Search results

This chapter aims to shed light on some aspects of instructional collaboration with the purpose of providing further understanding of how teachers collaborate and what hinders their collaboration in Saudi inclusive and mainstream schools. Instructional collaboration among teachers in Saudi educational settings has not been thoroughly reviewed, nor has it been adequately considered as an essential component in assuring the implementation of inclusive education. The voice of two special education teachers and two college professors are presented and discussed in order to explain and clarify aspects of instructional collaboration. The last part of the chapter delineates proposed changes that may motivate teachers and aid them in developing a clear understanding of how to practice instructional collaboration in inclusive and mainstream settings, namely, provision of professional development for special and general education teachers, endorsement of legislation and regulations to promote instructional collaboration, and development of teacher education programs.

The remarkable achievements being promoted through inclusive education practices make the deficiencies associated with educational exclusion all the more noticeable. Despite many schools adopting the philosophy of inclusion, avoidable educational exclusion of students with special needs still persists in educational systems worldwide. This is because the preparation of competent teachers to respond to variations in student populations in schools is very difficult to achieve. A major reason for this difficulty is that most student education programs fail to nurture collaborative instructional practice culture in student teachers, which can enable them to work well with others to teach all students. Utilizing the status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF) model developed by David Rock, this chapter contributes to existing knowledge on student teacher development by theorizing and offering practical ways to enact collaborative instructional practices in inclusive education. The chapter addresses this issue by reporting student teachers' experiences in a course unit on inclusive education in one Australian university that adopted a collaborative instructional practice, deepening their understanding and practice of inclusion.

The term Instructional Leader is often given to the leader of the school, even if she/he doesn’t deserve it. Instructional leadership consisting of four “main ingredients”: (1) a true understanding of and appreciation for the craft of teaching on the part of the site administrator, (2) the capacity to gauge the quality and effectiveness of instruction by individual teachers as well as teacher groups, (3) a practical, consistent, and ongoing teacher support and development system, and (4) the ability to remove teachers who prove to be ineffective from the classroom, is provided to guide the behaviors and actions of the school leader in becoming an Instructional Leader. Components of this “recipe” include the administrator teaching in classrooms, creation, implementation, and monitoring of a framework for instruction, as well as the teacher evaluation as an extension of the implementation of the framework. Instructional Leaders are made and the authors identify ideas from Fullan's Motion Leader (2010) to support a manager's change to becoming an Instructional Leader.

The purpose of this nonexperimental research was to examine the perceptions of state-certified teachers regarding Library Media Specialists (LMS). Through collaboration and the use of social constructivist learning theories, teachers at three high schools in Georgia were interviewed regarding the roles and responsibilities of LMS. The primary research question asked how the perceptions of teachers on the practices of the role of the school LMS differ from the way the teachers perceive these roles to be important at their high schools. The secondary research questions addressed the correlations between high school teachers' demographic information and both the importance of and the practice of the roles of the high school LMS. Quantitative data were collected through a survey developed by McCracken (2000). A paired sample t-test was used to compare the theoretical and practical scales in each category of the LMS roles, and a Spearman rank-ordered correlations test was used to compare the 13 descriptive variables to theoretical and practical scales. Teacher participants reported each of the roles of the LMS to be more important than what is actually being practiced in their school settings and that similar views existed on both the practice scale and the importance scale. Implications include community and educator awareness of the role of the school LMS, an increased educator awareness of the roles of a state-certified school LMS to compliment the high school curriculum, and an increased awareness for the need of a LMS in public schools.

Instructional leadership has taken center stage in recent years as the emphasis on school leaders’ role in improving instructional programs and impacting student learning has increased under the pressures of the accountability movement. While there is a growing literature that has highlighted the indirect impacts of effective instructional leadership on student learning, little is known about these effects in the area of special education. Because this direct involvement in instructional and curricular matters has typically fallen outside the traditional roles of principals and other school leaders, the need for purposeful focus on developing these skills is paramount in a climate that is calling for leaders who can facilitate growth and improvement in student learning, particularly in the area of special education. This chapter explores instructional leadership in the context of special education with a focus on small to mid-sized schools. We identify a set of factors that are critical to the effective implementation of instructional leadership in the area of special education which include, communication, teacher evaluation and supervision, staff development, instructional programing, and instructional design. The chapter goes on to discuss how school leaders can cultivate growth and improvement in special education programming through the use of coaching models and distributed leadership. Lastly we explore the implications for practice including discussions of reforming principal preparation programs and shared leadership.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the challenges of instructional leadership in prekindergarten (PK) programs in the context of small and mid-sized school districts. We first explore issues that characterize current PK education including the need for content standards and curriculum, Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP), Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge, and addressing mathematics anxiety and teacher-efficacy. We then turn to instructional leadership for PK education and the challenges that leader preparation and district program structures cause for instructional leadership. Often instructional experts have limited exposure to PK classrooms housed in traditional elementary buildings. Additionally, elementary principals are typically ill-prepared with the knowledge needed to support and develop teacher MPCK and effective learning contexts in PK classrooms. Typical preparation and professional development programs offer limited support for building principals as PK instructional leaders. Implications for building principals include the need to engage professional communities, utilize collaborative processes such as team observations, and leverage the collective efficacy and expertise of PK educators in their schools and districts.

