Using Learning Walks to Improve Collaboration and Charter School Performance (A University/ P–12 School Partnership): Year One

Abstract

Many universities exist apart from their community's public schools. A New Orleans area public university took measures to facilitate collaborative partnerships with four public schools. Those schools were taken over and converted to charter schools by state officials for poor performance. The partnerships created simultaneous opportunities and challenges, especially in the aftermath Hurricane Katrina. One challenge involved replacing damaged school buildings. Another challenge involved forging productive relationships. This article explains how the university utilized "Learning Walks" (Resnick, 1996) to facilitate stakeholder collaboration, which blossomed into partnerships facilitating school and student improvement and professional development opportunities for both entities.

Classroom walkthroughs as an effective strategy for preschool improvement during the COVID-19 lockdowns: a Chinese model

“…Interestingly, directors' characteristics showed no or even negative associations with supervision practices, and their working experiences were negatively related to quality scores using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (Perlman et al, 2020). Participating in the walkthrough builds a sense of investment in the leaders (or supervisors) and grows into an effort to tailor teaching instruction and practice to help school improvement (Bole and Farizo, 2013;Brookhart, 2015, 2019). Therefore, supervisory approaches or pedagogical skills during classroom walkthroughs, instead of demographic characteristics, might lead to differences in quality improvement (Rous, 2004;Badiali, 2016, 2018;Glickman et al, 2017).…”