Shared Expectations, Professional Judgement and Better Instructional Practice

One of the challenges in improving instructional practice is creating shared expectations without turning them into compliance.

I worked with a school leadership team that was grappling with exactly that. They wanted to strengthen instructional practice and see greater consistency across classrooms but they also wanted to preserve teachers’ professional judgement.

It wasn’t because teachers weren’t working hard or weren’t committed. What was missing was enough shared clarity about what effective practice looked like and the structures that would allow teachers to learn from what was happening across classrooms.

Sharratt’s work in Clarity (2019) reinforces the importance of leaders and teachers developing a shared understanding of effective practice, so there is a common language for talking about teaching, learning and improvement. That became an important part of our work.

Over several months, the leadership team introduced more purposeful peer observation, collaborative planning and regular opportunities to look together at what they were seeing in classrooms and in student work.

The purpose wasn’t to check whether every teacher was doing exactly the same thing. It was to create better feedback loops.

• What are we noticing across classrooms?

• Where are students respo

  nding well?

• Where is practice varying and does that variation matter?

• What can teachers learn from one another?

• What support might help someone take the next step in their practice?

Over time, the conversations started to shift. Teachers were sharing strategies more openly, looking at evidence together and developing a stronger shared language for talking about their teaching and the impact it was having on student learning.

One of the things this work reinforced for me is that consistency doesn’t have to mean uniformity. We don’t need every classroom to look the same. But we do need enough shared clarity about what matters, structures that allow teachers to learn from one another, and feedback that helps people continue to develop their practice.

Reflection questions:

• Where do we have genuine shared clarity about what effective instructional practice looks like and where are we still relying on individual interpretation?

  
  

• Where is variation in practice appropriate and where might greater consistency strengthen student learning?

  
  

• What structures currently allow teachers to see, discuss and learn from practice across classrooms?

  
  

• How useful are our current feedback loops in helping teachers understand the impact of their practice and decide what to do next?

  
  

• How do we create shared expectations while still protecting teachers’ professional judgement?