IMPROVING LEARNING IN LOW- PERFORMING SCHOOLS: INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING AND LEADERSHIP PRACTICE RICHARD F. ELMORE HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND GENERATION READY NASDTEC Winter Symposium February 2015

Questions That Have Shaped My Research and Practice Can education become a profession? How does knowledge find its way into teaching and leadership practice? What are the various organizational forms that learning takes, and which forms work for which purposes?

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT AS A LEARNING PRACTICE Ambitious improvements require teachers and leaders to learn how to do things they do not currently know how to do The more ambitious the improvement the larger the learning gap Most organizations are designed to enable and reinforce what people already know how to do Ambitious improvements require (a) ambitious forms of adult learning; and (b) organizations that are designed to hold and reinforce the learning

THE INTERNAL COHERENCE PROJECT A product of an national initiative to connect research, organization, and practice: The Strategic Educational Research Partnership (SERP: Design, test, and redesign a theoretically and empirically-based clinical practice of school improvement in collaboration with school- and district-based partners

THE INTERNAL COHERENCE MODEL

SOME INITIAL FINDINGS FROM THE IC and IR WORK WHY? High levels of initial engagement and enthusiasm with the work; extremely weak capability to sustain the work without external partners High levels of enthusiasm and commitment to instructional improvement; extremely low capability to develop and sustain an improvement strategy Consistent tendency to convert problems of learning and culture into problems of structure and process Strong, resilient, and unconscious beliefs and practices based on faulty assumptions about students’ capabilities as learners

THE DONUT HOLE PROBLEM Building organizational capability and coherence in the absence of strong, challenging adult learning produces little in the way of improvement Adult learning is primarily a cultural practice that requires... Challenging adults’ fundamental beliefs and practices in a safe and demanding learning environment

THE GENERATION READY WORK Couple strong instructional coaching practice with an equally strong organizational and leadership development practice Capitalize on Generation Ready’s expertise at creating and sustaining strong, longer-term instructional coaching relationships to shift the focus of Internal Coherence more toward sustained improvements