Instructional Regimes as a Tool for Classroom Observation

• In Event: Efforts to Conceptualize Key Structures of Teaching Practice in the Content Areas

Abstract

Objectives
A frequent criticism of educational policy is that it rarely makes a positive impact on the quality of instructional practice. Researchers have made many efforts to bring policy and practice together, but the separation persists. This paper examines the concept of an instructional regime, exploring its affordances and problems as a tool for understanding and improving instruction.

Perspectives
Two frameworks used in prior research ground the work in this study. Raudenbush and his colleagues (2003, 2008) were the first to suggest using research on instructional “regimes” to improve educational policy. They propose that three components necessary for an instructional regime are a learning goal, a strategy for assessing student understanding, and a scheme for making instructional decisions based on the results of the assessment. Next, Cohen and Moffit (2009) established a framework to analyze change in instructional practice in response to policy. These authors view such change as a product of the aims and instruments of policy as well as the capability within the system and the environment. Within this framework instructional regimes are seen as an instrument of policy which practitioners can utilize to change instruction.

Methods and data
Classroom video of middle school mathematics teaching was used to explore the utility of instructional regimes as a tool for observing teaching. Three sites in which instructional regimes can be identified are curriculum materials, published instructional programs, and charter school networks. Instructional regimes from these sources were used to articulate alternative frameworks through which to view and comment on classroom video. Although the teachers in these videos were not attempting to enact any particular regime, viewing the classroom instruction through the lens of each regime provides an opportunity to consider the features of practice most visible through each regime.

Results
This study analyzed features of the work of teaching foregrounded in specific instructional regimes. A regime originating in curriculum materials might lead observers to attend to ways on which the physical resources of the classroom facilitate or constrain effective teaching. By comparison, regimes originating in instructional programs are more likely to illuminate the cognitive work of teaching such as how teachers sequence a set of problems when they teach a new idea. Identifying features of the work of teaching through the lens of a regime is valuable because the features are visible as part of a system of instruction rather than in isolation.

Significance
By identifying features of instruction that are visible through particular frameworks it is possible to make an informed decision about which instructional regime to use in an effort to change instructional practice. Practitioners can use instructional regimes as a framework for observing features of instruction they would like to change. Likewise, policy makers can advocate for instructional regimes that make visible those features of practice that they find to be in need of change.

Author

• Kolby Gadd, University of Michigan