Chapter 2: Professional Learning in a Rural School Community: The Instructional Rounds Partnership

This chapter describes the instructional rounds partnership between the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and the Gill-Montague Regional School District, both located in western Massachusetts. The partnership had three primary goals: to conduct intradistrict instructional rounds, to increase shared professional literacy across the district, and to improve instructional leadership practices for principals and other district leaders. In order to suit the needs and sensibilities of educators in a rural school district, the standard instructional rounds process to the addition of visiting network members (teachers at the hosting school). As a result of the partnership, the school districts’ leaders came to recognize the primacy of the fundamentals of good instruction as the common thread that ran through their leadership work independently of the school to which they were assigned. They also expressed and exhibited increased trust and cohesion as a leadership team, and some reported changes to the way they observed and evaluated teachers. The district made changes to planned improvement initiatives to more closely address problems of practice that were brought to light by the rounds process. The partnership also led to a strengthening of the individual relationships between university staff and school staff, increasing both institutions’ levels of organizational social capital.