When working with Britté to prepare our screencast for Standard 7, I had to dig deep to get a grasp on the concept of instructional frameworks. Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about the need for frameworks, but at one point I saw that TPEP and Marzano were frameworks, and then the standard clicked for me. As Britté and I looked through our various courses, we realized that we have used instructional frameworks multiple times throughout the course.
The most obvious for me is the Marzano framework (Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 2014), which my district uses in its evaluation process. I’ve spent time this year looking at the difference between proficient and distinguished and have noticed that parent engagement and student-led learning factor heavily in moving from proficient to distinguished on the framework. Those frameworks helped us analyze our own teaching when we completed the video assignment in Accomplished Teaching way back in our first quarter in the program. This year, I have changed my practice to include more parent engagement and student-led learning, specifically in an attempt to improve my practice in the area of Criterion 3: Recognizing individual student learning needs and developing strategies to address those needs. The frameworks serve as a guide for my improvement as a teacher.
Another framework came through developing our own professional growth plans for Surveys of Instructional Strategies. The PGP required reflection on our part, an essential component originally introduced in Accomplished Teaching, as well as action and evidence. The PGP included several reflective prompts that mimic the type of individual reflective practice that York-Barr, Sommers, Ghere, and Montie (2006) identify. For example, the question, “Why did you select this strategy?” forces the teacher to have a justifiable explanation they can share with themselves and others. The solution comes from the teacher themselves, rather than an outside source (York-Barr et al., 2006).
Finally, we used a series of questions as prompts to analyze our vision for our school in the Visionary Leadership Analysis that we did for Leadership in Education. The questions provided the framework and again forced us to reflect on leadership within out school. Owens and Valesky (2015) note that revising a vision or mission allows a leader to reach consensus about a better product. Combine that with our individual reflection and we have a better understanding of what our school’s mission should be - or could be.
As I have reviewed different frameworks and how they are put into practice, I see that they have at least two things in common: an emphasis on reflection and an emphasis on collaboration. Considering our work in this program, this comes as no surprise. Sherrill (2016) notes that “the best way to go about improving the quality of [teachers’] professional practice is to spend more time learning from and working with colleagues” (p. 223). Likewise, collaboration, for example, in a critical friends group promotes reflection that improves teacher relationships, increases awareness of research-based practices, and their ability to improve instruction (Zepeda, 2013). This mimics the advantages that York-Barr et al. (2006) see in reflective practice in small groups. Through these practices, an instructional framework has tremendous potential to improve teacher practice and, by extension, student learning.
Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. (2014). The Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model by Washington State Criteria. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/TPEP/Frameworks/Marzano/Marzano-rubrics-by-criteria.pdf
Owens, R. G., & Valesky, T. C. (2015). Organizational behavior in education: Leadership and school reform. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Sherrill, J. A. (2016). Preparing teachers for leadership roles in the 21st century. In E. Blair (Ed.), Teacher leadership: The “new” foundations of teacher education (pp. 222-228). New York: Peter Lang.
York-Barr, J., Sommers, W. A., Ghere, G. S., Montie, J. (2006). Reflective practice to improve schools: An action guide for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Zepeda, S. J. (2013). Professional development: What works. New York: Routledge.
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