1. Jeffrey Silva
A-123 Teacher and Teaching Quality
Final Paper
12/14/2014
Instructional Rounds as a Professional Development Tool
Background and Context
Instructional rounds are currently practiced in a small, but growing number of schools,
districts, and systems around the globe. Their increasing popularity is, in part, influenced by the
initial successes of their first adopters. In the present literature on instructional rounds, some of
the more-referred-to practitioners of the rounds process are the California Rural Network,
Connecticut’s Farmingham School District, and the Western Metropolitan Region of Melbourne,
Australia, because of the large extent of buy-in exhibited by these three education agencies
(Gillard, 2014). Another source for instructional rounds’ increasing use is the focus on educator
professionalism that attends them. As one superintendent stated, “I liked the idea of rigorous and
collegial self-reflection. To reach for professionalism based on honesty and transparency really
appealed to me” (Gillard, 2014, p. 21). These two factors seem to forespeak instructional rounds’
continuing growth in both acclaim and adoption.
The idea for instructional rounds stems from the well-known practice of medical rounds.
Teaching hospitals regularly send groups of interns, residents, and somewhat less frequently,
attending physicians from one room to another to discuss various symptoms, possible diagnoses,
and proposed treatments of patients. The underlying concept is that the rounds provide a training
ground for participants in the clinical aspects of the medical profession – in contrast to the
theoretical instruction of medical school lectures. Based on an apprenticeship model of learning,
rounds allow inexperienced practitioners the opportunity to work collaboratively with peers,
more experienced residents, and master attending physicians in order to develop the bedside
skills necessary for success on a practical level.
In many ways, instructional rounds mirror medical rounds. Similar to the interns,
residents, and attending physicians of medical rounds; teachers, principals, and superintendents –
among other educators within a network of rounds participants – collaboratively identify
problems, observe practice, and debrief under strict protocols that ensure impartiality and
objectivity. Furthermore, instructional rounds, like medical rounds, attempt to provide less-
experienced educators with practical knowledge rather than the theoretical knowledge taught in
the traditional, teacher-centered classes of education schools.
There are, however, some key differences between the two models. First, unlike medical
rounds, which do not often focus on specific problems over multiple rounds iterations,
instructional rounds center on a single problem of practice over numerous repetitions of the
rounds process. Second, a shared vision of best practice already, for the most part, exists in the
medical field; therefore, the purpose of the rounds process is to pass this knowledge down to
those who are not sufficiently familiar with it (Wilkerson, Lesky, & Medio, 1986). The field of
education, on the other hand, has not yet come to widespread consensus over what good teaching
looks like, and so, instructional rounds’ primary goal is to identify best practices through data
collection, their analysis, and outcome prediction; and subsequently utilize those findings in
scaled interventions to reduce organization-level variability in instructional quality (Teitel,
2009).

2. Instructional Rounds’ Theory of Action
There are a number of different logic models for instructional rounds, each of which
depend on the organization (e.g., school, charter network, district, etc.) that is implementing the
rounds. The description used within this paper is heavily based on the school-level model
proposed by Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles in The Power of Teacher Rounds: A Guide for
Facilitators, Principals, & Department Chairs (2014). Note the following figure, which
illustratively depicts the model’s theory of action:
Figure 1: Instructional Rounds Theory ofAction
*Blue boxes refer to specific activities participants engage in during instructional rounds; red ovals to pathway steps; and the green parallelogramto intended goal.
Troen & Boles’ instructional rounds process consists of six major stages as illustrated by
the blue boxes in the figure above. The entire process is moderated by a facilitator, a master
teacher or administrator, familiar with the strict routines and protocols that the rounds demand.
In the first stage, the participants all agree upon a single problem of practice that is relevant to
their school and that they would like to understand more deeply. The facilitator then assists the
first teacher to be observed, known as the host teacher, in creating a preparation form that will
specifically direct the attention of the other rounds participants during the observation stage.
Following observation of the host teacher’s class, the rounds participants debrief under strict
protocols that the facilitator is responsible to uphold. These protocols are meant to ensure that the

