Teachers Taking up Explicit Instruction: The Impact of a Professional Development and Directive Instructional Coaching Model
Something very strange is going on here. It is Sunday. Not that big a deal really – however. On Friday, our excited little Vegemites half packed their schoolbags and rushed full tilt out the door – leaving a trail of moldy crumbs, paper and half eaten apples and Christmas wrapping paper that would do Hansel and Gretel proud.
In fact, the Christmas tree is still teetering in the assembly hall whilst the left over food scraps and empty bottles have barely begun to rot into a maggot infested new year bundle of joy. Give it a week or two of blistering summer heat. Pitty the poor cleaner – or some other mug whose responsibility it is to try and get any essential service done at this time of year.
So none of that is very strange – sadly. The bit that sticks out here – is how inspiring ERRR#24
was. Let’s be clear – they are all pretty great. As usual, I’m deeply inspired and want to take this and make it happen for the kids under my care.
So here is my attempt to reflect on what I’ve been listening to and then somehow operationalise it.
Key points to jot down before I get distracted and forget:
- Instructional coaching is not coaching.
- Very highly structured
- Triad approach including admin
- Built on Relationship – trust.
- Uses lots of instructional protocols
- Not content specific
- Focused on surface knowledge
- Prioritize How to teach, Who to teach then What to teach (own emphasis)
- Shared language / matrix about what is being observed in the class and how to talk about what is being observed.
- Deep and surface are terms relative to each other. You can’t have one without the other. So start with surface learning.
Where to with this?
Read a copy of the report provided to the ERRR. Identify the elements that would be useful from the research to plug into our existing framework.
ie: Start with our instructional model. Get this in embedded then build from there.
What is in the tool bag and who designed it?
Fundamentally – Lorraine is an expert in this – and I am not. How do we get safe with deferring to the external expert and being inducted / apprenticed from novice to expert?
So – what is so strange about this. Well it is Christmas Holidays for goodness sake – now I’m all excited about doing an inquiry into explicit instruction! It’s a miracle!