Instructional Rounds Research Articles

Think-aloud approach combined with case-based learning in nursing teaching round for new nurses in cancer hospital

BackgroundThe transition from nursing students to working as new nurses can be a challenging process. This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a pedagogical approach amalgamating the think-aloud approach and case-based learning in the instructional rounds for new nurses.MethodsUtilizing convenience sampling, new nurses were selected between 2020 and 2021 in China cancer hospital. A total of 98 participants agreed to participate, with 50 enrolled in 2020 as the control group and 48 in 2021 as the observation group. Across a span of weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11, each clinical department conducted six teaching rounds. The observation group engaged in teaching rounds combining the think-aloud approach with case-based learning, whereas the control group solely utilized case-based learning. Disparities in case analysis scores and critical thinking ability between the two groups were scrutinized, alongside an analysis of learning strategies and the observation group feedback.ResultsThe observation group exhibited superior case analysis scores (91.92 ± 6.33) and overall critical thinking ability scores (308.39 ± 35.88) in comparison to the control group, which scored (85.27 ± 5.39) and (275.11 ± 31.32) respectively, reflecting statistically significant variances (t = 1.868 ~ 6.361, P < 0.05). Predominant learning strategies employed in the observation group ranged from cognitive to meta-cognitive, followed by psychosocial strategies. During interviews focused on nurses’ feedback on the learning process, themes emerged surrounding the enhancement of learning proficiency, invigoration of learning enthusiasm, and bolstering psychological well-being.ConclusionThe combination of think-aloud approach and case-based learning in nursing teaching rounds greatly improves the efficiency of training and the critical thinking acuity of new nurses. Concurrently, it facilitated an evaluation of learning strategies, thereby offering valuable insights for the nursing teaching rounds of new nurse.

Preservice teacher perceptions of instructional rounds

PurposeThe purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to determine the perceptions of preservice teachers (PSTs) on the effectiveness of instructional rounds as a clinical experience in promoting awareness of student diversity and supporting the acquisition of professional knowledge (Essential 2).Design/methodology/approachThe instructional rounds were implemented in a junior-level general pedagogy course prior to formal clinical experiences. Professional development school (PDS) personnel supported the course instructors by scheduling the classroom observations, supervising groups of PSTs and debriefing the PSTs after each observation (Essentials 4 and 8). The data were collected through an end-of-course survey of 18 secondary PSTs.FindingsThere were several themes that emerged from the analysis of data. First, the study revealed that PSTs credited the variety of campuses visited as supporting their awareness of student diversity and varied instructional strategies. Second, PSTs acknowledged that the instructional rounds supported their connection of theory to practice. Finally, over 70% of the participants noted that they most enjoyed in-person experiences in different classrooms to observe students and teachers in action.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings for this study were specific to the teacher preparation program (TPP) utilized for the research. Each TPP requires different coursework and clinical experiences; therefore, the inclusion of instructional rounds may not be possible in all programs. Yet, the implementation of the rounds as a PST experience prior to clinical experiences is a strategy to consider to support the preparation of PSTs for their clinical experiences.Originality/valueThis study supports the continuation of instructional rounds at the teacher preparation program where the research was conducted. This research also informs other TPPs that strive to provide early clinical experiences that support PSTs’ emerging perceptions of student diversity and applications of instructional knowledge.

Correction to: The influence of instructional rounds on teacher metacognition in a middle school context

Correction to: The influence of instructional rounds on teacher metacognition in a middle school context

The influence of instructional rounds on teacher metacognition in a middle school context

The influence of instructional rounds on teacher metacognition in a middle school context

Teacher Candidate Perceptions of Early Field Experience Instructional Rounds

Field experience is at the heart of many teacher education programs in America. The early field experiences teacher candidates receive can set a foundation for future success in their teacher education program and even throughout their teaching career. The students in this study were enrolled in a university in a rural Midwestern state and 90% claimed residency in that state. The Early Field Experience Instructional Rounds were embedded in a 25-hour early field experience to provide a small group of teacher candidates with the opportunity to see multiple elementary teachers teach in their own classrooms in real time. Teacher candidates used a discussion protocol to debrief what they witnessed and reflected on how the experience influenced their learning about teaching. Over a two-year span, the teacher candidates who participated in Early Field Experience Instructional Rounds were surveyed to ascertain their impressions of the instructional rounds experience. The survey also asked teacher candidates about the potential impact of Early Field Experience Instructional Rounds on their future teaching practice. The survey results indicated that the time spent in the instructional rounds process was time well spent.

