School-Based Instructional Rounds: Improving Teaching and Learning Across Classrooms

In School-Based Instructional Rounds, Teitel offers detailed case studies of five different models of school-based rounds and investigates critical learning from each.

Instructional rounds—one of the most innovative and powerful approaches to improving teaching and learning—has been taken up by districts across the country and around the world. Now Lee Teitel, an originator of this transformative practice, explores one of the most promising ways in which it is being adapted in the field: implementing instructional rounds networks within, rather than across, K–12 schools.

In School-Based Instructional Rounds, Teitel offers detailed case studies of five different models of school-based rounds and investigates critical learning from each. Expanding rounds to include teachers, for instance, offers opportunities for a more direct connection to instructional improvement. Other areas of experimentation include increasing the frequency of visits, engaging participants across diverse roles, and modifying the structure or focus of rounds work.

School-Based Instructional Rounds represents an invaluable resource for educators involved in instructional rounds. It marks a significant addition to the literature on this evolving practice."

Lee Teitel teaches courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on leadership development; partnership and networking; and understanding organizations and how to improve them. He directs the master’s-level School Leadership Program. He was the founding director and then faculty senior associate of the Executive Leadership Program for Educators, a five-year collaboration of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government that focused on bringing high-quality teaching and learning to scale in urban and high-need districts.

Teitel is coauthor (with Elizabeth City, Richard Elmore, and Sarah Fiarman) of Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning (Harvard Education Press, 2009). He has facilitated or helped launch instructional rounds networks in ten states in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Sweden.