A Study Of The Instructional Rounds For Professional Development Of Primary And Secondary School Teachers In The United States

In recent years,a fundamental direction of paradigm shift in teacher professional development has been from isolation and closure to collaboration and dialogue,and many emerging teacher professional development strategies reflect this shift,such as lesson study,peer assisted learning,and collaborative action research,among which instructional rounds are one of them.Instructional rounds are a form of professional development derived from the medical education model,based on teachers’ own classroom practice and leveraging the power of collaborative teacher learning to develop teachers’ insight,practice,and expertise.Instructional rounds are organized as professional learning communities and are based on three theoretical assumptions: that teachers’ professional development should be integrated into practice contexts;that interaction within professional learning communities is a driving force for teacher development;and that teachers are central to their own professional development process.This study consists of five parts,which are as follows:The first part is the concept of instructional rounds.We analyze the various definitions of instructional rounds by foreign scholars and summarize their main points,then compare instructional rounds with lesson study to reveal their similarities and differences.The second part of the study is about the background of the emergence of instructional rounds.The emergence of instructional rounds in the United States is related to the shift in the focus of teacher professional development,a greater emphasis on school-based teacher professional development.In addition,the newly emerging view of teacher professional development that starts from the actual problems faced by teachers,emphasizes classroom observation and professional discussion,and emphasizes individual teacher reflection has also directly contributed to the emergence of instructional rounds.In the third part,the research on the operational procedures of instructional rounds.Scholars such as City and Troen have elaborated the operational procedures of instructional rounds respectively,and the procedures they designed,although different,include some common steps and links.Preliminary preparation,classroom observation,and subsequent communication and reflection constitute the three basic aspects of instructional rounds.The fourth part of the study is about the examples of the application of instructional rounds for teacher professional development in primary and secondary schools in the United States.Using Akron Public Schools and Killingly Memorial School as the subjects of the study,we systematically examined how instructional rounds are specifically implemented in elementary and secondary schools.In the fifth part,an analysis of the characteristics,values,and insights of instructional rounds is presented.Instructional rounds develop teachers’ own insight,practice,and expertise;they enable teachers to share expertise and experience and to have the experience of a professional learning community;they develop teachers’ habits of reflection and their capacity for thoughtful inquiry;they enable attention to the details of teaching and learning and deepen teachers’ understanding of the complexity of practice,and so on.Effective teacher professional development must follow some basic principles,such as: being quite sensitive to the context of practice in which teachers are embedded,rather than being disconnected from their daily practice;being ongoing rather than one-time;being participatory and reflective,and so on.As an emerging model of teacher professional development,instructional rounds are fully in line with the above principles and provide a valuable reference for us to enrich and enhance the school-based forms of teacher professional development.