Improvement routines: Research by and for practitioners

The relationship between research and practice in K-12 is complicated and fraught. Research publications are unlikely to become more “user-friendly,” and teachers are unlikely to change their practice quickly or more willingly — nor should they. Recognize that reality, Isobel Stevenson and Richard Lemons explain that schools need to engage educators in improving practice in ways that incorporate research evidence but also value educators as creators of knowledge. One way of achieving that is improvement routines — a method for embedding repetitive examination and reflection into the business of schools and districts. Using instructional rounds as an example, the authors explain how to develop routines that have potential to improve practice and discuss some of the pitfalls to avoid when incorporating these routines.

Building a whole school approach to professional experience: Collaboration and community

ABSTRACTThis paper explores one implementation of an extended, structured, collaborative professional experience program. Its context is a new partnership between a university and a professional experience school. The program draws on elements of Instructional Rounds and Lesson Study, framed around a learning community model of professional experience for peer collaboration, observations, reflections and discussions across disciplines by pre-service teachers. Results show that pre-service teachers experienced a sense of belonging, developed professional relationships and dialogue with staff and peers, linked theory with practice, and developed dispositions for on-going improvement of teaching quality, all factors likely to improve their readiness for teaching. On the other hand, participants faced challenges in terms of logistics and communication, time pressure and anxiety and power relations between novice and expert.

The Elusiveness of Equity: Evolution of Instructional Rounds in a Superintendents Network

The practice of instructional rounds is a recent innovation in educational administration, intended to support administrators’ understanding of instruction through the development of common language. This longitudinal study examines the rounds practice of a network of superintendents over 6 years to understand how rounds serves as a vehicle for addressing inequities in students’ educational experiences. Using Scott’s concept of normative, regulative, and cultural-cognitive pillars, we investigate the practice to see how the network addressed issues of equity in 21 visits. Findings demonstrate that increased attention to equity in the protocol and visit expectations resulted in increased attention to equity. However, conversations manifested three patterns that functioned to curtail a focus on equity: understating race, the “culture of nice,” and following the protocol. We conclude with implications for how rounds can be structured to bring equity into sustained focus, with an understanding of regulative, ...

Investigating the Role of Instructional Rounds in the Development of Social Networks and District-Wide Improvement

In this article, we explore how organizational routines involving instructional rounds—collective, structured observations and reflections on classroom practice—might contribute to the development of social networks among administrators and support a common, district-wide focus on instruction. Building on work on communities of practice, we consider some of the mechanisms through which rounds might contribute to the development of the relationships, common language, and shared understanding integral to building social capital. Our analysis focuses on the evolution of social networks among administrators in three districts. While this initial analysis does not find a consistent association between engagement in rounds and the development of social networks that have the characteristics of communities of practice, it points to several key factors that need to be taken into account in order to use rounds strategically to support the development of connections among administrators who may not normally come into contact with one another.

Investigating discourses for administrators’ learning within instructional rounds

Instructional rounds is a professional learning practice for supporting school and district leaders’ understanding of the instructional core, the interaction among curricular content, instruction, and student learning, which is a foundation for instructional leadership practices. This article examines instructional rounds visits within a network of school district superintendents in a northeastern state of the USA over five years. It investigates how discussions within visits demonstrate features of discourse that afford opportunities for learning, that is, those that employ specific evidence in interpreting classroom practice. The analysis suggests that such instruction-specific discourse can be initiated by facilitators or participants. However, instruction-specific discourse is relatively rare and easily threatened, thus limiting opportunities for learning. The article offers implications for enhancing opportunities for instruction-specific discourse, thus making instructional rounds more generative of learning.