3. participants do not use observational data to evaluate or judge the host teacher, but rather to
“unlock the mystery of why the school is stuck, why this problem of practice persists, and what
might help the school get unstuck” (City, 2011, p. 39). Once possible solutions are hypothesized,
the participants commit to both changing their instruction in some way that attempts to eliminate
the problem of practice and to share records of their attempts with the other participants before
meeting again, at which time participants share their experiences regarding the efficacy of the
changes. The next host teacher to be observed then distributes his preparation form and the cycle
begins anew.
Key Assumptions within Instructional Rounds’ Theory of Action
The decision to address only one problem of practice during multiple iterations of the
rounds process is rooted in the idea of unifying focus among all participants in each of the
subsequent rounds activities. Lee Teitel (2009) argues that because banded collaboration ensues,
“accelerated instructional improvement” (p.3) should be achieved through efficient identification
of relevant data during the observation phase, their precise analysis, and their accurate use in
predicting outcomes. This, however, makes three assumptions: 1) that participants have the
authority to decide the problem of practice, 2) that they can agree on a problem of practice, and
3) that they will focus on the problem of practice in ways that are consistent to each other. City
(2011) concedes that rounds participants, especially if they consist solely of teachers, do not
always have the authority to dictate which problem of practice to focus on. “And sometimes,
frankly, they pluck the problems of practice out of thin air, with just the principal deciding what
the problem is” (p. 38). Moreover, it is likely that in the initial stage of the rounds cycle, a
common vocabulary among their participants is absent, which may likely cause later difficulty
during the observation phase in each participant’s identifying how a problem of practice
manifests itself in the classroom (City, Elmore, Fiarman, & Teitel, 2009). Teitel (2009)
illustrates this challenge anecdotally. He describes a debriefing session in which two rounds-
participating parties have “a fundamental – and unexpected – difference of understanding” (p. 3)
over whether information recall should be considered reading comprehension, which leads to one
party’s confusion over whether a problem exists at all.
Therefore, the importance of the facilitator in the rounds process is vital to their success,
for without supervision over precise language, unbiased judgment, and faithful follow-up, lateral
accountability is lost, blame or hierarchies reassert themselves, and the promise of a shared
vision of teaching and learning is therefore lost. Consequently, facilitators require highly
specialized skills of upmost cognitive demand. Among the myriad skills the facilitators must
possess are understanding the relevance of data, recognizing whether observations are focused
on the correct issue, and maintaining everyone’s attention on analysis rather than critical
feedback (Troen & Boles, 2014). One concern that logically arises then is whether the facilitators
who are installed in instructional rounds are capable of performing their positions satisfactorily.
Master teachers and principals, those within the school hierarchy that most often serve as
facilitators, do not practice facilitation’s requisite skills on a daily basis. Their quotidian tasks
often do not include those that facilitators must make the most use of. Master teachers may be
experts in classroom instruction, but instructing school-age children is quite different than
overseeing adult education and teamwork (Breidenstein, Fahey, Glickman, & Hensley, 2012).
Principals, too, are not extensively trained in the professional development or collaboration of
working adults; furthermore, their established authority hampers the formation of a safe cultural
space based on lateral accountability since their supervisory position likely reinforces many

4. participants’ notions that rounds are just another evaluative tool rather than an opportunity for
personal instructional quality advancement. “In almost any profession successful training and
development… has to come from the bottom; it cannot be mandated” (Rotherham & Mitchel,
2014).
A similar key assumption in instructional rounds’ theory of action is related to the skill of
the other participants in the observation phase to not only detect classroom events that relate to
the problem of practice but also to discuss them in an objective and egalitarian manner. Class
observation under the rigid structures of the rounds process is challenging to master because of
its alien, nonjudgmental nature. “The teachers learned they couldn’t assume any one of them had
a professional knowledge base” (cited in Gillard, 2014, p. 24). In any school, hierarchies exist
among faculty members (A. Berger, personal communication, October 15, 2014) and different
levels of teaching experience lead to different types of adult learning processes, what
Breidenstein et al. (2012) term “instrumental”, “socializing”, and “self-authoring” learning.
Although Troen and Boles (2014) suggest that only experienced teachers participate in rounds in
order to mitigate the negative effects these factors have on objectivity, if the goal of rounds is to
make the greatest improvements in the overall instructional quality of a school, novice teachers
should also be included. As Hanushek and Rivkin (2006) have discussed, teachers make their
largest gains in teaching quality in their first years of service after which their development
plateaus. “To reduce variability” (City, 2011) in instructional quality effectively among all
members of a school’s faculty through rounds, rookie teachers need to be involved.
Instructional rounds’ theory of action foresees many pathways leading to a participants’
sharing of successful practice, which then theoretically leads to a shared vision of teaching and
learning. By observing how other teachers behave in the classroom rather than isolating
themselves in their own, participants share experiences on which they can base a common
vocabulary. By debriefing through the strict protocol of describing evidence, analyzing it, and
predicting outcomes based on it (Teitel, 2009), participants understand in similar ways how
instructional behavior operates and collaborate openly because of the objective, non-evaluative
nature of the protocol. By committing to change practice and sharing the records of their
changes, participants share responsibility in the improvement of schoolwide teaching quality,
thus improving teaching quality more effectively and uniformly. However, these pathways
assume that the participants have equal influence in determining the collective vision of teaching
and learning.
The literature on medical rounds has demonstrated that this type of collaboration does not
happen as often as one would assume in the rounds process. Yes, there already exists a strongly
agreed-upon vision of good medicine, but this vision is usually purveyed to interns during rounds
rather than created by the interns’ own constructive thought processes. Wilkerson et al. (1986)
state that residents, who generally fulfill the facilitation role in medical rounds, teach, for the
most part, in “an authoritarian style, characterized by use of the lecture” (p. 827). Furthermore,
residents also tend to generalize rather than be specific and to give subjective and personalized
feedback rather than focus on strictly objective observation and prediction. Wilkerson et al.
(1986) hypothesize three explanations for these behaviors: 1) the disparity of expertise between
the resident and the other participants in the rounds process resulting in greater confidence in the
resident’s perception of himself as an expert, 2) the constraints of time, and 3) the residents’
desire to make the lives of the other participants easier by simply supplying them with behaviors
to follow.

