Foundational Practices

Professional Learning

IFL professional development enhances educators’ daily practice by focusing closely on the work of teaching and learning and ensures efforts are sustainable with ongoing support.

The IFL has a suite of tools for professional learning to help educators develop, strengthen, and support professional learning communities, focus on instructional matters, and engage in cycles of continuous improvement. We work closely with school and district leaders to ensure that instructional content aligns with school and district goals.

• The IFL offers content-specific professional development for teachers and administrators.
• The IFL has a suite of content-specific coaching tools and that includes a set of moves for coaches designed to help deepen their planning for and execution of each phase of the coaching cycle.
• The IFL offers leadership coaching to learn about ways of working and supporting district and building administrators to take on instructional based problems of practice.
• The IFL’s content-specific feedback tools and protocols assist educators at all levels to focus observational feedback on the instructional core.
• The IFL’s studying student work protocols help educators analyze and discuss student work to determine what students know and can do, and to determine next steps for instruction.
• The IFL has an array of tools for instructional leaders that help plan and evaluate initiatives that are squarely focused on the instructional core.

Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a process in which fellows and district partners collaborate to define a problem of practice, study artifacts to understand the problem’s root cause, develop a theory of action, and then document quick cycles of small tests of change. Through the course of the cycles around small tests of change, teachers and/or administrators collect samples of student work and student feedback to determine the effectiveness of the changes tried. School teams then work to make decisions about adapting, adopting, or abandoning the test of change. Teams then work to use what they have learned to inform the next cycle in an ongoing process. 

We have engaged leaders and practitioners at the state, district, and school level to implement small tests of change around rigorous instruction in literacy and mathematics for every student. We utilize network models and improvement cycles to manage and accelerate improvement across levels within a school system. Employing continuous improvement methods ensures that the research-based practices that we introduce into schools are implemented in ways that lead to sustained student achievement.

Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA)

We have engaged leaders and practitioners at the state, district, and school level to implement rigorous instruction in literacy and mathematics for all students. We utilize network models and Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to manage and accelerate improvement across levels within a school system. Employing improvement science methods ensures that the research-based practices that we introduce into schools are implemented in ways that lead to sustained student achievement.

IFL projects that have used PDSA cycles and network models include:

• • The Tennessee Math Coaching Project
    A team of IFL fellows, LRDC researchers, and administrators from the Tennessee State Department of Education created a network of elementary and middle school mathematics coaches and worked with them to design a state-wide model for instructional coaching. The IFL trained math coaches across the state to utilize PDSA cycles to adaptively integrate the coaching model into diverse local contexts. This approach helped coaches to overcome typical implementation challenges, such as coping with competing demands for their time.

• • Online Content-Focused Coaching in English Language Arts
    Teachers across multiple schools worked together online to build their content knowledge of reading comprehension and engage in PDSA cycles with a coach to improve their practice through evidence-based reflection on their videoed lessons.

• • iLead Initiative
    Through the University of Pittsburgh’s partnership with the University Prep High School, IFL fellows worked with teachers to utilize PDSA cycles to increase the number of students who are proficient in mathematics and ELA through improving the rigor of their ELA and mathematics classroom practice.

• • Dallas Independent School District/IFL Network for School Improvement
    IFL fellows, LRDC researchers, and professors from the Center for Urban Education are currently partnered with 14 middle and high schools in the Dallas Independent School District to form a network studying literacy achievement in grade 6-9. Through the study of both qualitative and quantitative data, network teachers have learned from students and othe educators about the root causes of low literacy achievement in network schools. Working from what they’ve learned, teachers have been enacting small tests of change around reading and writing. These shifts to instruction have led to over a year’s worth of growth in one academic year reading and writing for every student, with the largest gains made by Black and Emergent Multilingual Students (IFL, 2021). This work is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Instructional Leadership

The IFL also offers coaching support for senior administrators around instructional problems of practice. Our most customized service, this on-site coaching occurs with individuals or small groups. No matter the size of the problem – from a need for talk in pre-K classrooms to revising curriculum, we work with senior leaders to refine their craft and amplify their efforts to be even more organized and effective.