Classroom Walkthroughs To Improve Teaching and Learning

Judy Stout, Donald Kachur, Claudia Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781596671331
• eBook ISBN: 9781317927617
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book demonstrates the many ways classroom walkthroughs can be used for continuous, systemic, long-range school improvement. Woven throughout the book are eighteen different models of walkthroughs that have been successfully implemented in schools across the country. An effective tool for improving teaching and learning, this book demonstrates that there is no "one-size-fits-all" walkthrough model. It shows you how to use classroom walkthroughs to meet the specific needs of your school.

1

Introduction to the Classroom Walkthrough as a Tool

The use of the classroom walkthrough does not represent a new educational concept. In many districts, school administrators and other instructional leaders have been conducting such visits as a standard practice for years. However, the nature, purpose, variations of use, and outcomes of the classroom walkthrough as a tool for improving teaching and learning have taken on new meaning. Referred to by such descriptors as learning walks, instructional walks, focus walks, walk-abouts, data walks, data snaps, learning visits, quick visits, mini-observations, rounds, instructionally focused walkthroughs, administrative walkthroughs, supervisory walkthroughs, collegial walkthroughs, reflective walkthroughs, classroom walkthroughs, and just walkthroughs, the nature of the tool allows for a wide variety of options for its conceptualization and use. The emphasis in this book is on short, informal observations of classroom teachers and students by school administrators, coaches, mentors, peers, and others, followed by feedback, conversation, and/or action. Classroom walkthroughs provide snapshots of instructional decisions and student learning that, over time, create an album of a building’s strengths, patterns of practice, and needs.

Classroom walkthroughs alone are not a solution for challenges of school improvement and closing the student achievement gap. However, when instructional leaders choose to equip themselves with a structured, focused walkthrough process and provide individual teachers or the entire school with specific, detailed follow-up, the impact of such instructional leadership will be considerable. As you read this book, think of classroom walkthroughs as a significant instrument in your toolbox of school improvement strategies. Its value will depend on the purpose you seek and the fidelity of its use.

Defining Classroom Walkthroughs

As there are numerous variations of walkthroughs, there are also common features. These features can be identified by examining various definitions of classroom walkthroughs:

Classroom walkthroughs are brief, structured, non-evaluative classroom observations by the principal that are followed by a conversation between the principal and teacher about what was observed.

Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement (2007, p.1)

The classroom walkthrough is a process of visiting classrooms for short time periods of 5–15 minutes, where the instructional program is observed, feedback is provided to teachers, students talk about what they are doing, and data is gathered to inform curricular decisions.

Walker (2005, p. 1)

Classroom walkthroughs are brief visits to classrooms throughout the school, two to five minutes long, conducted on a frequent basis and are informal and non-evaluative, designed to collect patterns of data that can help members of the professional learning community to continually improve their teaching practices.

ASCD (2007)

Classroom walk-through is used only for short, focused and informal visits to the classroom that are not formal data-gathering situations. Walk-throughs are frequent visits used by the observer to better know the teacher’s decision making approach to curricular and instructional decisions.

Downey et al. (2004, pp. 3–5)

The common elements in these statements provide the basic definition of a classroom walkthrough as:

• informal and brief;
• involving the principal and/or other administrators, other instructional leaders, and teachers;
• quick snapshots of classroom activities (particularly instructional and curricular practices);
• NOT intended for formal teacher evaluation purposes;
• focused on “look-fors” that emphasize improvement in teaching and learning;
• an opportunity to give feedback to teachers for reflection on their practice;
• having the improvement of student achievement as its ultimate goal.

A Bit of History

In 1982, Peters and Waterman published a business book that became a best seller. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies shared some of the management techniques of the best-managed companies of that time. Consistent in excellent companies was “intensity of communications.” Strong emphasis on such communication in excellent companies was an insistence on informality (p. 287). One particular technique was to have managers leave their offices to walk around and engage with employees through informal exchanges. One company featured in the book was United Airlines with its practice known both as “Visible Management” and “Management by Walking About.” Another prominent company was Hewlett-Packard and its trademark management style known as “Management by Wandering Around” (MBWA) (p. 122).

MBWA was basically an unstructured, informal approach to hands-on, direct participation by company managers in the work-related affairs of their workers. This was in contrast to formal and remote forms of management. The overall purpose of these informal visits was for managers to listen to suggestions and complaints of employees, collect qualitative information, and keep a finger on the pulse of the company.