Relationships, instruction, understandings: one district’s implementation of rounds

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show how instructional rounds contributes to shared understandings and facilitates the development of relationships among administrators.Design/methodology/approach– This mixed methods study draws on three years of data in a district engaged in rounds. Administrators annually completed a social network survey, which focussed on how often they interacted around instructional issues. Additionally, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of administrators.Findings– Administrators have increased their participation in and understanding of instructional rounds, as well as their understanding of district initiatives. However, results are mixed when looking at the quantitative data. While the theory of rounds suggests that the process would lead to increased interactions, the authors found a statistically significant decrease.Research limitations/implications– Implications include examining rounds as part of a district’s set of formal and informal structures. Also, results suggest further examination of how turnover impacts networks. Finally, expanding the number of interviews may present a more mixed qualitative experience of rounds.Practical implications– As districts adopt initiatives based on observations, rounds can be used to support administrators’ growth in understanding these initiatives. Simultaneously, districts need to consider the purpose for both central office and building administrators and how those purposes align with protocols, norms, and practices they use.Originality/value– This paper advances the empirical knowledge on instructional rounds, which has been gaining popularity, though little empirical analysis exists of the process, how its theory of action is enacted, and how administrators experience rounds.

Rethinking Field Observations: Strengthening Teacher Education Through INFORM

This article introduces the Instructional Field Observation Rounds Model (INFORM), drawn from the medical profession where resident interns make rounds with experienced physicians, as an alternative approach for conducting classroom observations in pre-service teacher education methods courses. INFORM centers on structured group observations in P-12 classrooms, followed by interactive debriefing between methods students, their instructor, and observed classroom teachers. This shift from traditional field observations contributes in addressing the call for transformational change in teacher education with explicit connections between theory and practice (Zeichner, 2010a). We argue that INFORM allows pre-service teachers to focus more intently on improving content-specific teaching practices through a unique community of practice.

Learning Rounds: what the literature tells us (and what it doesn’t)

Learning Rounds is a form of professional development that has gained widespread currency in Scotland. It has received official endorsement from Scottish Government funded agencies and has spread as a practice through at least 24 out of 32 local authorities, in part through popular adoption by teachers. However the literature on Instructional Rounds that informs Learning Rounds is not as well known in Scotland as the practice of Learning Rounds itself. An earlier small scale study of Learning Rounds in Scotland suggests that practice varies significantly from school to school and from the original practices of Instructional Rounds. This literature review provides a critical survey of the existing literature on Instructional Rounds and Learning Rounds. This is intended to enable educators to be more informed about whether to adopt the practice and how to develop and evaluate the practice if they do.

What Do Teachers Do When They Say They Are Doing Learning Rounds? Scotland’s Experience of Instructional Rounds

&lt;p style="text-align:justify"&gt;This paper reports on research into the practice of learning rounds in Scotland. Learning rounds are a form of collaborative professional development for teachers based on the instructional rounds practice developed in the USA. In recent years learning rounds have gained high profile official support within education in Scotland. The research finds that what teachers in Scotland do when they say they are do-ing learning rounds varies widely from school to school and deviates significantly from the practice of instructional rounds. The implications of this for who is learning what in the practice of learning rounds is considered. The wider implications of the Scottish experience for the development of in-structional rounds practice in other countries is also considered as are the implications for promoting collaborative professional development practice more generally.&lt;/p&gt;

A closer look at the practice and impact of “rounds”

A practice that is gaining momentum in many countries in the world is “Rounds,” also known as Teacher Rounds, Instructional Rounds, or Education Rounds. Rounds engage educators in communities of practice, engender critical reflection, and support mutual learning. However, though promising as a way to focus learning in, from, and about teaching practice, Rounds has been the subject of comparatively little theoretical analysis or empirical study. It seems timely then to look at this emerging practice. This special issue delves into the conceptualization and practice of Rounds in the U.S., U.K., and Australia by theorizing around the idea, providing portraits of implementation, and sharing research that has emerged from enactments of Rounds with both pre-service and in-service teachers.

Unpacking practice with clinical instructional rounds in the San Francisco Teacher Residency program

Clinical instructional rounds have recently gained national and international attention as a pedagogical innovation that can help school administrators, leaders, and sometimes teachers move past the impenetrability of siloed classrooms to study teaching and learning across school sites and even districts. While rounds are an increasingly widespread form of professional development for administrators and teachers, they are less commonly used in preservice programs with teacher candidates. This article describes how an urban teacher residency program strives to strengthen the connections between the fieldwork and the coursework of novice teachers through clinical instructional rounds within and across the educational settings in an urban school district. It also describes the findings from research into what candidates seem to learn by participating in instructional rounds and how this might impact their future practice. The findings suggest that rounds can be useful for helping teacher candidates develop deeper understandings of the educational systems where they will work, facilitate their learning of diverse teaching practices, and develop an appreciation of diverse student's strengths across contexts. They also suggest that rounds are not a silver bullet, and candidates can develop reductionist views of student ability and disjointed understandings about how school systems work. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of considerations for how teacher educators can employ rounds as a tool for deepening candidates’ understandings of students, classrooms, schools, and the systems that support urban youth.