5. All of these explanations are applicable to the assumption that instructional rounds results
in egalitarian participation. As discussed earlier, facilitators are normally faculty or
administration members of supervisory positions. Not only do those positions influence the safe
space culture that instructional rounds require, but they also influence the facilitators’ views of
themselves as experts. It is quite possible that master teachers or principals who serve as
facilitators would end up treating the rounds process as a podium to express their personal vision
of teaching and learning rather than all participants’ coming to a shared one. This could feasibly
happen even if facilitators are just trying to “be nice” by skipping or misusing protocols in order
to save the other participants’ time and effort, both of which teachers have limited supplies of. In
order for rounds to work, “a desire to teach is not enough” (Wilkerson et al., 1986, p. 828).
Specific training is needed.
Recommendations for Ensuring Rounds’ Effectiveness
One strategy for overcoming hierarchical influence on the rounds process as well as
facilitator and participant skill dearth is to pass facilitation responsibility to third-party
professional developers specifically trained in facilitation’s requisite skills to moderate each
school’s instructional rounds. These professional developers may come from private firms
specifically contracted for facilitation services by districts, teacher unions, principals, or the
teachers themselves. In this way, concerns over possible evaluation may be allayed and intra-
school politics may be skirted. Professional facilitators would be more likely to maintain
protocol within the rounds process and restrict personally judgmental views of participants since
they have no stake in how others at the school perceive them as teachers or evaluators.
Moreover, inexperienced teachers participating in the rounds would likely not see the facilitators
as experts of teaching, whose practices or views are to be emulated, but rather only as experts of
the protocols and skills related to the rounds. In this manner, uptake of the protocols and skills
could be hastened and a truly shared vision of teaching and learning could be made more
reachable. Lastly, the necessary preparation for successful facilitation would not burden the
schedules of day-to-day school administrators and faculty since an outside expert would be held
responsible for the facilitation task. As a result, teachers would be more willing to participate in
instructional rounds.
Nevertheless, teachers would still need more time in their schedules to accommodate the
responsibilities of preparing host forms, observing classes, debriefing, and maintaining records
of practice. One possible method of reducing the impact that these activities have on teacher time
is to schedule rounds meetings during regular faculty meetings and professional development
days. Since rounds can address many different issues within school practice and teacher
development, they can substitute for the other activities that happen on those days. Another
method of saving participants’ time is to videotape host teachers’ classes rather than have
observers physically attend them. Rounds participants could then gather to watch recorded
classes without missing their own classes. Other than the convenience that this method brings,
observation through videotape has another benefit. Pickering and Walsh (2011) argue that
inexperienced observers are oftentimes disoriented during on-site observations, “not really
knowing what to look for or how to interpret what they see” (p. 100). Recorded classes would
allow the facilitator to collectively train participants in objective observational skills, thus
accelerating their ability to assess and interpret classroom behaviors effectively, and hence, result
in quicker usefulness of instructional rounds to address chosen problems of practice.

6. Conclusion
Overall, instructional rounds are a promising professional development tool. Although
there are a few questionable assumptions made in rounds’ theory of action, they are not
insuperable obstacles to implementation. Just by distancing the facilitator from the site of the
rounds, substituting rounds for other redundant faculty activities, and using technology for
convenience and efficacy, instructional rounds become a feasible and more effective alternative
to traditional professional development.

7. References
Breidenstein, A., Fahey, K., Glickman, C., & Hensley, F. (2012). Leading for Powerful
Learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
City, E.A. (2011). Learning from Instructional Rounds. Coaching: The New Leadership Skill,
69(2), 36-41.
City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional Rounds in
Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Education Press.
Gillard, C. (2014). Targeting Improvement: Instructional Rounds. AASA School Administrator,
1(71), 20-25.
Hanushek, E.A. & Rivkin, S.G. (2006). Teacher Quality. In E. Hanushek & F. Welch (Eds.),
Handbook of the Economics of Education Volume 2 (pp. 1053-1078). Amsterdam:
Elsevier B.V.
Pickering, L.E. & Walsh, E.J. (2011). Using Videoconferencing Technology to Enhance
Classroom Observation Methodology for the Instruction of Preservice Early Childhood
Professionals. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 27(3), 99-108.
Rotherham, A.J. & Mitchel, A.L. (2014). Genuine Progress, Greater Challenges: A Decade of
Teacher Effectiveness Reforms. Bellweather Education Partners.
Teitel, L. (2009). Improving Teaching and Learning through Instructional Rounds. Harvard
Education Letter, 25(3), 1-3.
Troen, V. & Boles, K.C. (2014). The Power of Teacher Rounds: A Guide for Facilitators,
Principals, & Department Chairs. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Wilkerson, L., Lesky, L., & Medio, F.J. (1986). The Resident as Teacher During Work Rounds.
Journal of Medical Education, 61, 823-829.