Individual Schools: The In-School Visit™ (Self Study)
The central focus for most Practice-Based Inquiry® visits is the individual school. The goal is to capture the particularities of how teaching and learning are proceeding within the specific school being visited is at the heart of the conceptual underpinnings of PBI, And indeed is the center of Practice-Based Inquiry’s theory of action.
This section considers school self-study.
The history of the use of self-study (more than 100 years in the United States) shows that it can be powerful, but that too often it is designed as a set of general, prescribed hurdles that a school must jump over. This uneven history is the result of under-theorized rationales, poorly designed exercises and Pollyannaish expectations about what will be accomplished. In short, concepts of self-study are usually dominated more by vague values of self-help than by the value of conducting an accurate inquiry that produces substantive results. Finally, modern self-study usually leads a school into strategic planning which is adopted from the business community and thus, which also lacks a convincing record of effectiveness.
To test potential of the PBI principles for generating rigorous self-study protocols that promote effective practitioner thought and action, Catalpa developed a pilot protocol for the In-School Visit™, working with the leadership and teachers of Perspectives, a Charter School in Chicago. Perspectives, then a member of the Chicago Schools Alliance, had hosted a Practice-Based Inquiry visit the year before.
The Perspectives’ pilot began with an inquiry conducted by the entire faculty to answer the question, “How rigorous is our program? Each faculty member followed a student through three classes. Each faculty member was charged to think about what she saw as evidence that defined the nature of rigor in an actual classroom. Then, the faculty met as a whole to prepare conclusions about how rigorous the practice of learning is in the school based on what the faculty members saw and what they thought about what they saw. While preparing conclusions that they agreed were accurate involved considerable work and discussion, their next step was easier - it made great sense to decide what they needed to change to strengthen the rigor of learning at the school.
Both a survey of the Perspectives faculty after the In-School Visit, and reports of the effectiveness of post-visit planning show that, even with start-up glitches, the In-School Visit™ has a much stronger positive effect on actual teaching and learning than conventional self-study processes provide.
Catalpa is working closely with SALT as it develops in-school and in-district variations of the SALT visit. See SALT for more detail.