Instructional Rounds as a professional learning model for systemic implementation of Assessment for Learning

The purpose of this research was to examine the implementation of a professional learning project aimed at building educators’ knowledge and skills in assessment for learning (AfL) within two school districts in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, the research examined the value of a two-tier Instructional Rounds (IR) professional learning model. This professional learning model was unique because it engaged both teachers and principals in collaboratively learning and implementing AfL strategies in order to develop systemic capacity in assessment. In total, 12 principals, 48 teachers, two superintendents and two school district assessment consultants participated in the study. Data were collected through observations of IR sessions, classroom observations, interviews, IR session reflections and a post-project survey. Findings from this study report on positive changes in teachers’ and principals’ conceptions and implementation of AfL as well as on the value and challenges of IR as a professional learning model. The paper concludes with a discussion on developing systemic capacity in AfL through an IR model of professional learning.

Leading instructional rounds in education: A facilitator’s guide

The use of instructional rounds in education, ‘‘an adaptation and extension of the medical rounds model, which is used routinely in medical schools and teaching hospitals to develop the diagnostic and treatment practice of physicians’’ (City et al. 2009, p. 3), has recently emerged as a means to effect school improvements. Instructional rounds consist of systematic classroom observations conducted by teams in conjunction with pre-classroom visit preparation and post-classroom visit debriefings. Elizabeth City et al. (2009) were first to clearly define this process for education with Instructional Rounds in Education. Thomas Fowler-Finn builds on the scholarship established by City et al. in his companion volume, Leading Instructional Rounds in Education: A Facilitator’s Guide. This book, reviewed here, accomplishes a logical next step in establishing a detailed guidebook for those facilitating a rounds network. While City et al. (ibid.) and others (Chew 2013; Del Prete 1997; Marzano 2011; Thompson and Cooner 2001; Virtue 2006–2007; Zenger 2003) have outlined basic parameters for conducting rounds, none has addressed specifically the role of the instructional rounds facilitator, which is the primary focus of Fowler-Finn’s volume. The book is comprehensive in scope and adeptly aligns the author’s personal experiences with practical applications. Importantly, Fowler-Finn provides sample agendas, lists of needed materials, practice exercises and evaluative protocols throughout, which provide the reader with clear and explicit guidelines to ease implementation during each stage of the instructional rounds process. In the Introduction, Fowler-Finn describes how he first came into contact with the Harvard team and the instructional rounds process as the school superintendent

Playing Doctor with Education: Considerations in Using Medical Rounds as a Model for Instructional Rounds

This article examines the literature on medical rounds to inform the recent move toward instructional rounds as a practice of districtwide improvement and professional learning for superintendents and administrators. Based on the practice of medical rounds as a method for creating shared norms and understandings about medicine and patient care, instructional rounds is a process in which networks of superintendents (and, increasingly, principals and teachers) observe and analyze classroom teaching to develop shared norms and understandings about instruction. Research on the practice of medical rounds highlights potential challenges for the medical community that also might apply to education: challenges of purpose, worldview, pedagogy, content, expertise, voice, and power/status. Understanding and addressing these challenges can inform the development of instructional rounds.

Instructional rounds in education: a network approach to improving teaching and learning

Instructional Rounds in Education is intended to help education leaders and practitioners develop a shared understanding of what high-quality instruction looks like and what schools and districts need to do to support it. Walk into any school in America and you will see adults who care deeply about their students and are doing the best they can every day to help students learn. But you will also see a high degree of variability among classrooms much higher than in most other industrialized countries. Today we are asking schools to do something they have never done before educate all students to high levels yet we don t know how to do that in every classroom for every child. Inspired by the medical-rounds model used by physicians, the authors have pioneered a new form of professional learning known as instructional rounds networks. Through this process, educators develop a shared practice of observing, discussing, and analyzing learning and teaching.