders who weren't smart enough to be doctors and lawyers. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. We stand in awe and admiration of just how hard teachers and leaders work every day on behalf of the students in their care. The problem—as we will illuminate further during the course of this book—is that the art and science of teaching is far more complex and sophisticated than our lay public and policy makers realize. As such, the requisite school leadership to improve teaching practice is also far more complex and sophisticated than most people realize. In addition, as we discuss teaching and learning throughout this book, we are setting a very high bar for what we mean by quality teaching practices designed to promote quality learning for all students.