Classroom visitations done well: walk-throughs can result in thoughtful discussions about teaching practice, or--if a school isn't clear about the purpose or process--in mountains of unused data.

In a California school district central office, staff members conduct "learning walks," briefly visiting school classrooms and entering data into PDAs. A principal in Tennessee schedules what she calls "learning walks" as well, this time conducted by grade-level teams visiting their own classrooms and examining the success of a particular teaching strategy that they have all agreed to try. In a Pennsylvania school district, "walkthroughs" consist of structured interviews of students in the school's hallways.

A large urban district in Illinois requires all sites to conduct what it calls "learning visits," allowing each site to design its own process. Implementation of this mandate ranges from a high school where a few administrators walk through classrooms with a 52-item checklist to an elementary school where all teachers visit each others' classrooms to observe for a teaching strategy and engage in an open conversation guided by three reflective questions.

Learning walks, walk-throughs and the like are being conducted around the country, and the results range from thoughtful discussions among practitioners about teaching practice, to the compilation of mountains of unused data gathered by self-appointed inspectors.

Teachers have traditionally worked in relative isolation, as "independent artisans" exercising their craft behind closed doors. The '80s and '90s saw rising interest in mentoring and peer coaching, interactions that were primarily one-to-one.

Popularizers of visitations

Informed by Peter Senge's work on learning organizations and Etienne Wenger's work on communities of practice, group classroom visitations have grown in popularity in recent years. Among the key popularizers of the concept are Tony Alvarado and Elaine Fink, formerly of New York City's District 2, who organized principals and teachers as professional learning communities that frequently conducted group classroom visitations.

Lauren Resnick has built upon this approach and is now helping districts across the country implement what she calls "Learning Walks" through her Institute for Learning. Other organizations and consultants promote similar practices. Doug Reeves and the Center for Performance Assessment support districts to implement walk-throughs for the purpose of data gathering.

Carolyn Downey trains principals to conduct "Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Throughs." The Lesson Study model has engaged teachers in crafting, testing and analyzing teaching in a public process.

Through multiple pathways, teaching is becoming a public professional practice; classroom doors are opening to principals and colleagues.

Clear expectations needed

As school sites and districts hop onto this bandwagon, there is a lot of unnecessary fumbling going on because of a lack of clarity around purpose, participants and process.

Done well, classroom visitations tied to professional learning communities and continuous improvement processes have transformative power. Done poorly, they can produce hostility and distrust, and will become one more passing fad in the long and disappointing history of school reform.

There are lots of valid reasons for visiting classrooms, many possible participants, and many processes that can be tied to those visits. No one model is sufficient to support a systemic school improvement process. It is essential that before a school or district begins a classroom visitation program, everybody is clear about what to expect and what their role is to be in the process.

The purpose of this article is to establish a typology of classroom visitations that might help schools and districts to achieve that clarity. The suggested categories and processes I share here are not meant to be exclusive. It is easy to imagine dozens of variations on these models. Instead, think of this typology as a place to start, subject to the interests and inventiveness of your own professional community.

Characteristics of visitations

Brief systematic classroom visitations can take a variety of forms and can serve a variety of purposes. At their core, they share some common characteristics:

1. They are intended to develop and support professional learning communities focused upon improving teaching and learning.

2. They are tied to the strengthening of a teaching profession in which practice is public and informed by standards.

3. They are grounded in a commitment to support the success of every student and every teacher.

4. They are organized around clear and public processes and protocols, are evidence based, and are linked to continuous cycles of inquiry.

Questions to ask

As schools and school districts initiate classroom visitations, they need to ask themselves a number of questions, including the following:

* Why are we doing this? Do we hope to gather program data at the teacher, school or district level? Is the gathering of data our primary purpose, or is it our primary goal to help teachers to improve their practices? How will these visitations relate to the teacher evaluation process, the school planning process, grade-level or subject-matter teams, professional development planning, etc?

* Who should participate in this process? Given our goals, who should be observing whom? How do we ensure that the process builds professionalism and trust? Should participation be mandatory?

* What protocols will guide our process? What are we going to be looking for, and how will we record what we see? How will we share and discuss our observations, and how will we commit to next steps and monitor our implementation of those next steps? How will we train participants, and how will we evaluate this process?

The table on the previous page has been useful to school districts as they engage in discussions to plan and name their visitation models. Again, there are many potential variations on these themes, and in healthy systems a variety of models are likely to be in play simultaneously.

Suggestions for improved practice

Here are some additional suggestions derived from the experiences of several school districts:

1. Have high expectations. Initial fears about resistance quickly evaporate when teachers and principals experience the benefits of safe and well-designed processes. Teacher leaders and administrators have to be very clear in communicating the fact that private practice is no longer an option in today's schools.

2. Keep the process simple. Provide participants with basic training in data gathering and giving feedback, and build simple, inquiry-based protocols. Avoid detailed checklists, which are usually blunt instruments that produce superficial data and convey a compliance-oriented rather than collaborative message.

3. Align the process with the analysis of student achievement data and student work, with professional learning communities and professional development, and with school planning processes. These visitations are not just another activity, they are a key element of continuous improvement processes.

4. Ensure that the process is ongoing, and that it is supported by adequate resources. Visitations are not something you do once or twice; they are meant to be an integral element of a school and district culture. Participants get better at the process and results become more profound over time. It takes resources--training, facilitation, release time and the like--to do this well.