A later book, A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference (Peters & Austin, 1985), includes one chapter titled, “MBWA: The Technology of the Obvious.” The authors went into further detail about MBWA, describing it as a means for “being in touch.” MBWA promotes innovation and involves listening, facilitating, teaching, and reinforcing values to every member of the organization. The authors further stated, “We will subsequently argue that leading (a school, a small business, or a Fortune 100 company) is primarily ‘paying attention’” (pp. 31–32). In other words, managers of successful companies stayed close to the customers and people doing the work. They were visible and accessible rather than isolated from the daily routines of the business.

The classroom walkthrough is a by-product of MBWA. Among the early pioneers of the MBWA concept in education were superintendent Tony Alvarado and Deputy Superintendent Elaine Fink when they were at Community School District 2, part of the New York City school system. Under their leadership in the 1980s, walkthroughs became a routine for the district’s principals, teachers, and central office leaders. For Alvarado and Fink, their in-depth knowledge of the district’s schools and principals came from their own school walkthroughs (Elmore & Burney, 1997).

Alvarado and Fink ultimately viewed principals as the key listeners in the system, and saw being in touch and paying attention as key elements of their leadership. They were strong proponents of principals working closely with teachers as well as providing opportunities for teachers to learn from and coach one another. They then promoted the school walkthrough as the district’s primary accountability strategy. Principals observed classroom instruction and environments, arranged professional development opportunities, consulted with teachers and evaluated their classroom practices. As a result, principals captured the concerns and insights of teachers and were able to incorporate their needs and ideas into policy and new strategies. According to Kate Maloy who described the work of Alvarado and Fink in a U.S. Department of Education research report, Building a Learning Community: The Story of New York City Community School District #2 (1998, p. 17):

Over the years, the walkthrough strategy has proven to be an effective professional development tool in itself. It focuses principals on their primary task—the improvement of instruction—and encourages them always to be seeking new means of motivating the teachers in their schools, devising opportunities for teachers to develop substantive collegial ties, and deeply informing them about theory, content areas, and best practices.

It also has changed the content of the principals’ beginning-of-the-year written plans, which now reflect a much more sophisticated understanding of their schools’ and teachers’ specific needs in the ongoing struggle for higher achievement among all children.

Subsequently, a number of walkthrough models came upon the scene. The Learning Walk® routine was initially inspired by leadership practices observed in New York City’s Community School District #2 as part of the High Performance Learning Communities Project (Fink & Resnick, 2001). In that district, a supervisory walkthrough was used by the superintendent as a high-stakes, on-the-ground review of all elements of a principal’s instructional leadership activity. The Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh adapted walkthroughs for use in its partner districts. Participants were focused on improving instruction and learning rather than using the walkthrough as a supervisory or evaluation tool. To mark this new and refined version of the routine, it was renamed The Learning Walk® routine. Further development of The Learning Walk® routine resulted in a set of training tools to ensure fidelity of practice and careful attention to content-specific indicators of teaching and learning in classrooms.

In 1990, Larry Frase and Robert Hetzel published a book, School Management by Wandering Around. The book followed current business models and focused on the value of the school leader “wandering” throughout the school and community with a designated purpose and meaning. By wandering around instead of staying behind a desk, the school leader could listen for hints and clues relative to strengths, weaknesses, problems, and solutions. A valuable part of that wandering was frequent classroom walkthroughs and teacher observations. In other words, principals engaged in walking around looking and listening for better ways to do things within the school. Because of the increase in popularity of classroom walkthroughs during the past ten years, the book was republished in 2002.

Another of the early models was Data-in-a-Day (DIAD), which appeared around 1998. DIAD is a walkthrough tool that provides a short but intensive opportunity for a school to gather data about issues that both students and staff view as important. Staff and students collectively observe and summarize data organized around themes they identify in advance and then report to the school leadership for subsequent decisions. DIAD is one of three tools included in the self-study toolkit, Listening to Student Voices (2000), developed for K-12 educational leaders and school-based teams interested in including students in continuous school improvement. This toolkit was developed by the School Change Collaborative, a group of regional educational laboratory staff working with K-12 school partners across the country as part of a national Laboratory Network Program.

