Instructional Coaches and Fidelity
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 06:32PM One of the most frequent comments I hear when I talk with people about school change is that coaches will only be effective if they ensure that teachers implement new practices with fidelity. This is an easily justified goal. If teachers don't teach innovations with fidelity, the thinking is, they won't get results. So we need to make sure teachers do it (whatever it might be) the way it is supposed to be done. I think, however, that it is worth while to ask what is fidelity before we totally adopt this way of thinking?
For me, there are some thorny issues that we need to think about with respect to the topic of fidelity. Of course, if coaching is going to be effective, coaches need to partner with teachers to provide the supports that empower teachers to implement new practices in a high-quality way that gets results. But we make a big mistake, I think, if we assume this means that teachers must mindlessly follow a script.
Lucy West, in the new book I edited Coaching: Approaches and Practices suggests that coaches, rather than encouraging fidelity, which she describes a "dictum to follow a script," should strive for mindful engagement of the curriculum with teachers.
I agree completely for a number of reasons, but I'll mention two here. First, asking teachers to implement exactly what a script says, exactly as the script says, treats teacher like workers on an assembly line rather than professionals. This means, I suspect, that an over emphasis on fidelity likely leads to low quality instruction where teachers do every task on a checklist but do not teach with passion, or love, or even in a manner that involves reflection.
The second issue, though is more troubling. I just don't think it is likely that a heavy emphasis on fidelity is practically effective. As Thomas Davenport has shown in Thinking For a Living when professionals (whom he calls knowledge workers) such as teachers are not given the opportunity to reflect and think for themselves, they resist change. Simply put: what knowledge workers do is they think for a living; if someone else (researchers, administrators, policy makers) does the thinking for teachers, teachers will resist.
Now I'm not saying everything is up for grabs, or that a teacher can say, "OK, this year, no more reading and writing, this year it is all hockey." That is ridiculous. I'm also not saying coaches shouldn't worry about high quality implementation, or understanding the teaching practices they share. In fact, I believe just the opposite.
Coaches need to deeply understand the materials they share, and they should be highly skilled at finding precise and easy-to-understand explanations for those practices. However, when they explain, model, observe, and explore data, coaches need to present that information in a way that allows teachers to do the thinking. For example, when explaining teaching practices, instructional coaches can say, "Here's what the research says. However, do we need to adapt this at all so it will work for you and your students. What do you think about this approach?" 95% of the time when coaches ask for teachers' opinions, the teachers say, "let's do it the way you describe it." When coaches tell teachers what to do without honoring their thoughts and voices, however, the first thought if not word for the teachers is, "I want to change it."
There are several key lessons here.
First, instructional coaches have to deeply understand the teaching practices they share.
Second, coaches have to find precise language to describe in easy-to-understand language how a new teaching practice will look in a teacher's classroom.
Third, rather than telling teachers how to do it (encouraging mindless fidelity) coaches should engage teachers in reflective conversations about how they think teaching practices might work in their classrooms (mindful engagement).
By treating teachers like professionals, by letting them do at least some of the thinking, coaches have a much better chance of enabling high-quality teaching and better student learning--and isn't the whole point.
Reader Comments (10)
Anne Marie Sullivan Palinscar introduced the term “lethal mutation” at 2008 SIM Conference when describing the adaptation of her Reciprocal Teaching Strategies by two teachers who reported that they were able to reduce her strategies to a simple system without dialogue. If you know anything about Reciprocal Teaching it is all about dialogue. As you can imagine, the ‘adapted’ strategies implemented by these teachers were unsuccessful. This example demonstrates the importance of fidelity of the program when using research validated interventions. The teachers had distorted the strategies to such an extent that they were ineffective.
A major challenge to any process of adaptation is to maintain the core principles of the innovation throughout its adaptation. If an innovation is changed in such a way that it violates its core principles, that is called a “lethal mutation”. (Brown and Campione, 1996).
While listening to Palinscar referring to lethal mutations, another term was echoing in my head, “mutual adaptation”. On my night stand was the book, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality , by Dalai Lama. In this book the Dalai states the importance of mutual adaptations of different cultures to allow for co-existence. He calls for the mutual adaptation of the ancient Buddhist culture to embrace western empirical science. The Dalai states that the Buddhists Monks would have much to gain by the knowledge of neuroscience as it relates to the contemplative traditions, just as the scientists would have much to gain from the inclusion of moral purpose within the scientific community.
These two thoughts came together to create a decision continuum. Yes, we need to ensure fidelity to our research validated intervention, and yes, there are adaptations that are to be considered in our ever changing world of education. Will these changes make a positive impact on student outcome? Is this a ‘mutual adaptation’ or will this be a ‘lethal mutation’?
This conversation is intriguing and one that I’m interested in continuing.
Sarah
I agree that coaches can be highly effective in helping teachers understand and deliver quality instruction. This comes from a coach having expertise and the ability to make something complex more easy and understandable. It is about small incremental changes. It is about examining data about what occurred and having nonjudgmental conversations with teachers to better understand what they are doing.
Right now fidelity is most definitely a buzz word in education circles. Do you think it could be related to the focus on research based interventions? Researchers want to be sure that programs are being implemented as intended - I think it is important to think about that side of the coin, too. It is an interesting topic to toss around. I'm curious to hear what more of you are thinking.
Your views on fidelity seem consistent with your overall philosophy about teacher voice and choice and contain many important seeds, I think. A key in my view is, as you suggest in your opening paragraph, the definition of fidelity. If fidelity is interpreted as strict adherence to a script then what we have may not be a faithful rendition of a research velidated practice. It may be closer to what we might call in my biz "empty speech." I would argue that delivering a script may be the antithesis of fidelity if the intent is lost. The key, in my view, is to distill the nuggets (non negotiables) of what makes a practice/program effective and understand a variety of permutations that may still fall within the range of the intent of the practice/program. This orientation is what retains my interest in the CBAM tools, especially the Innovation Configuration Map which is an effective way to define a range of "acceptable" variations within the context of fidelity. Having been an administrator in a large school district I understand, albeit not condone, the evolution of scripts. It is challenging to get large numbers of people on the same page and in the absence of sufficient resources to conduct high quality professional development, including instructional coaching, districts often resort to strict adherence to scripts. They think that kind of standardization will ensure implementation of scientifically based practice. Quite the contrary, if teachers don't really understand what they are delivering enough to vary the script! So...bottom line for me is that I think we need to reflect thoughtfully on what fidelity really should mean and how it might coexist with teacher voice and choice in a way that yields positive outcomes for students.