Where should a school and district start if it wants to engage in a process of collaborative professional classroom visitations? If the goal is to build public practice, trust and team, we believe that the starting place should be what we call "learning walks." A generic protocol for learning walks is included on the previous page.

In implementing learning walks, groups might want to review Shirley Hord and the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's research on successful professional learning communities. Among other things, they state that effective professional learning communities are characterized by shared leadership and shared personal practice, characterized by visitation and review of each teacher's classroom. Feedback is directed at individual and community improvement.

Impact on school culture and achievement

Implemented well, each of the visitation models outlined above can play a significant role in school improvement. Where they are embraced and modified to meet local needs as methods for gathering data, stimulating discussion and driving continuous improvement in district, school and individual practice, they have a huge impact on professional culture and student achievement.

References

Abrutyn, Leslye. (2006). "The Most Important Data." Educational Leadership: 54-57.

Downey, Carolyn J. (2004). The three-minute classroom walk-through: changing school supervisory practice one teacher at a time. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Corwin Press.

Hord, Shirley M. (2004). Learning together, leading together: changing schools through professional learning communities. New York; Oxford, Ohio: Teachers College Press; National Staff Development Center.

Senge, Peter M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday.

Wenger, Etienne. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press.

From data walks to quick visits: Five models

* Name and purpose: Data Walks--Gathering quantitative school and/or district data

Participants: Teachers, teacher leaders, site administrators, central office, community, cross-site teams

Process: Observers gather quantitative data to assess needs and program implementation at site and district levels. Data are aggregated to focus upon grade levels, departments, sites and programs, not individual teachers

Frequency and other considerations: One to four times per year, announced

* Name and purpose: Learning Walks--Informing school level professional learning communities

Participants: Teachers, teacher leaders, site administrators

Process: Observers gather quantitative and qualitative data to inform conversations and action planning in site-level professional learning communities

Frequency and other considerations: Quarterly to monthly, typically announced

* Name and purpose: Peer Coaching--Informing individual teacher professional development

Participants: Teacher colleagues, teacher leaders

Process: Teachers observe one another with the goal of providing mutual feedback and opportunities for reflection upon individual practice

Frequency and other considerations: Quarterly to monthly, with sanctioned time for debriefing, announced

* Name and purpose: Principal Professional Learning Walks--Informing administrator professional development

Participants: Site administrators, central office, cross-site administrator teams

Process: Administrators engage in shared observations in order to improve and calibrate their observation and teacher coaching skills and better understand best practices and needs across sites and among schools

Frequency and other considerations: One to four times per year, announced or unannounced

* Name and purpose: Quick Visits--Informing the teacher supervision and support process

Participants: Site administrators and other support providers, often solo

Process: Data informs coaching support directed to individual teachers by supervisors and other support providers, and informs the formal supervision/ evaluation process

Frequency and other considerations: Unannounced

RELATED ARTICLE: A suggested protocol for conducting learning walks.

By Gary Bloom 

The purpose of learning walks is to inform school-level professional learning communities. Participants may include teachers, teacher leaders and site administrators. Here are five suggested steps to take.

1. Advance preparation

* Identify the focus area(s) for the learning walk. The focus area is typically identified by the group that is conducting the walks. For example, a third-grade team might determine that it is concerned about the achievement of English language learners and wants to observe for their engagement, or a high school math department might decide that it is interested in direct instruction in algebra classes.

* Develop or adopt a simple data-gathering format. Avoid checklists; focus observers on gathering evidence of student learning and effective teaching rather than superficial measures such as the posting of objectives.

* Identify a trained facilitator and participants.

* Inform the staff and the participants of the process. Do not attempt to build a minute-by-minute, classroom-by-classroom schedule, but inform teachers that visitors may appear during the general visitation window.

2. Pre-visitation briefing

* Principal or facilitator provides review history in relation to the process, schedule and other appropriate information.

* Review focus area(s) for learning walk; share examples of evidence.

* Review note-taking/data-gathering instrument.

* Review follow-up plans.

* Review tentative visitation itinerary.

3. Learning walk

* Conduct visitations in groups of no more than six for 5 to 10 minutes per classroom. Note-taking in classrooms is permitted. Students may be questioned if it will not be disruptive.

* Avoid informal hallway discussions or debriefing.

4. Debriefing

* Gather in a private meeting space.

* Facilitator reviews process and reminds group that the process is non-evaluative of individuals and is data-driven.

* Facilitator leads a process that progresses as follows: One classroom at a time, participants share their data. This should take about 10 minutes per classroom. If quantitative data are being gathered, it is charted during classroom-by-classroom debrief. After each classroom review, note questions and issues that were raised.

* After all classroom data have been presented, the group determines and charts strengths and areas for growth, questions for the team and suggested next steps.

* Group plans for data reporting and reflective conversation with the broader group.

* Facilitator leads a process evaluation discussion on what worked and what could be improved in the learning walk process.

5. Reporting

* Within two weeks of the learning walk, the participants and facilitator meet with the appropriate broader group, which may be a whole-staff, grade-level or department group, to share the data summary, information on strengths and areas for growth, questions for staff and suggested next steps.

* Facilitator or principal leads a reflective conversation around the following: What do these data mean to us? What are our next steps? How can we improve the learning walk process?

Gary Bloom is associate director of the New Teacher Center, University of California Santa Cruz.