One educator who has popularized the concept of classroom walkthroughs is Carolyn J. Downey. She, along with co-authors Betty E. Steffy, Fenwick W. English, Larry E. Frase, and William K. Poston, Jr., wrote The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through: Changing School Supervisory Practice One Teacher at a Time (2004). In her thorough introduction to the philosophy and implementation of this type of classroom supervision, Downey advocates using many informal visits to each classroom to develop a picture of education in the classroom and in the school. She promotes a collaborative approach to classroom supervision, one in which the teacher reflects on instructional and curricular decisions and then plans for improvement; the observer facilitates such reflection on the part of the teacher.

Breaking Through to Effective Teaching: A Walk-Through Protocol Linking Student Learning and Professional Practice (2008), authored by Patricia Martinez-Miller and Laureen Cervone, was the culmination of more than ten years of work. The contributors (teachers, leadership teams, and administrators of schools) were committed to a transformational improvement of student learning. This protocol fills a gap between administrative walkthroughs aimed at teacher or program evaluation and supervision of instruction walkthroughs that focuses on coaching teachers as practitioners. The UCLA SMP Classroom Walk-Through protocol engages teachers in examining student academic behavior. Teachers base walkthrough focus questions on the results of their teaching, allowing change in their practices and improvement in student learning.

Increasing Interest in Classroom Walkthroughs

Let us examine several reasons why walkthroughs are increasingly appearing in the literature and at conferences and workshops for educators.

• Instructional Leadership: The principal and other instructional leaders need to further their leadership roles by becoming acquainted with actual building practices. They gather data regarding building needs and strengths that will aid professional development efforts.
• Professional Learning Communities: Teachers have traditionally worked in relative isolation. Today, teaching is becoming a public practice with classroom doors being opened to principals, other instructional leaders, and peers. Teachers in professional learning communities are working collaboratively to systematically analyze and share their instructional practices to determine how they can maximize the learning of every student.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: The ongoing process of gathering school data helps teachers and schools ask questions about student performance, analyze and organize data to find root causes of performance issues, and implement action plans to improve academic achievement.
• No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and School Improvement Plans: NCLB dramatically raised the bar on expectations for all students (including students with disabilities and recent immigrants) to become proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. This law has increased the level of accountability for schools, causing instructional leaders to assume a more active and visible role in school improvement and the professional development of teachers.
• Standards-Based Curriculum: The standards established at the state and district levels must be evident in classroom instruction and student learning experiences.
• Curriculum and Instructional Initiatives: Instructional leaders are being called upon to assess the degree of application of newly mandated instructional and/or curricular initiatives in the school building such as Response to Intervention (RTI), reading literacy, formative assessment, and technology integration.
• Shift from Teacher-Focus to Learner-Focus Supervision: Rather than watch only teacher behavior, the focus is now to look first at students to see whether they are engaged, motivated, and learning.
• Increase in Coaching, Peer Coaching, and Mentoring: Performance data keeps the coach and/or mentor informed on the strengths and needs of the person being coached or mentored.

Benefits of Conducting Classroom Walkthroughs

There are significant benefits for all schools, teachers, students, and observers involved in classroom walkthroughs.

The school gains by:

• collecting additional data on teaching practices and student learning to supplement knowledge about how the school and students are performing;
• increasing school-wide reflection on best practices to increase student achievement;
• acquiring evidence of the impact of curricular initiatives and instructional practices;
• appraising how professional development initiatives are being incorporated into classroom practices;
• identifying professional development needs of the faculty and staff;
• promoting collegial and collaborative conversations that become part of the school culture.

Teachers gain by:

• reflecting on their own instructional and curricular practices related to the school improvement plan;
• engaging in collegial dialogue and reflection about better teaching practices, curricular decisions, and school-wide improvement;
• identifying personal areas of high-need, high-impact professional development;
• recei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Meet the Authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to the Classroom Walkthrough as a Tool
• 2 Research About Classroom Walkthroughs
• 3 Purposes of Classroom Walkthroughs
• 4 Involving Teachers in Classroom Walkthroughs
• 5 Walkthrough Participants and Training
• 6 Classroom Walkthrough Protocols
• 7 Data Gathered During Classroom Walkthroughs
• 8 Recording Data from Classroom Walkthroughs
• 9 Providing Follow-up on Classroom Walkthroughs
• 10 Additional Factors to Consider about Classroom Walkthroughs
• Appendix A: Classroom Walkthrough Model Executive Summaries/Contacts
• Appendix B: Classroom Walkthrough Models MATRIX
• Appendix C: Planning Template: Classroom Walkthroughs in your School/District
• Appendix D: Learning Walk Newsletter
• Appendix E: Walkthrough Feedback Letter
• References