There has been much discussion in the literature in recent years on the problems involved in the identification of children with reading disabilities. One of the most influential sources of knowledge in the field of learning disabilities is the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). This agency has typically been a major funding source for methodologically rigorous reading intervention research. Further, such research has contributed significantly to the validity of identifying children suspected of learning disabilities as “treatment resistors” (e.g. Vellutino et al., 1996). Yet, the NICHD has recently been the focus of some controversy. The purpose of this chapter was to synthesize NICHD funded research conducted over the past 10 years via a meta-analysis to determine what can be generalized from this body of research that can be applied to the identification of students with learning disabilities in reading. The results of the synthesis were that a prototypical intervention study has a mean effect size (ES) of 0.67 (SD=0.42), indicating that most interventions designed to increase reading skills were effective. The overall ES ranged, however, from 0.19 to 1.76, and therefore some criterion could be established for identifying treatment resistors. Performance below an overall ES of 0.25 was suggested as one of several criteria for identifying children with potential reading disabilities. However, this suggestion must be put in the context of intervention outcomes. The synthesis indicated that: (a) performance was more pronounced on skill or process measures (e.g. ES varies from 0.45 to 1.28 on measures of segmentation and pseudoword reading) than on measures of actual reading (ES varies from 0.17 to 0.60 on real word and comprehension measures); (b) the magnitude of effect sizes were more related to instructional activity (e.g. explicit instruction/practice) than to the content of instruction (e.g. type of phonics instruction); and (c) the bulk of intervention studies focused on a narrow range of reading behaviors (i.e. phonological awareness). Implications related to identification and sound teaching practice versus content training of reading instruction (e.g. phonological skills, comprehension skills) are discussed.

Purpose – Teachers should plan instruction that integrates digital tools into instruction in meaningful ways to promote students’ use of multimodalities. Therefore, it is useful for teacher educators to expose pre-service teachers (PSTs) to a systematic approach to integrating a variety of digital tools into their instruction. In this chapter, the authors discuss on the Technology Integration Planning Cycle (TIPC; Hutchison & Woodward, 2014a, 2014b) as one systematic approach for teachers and teacher educators to consider.

Design – This chapter describes the promise of using the TIPC with PSTs to demonstrate and practice how to plan effective literacy instruction to support students’ use of multimodalities. The chapter includes a rich description of how the use of the TIPC might take shape in a literacy methods course based on a composite of courses, students, and activities that the authors have experimented with over time.

Findings – Using the TIPC with PSTs requires a structured approach (Hutchison & Colwell, 2016) that includes modeling and scaffolding of PSTs’ knowledge of technology and pedagogy (Beschorner & Kruse, 2016). Therefore, the Gradual Release of Responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) might be valuable to consider as a guiding framework for planning course activities and assignments that utilize the TIPC. This chapter provides an example of this type of instruction.

Practical Implications – There is a significant need to prepare twenty-first century learners to read and write multimodal text. Thus, supporting PSTs to increase their self-efficacy in using technology for instruction and providing the conditions necessary to develop pedagogical beliefs that make it likely for them to be able to integrate technology in meaningful ways is vital (Ertmer, 2005). Using the TIPC in a literacy methods course in the ways that model and scaffold its use, might be one approach to creating these conditions.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to articulate the relationship between school leadership and quality core instruction, as defined by a gradual release of responsibility (GRR) framework. The development of a common vocabulary for quality instruction is essential for leaders and teachers to communicate effectively.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This chapter uses vignettes developed from previous studies to illustrate the use of GRR in principal development, instructional leadership in schools, and in professional learning for teachers.

Findings – Instructional leadership in action is enhanced when adults experience GRR as learners themselves. The authors use illustrative examples to highlight how GRR is leveraged to enhance learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – The authors use vignettes to highlight effective practices and believe that they have utility for other programs aimed at preparing instructional leaders.

Practical Implications – GRR principles should be enacted within adult learning, particularly in leadership preparation programs, and in school-based collaborative inquiry processes such as learning walks and professional learning communities.

Originality/Value of Chapter – The authors utilize our experiences as researchers and school leaders to articulate the bridge between leadership development and leadership in practice using GRR as the constant.

While the chapters in this book present insights on collaborative instructional practices from a cross section of international perspectives, this introductory chapter frames a commentary for the following chapters. The work of instructional collaborative practices internationally shifts the responsibility from the deficits within the student to the instructional decisions made as teachers, as well as policies, procedures, and decisions made by educational institutions. We highlight influential scholars whose work can inform the inclusive and collaborative instructional practices occurring worldwide. As teacher educators, we conclude that a collaborative approach to instruction empowers teachers with the knowledge that they have the ability, given a little ingenuity, to include students regardless of the unique learning needs they may present. Further, we examine sociopolitical current trends which support and constrain the work of collaborative inclusive practice in the field. Finally, we provide an overview of the chapters to come, all of which provide evidence for the need to invest in and cultivate collaborative instructional practices for the benefit of all students.