S4 Ep3 - Can Great Teaching Be Scripted?

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Hi there and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm Jocelyn and in this episode, recorded on the lands of the Palawa people here in Tasmania, I'm going to share my thoughts on an issue that many people have many viewpoints about: scripted teaching. Specifically, can great teaching be scripted?

Now, full disclosure, I don't have research to share with you that will definitively answer this question. A review of the literature on this issue yields a number of papers and articles, most of which seem to have been written by people who either really love or really hate scripted instructional programs. I find it hard to put much faith in the findings and viewpoints of an article when clearly biased language is used in statements such as scripted programs are being forced onto teachers or schools committed to evidence-informed practices use scripted programs.

This sets up an expectation of competition of absolutes that's rarely helpful to leaders and decision makers. When school leaders are making decisions for the good of their school communities, they want to get it right. They know that decisions, particularly those that come with a price tag, carry a certain weight of accountability.

So this podcast episode isn't going to be a persuasive piece on whether you should or should not use a scripted approach to instruction. Rather, I hope to present some food for thought and a little more nuance in the discussion than we sometimes see.

Firstly, I'd like to give you a bit of background about the thinking that has led me to produce this particular episode. Years of working with and supporting adults in training, coaching, leadership and day-to-day operations, both in school settings and outside of them, has made it very clear to me that grown-ups benefit from the explicit teaching model just as much as students.

I do, We do, You do is useful for all.

It is also clear that there is as much variation in our teaching teams as in our classrooms, with different teachers having different needs. Trying to come up with a universal answer on finer points of instruction for every teacher in every classroom in every school is a pipe dream.

Working with people is messy.

Working with students and meeting the needs of a range of learners is also no easy task.

When it comes to teaching, I rarely say that something is always good or always bad. And sure, taking a hard stand and being all controversial will get more podcast downloads, but I'd rather we had a more professional conversation about when might scripted programs be appropriate and if scripting is even the right place to put our focus for this conversation.

In thinking about this issue and so many others, I come back to how we make sure that teachers get what they need at their particular point in their teaching journey.

Situational Leadership Model

The foundation for me is Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership Model. If you've been with me for a while, you will undoubtedly have heard me speak about this. The Situational Leadership Model organises people into four quadrants, depending on how much skill and knowledge they have in relation to a particular task.

Quadrant one is for enthusiastic beginners who have no experience and just need to be told and shown what to do.

Quadrant two is for disillusioned learners who have not yet developed enough skill and knowledge to perform a task on their own, but have had enough time trying to be in a place of frustration. You might know this as the learning pit. Disillusioned learners need high levels of direction and also high levels of support. They need to be told and shown what to do and also have highly supportive coaching to help them through the rough spots.

When you have appropriate direction and support, you move to Quadrant three, which is where you become an emerging contributor. You can perform the task, but you doubt yourself. You need loads of support, but not much direction.

Finally, after sufficient time, and having received appropriate support, you move to becoming a peak performer and can just get on with what you're doing.

See these four quadrants in the show notes of this episode so that you can get a visual of how we develop in our skills and knowledge.

The thing about Situational Leadership is that everyone has different tasks in their job that sit across at least three of these quadrants, and across a team you're going to have individual teachers who sit across these quadrants for the same thing. So when it comes to teaching students to read and spell in a structured, explicit way, I guarantee that your team will be in different places, and unless you have an incredibly stable staff who stay together for five years and all row in the same direction, you are going to have this mix forever.

So, what's this got to do with scripted programs?

The way that this all comes together is that one of the benefits of a scripted program is that everyone gets the same type of direction, because the words you say and things you do are all there, right in front of you. Introducing a scripted approach to teaching can be a very quick undertaking, making it feel like you're able to achieve a lot in a small amount of time, and if your intention is to introduce a program, that's absolutely true, you will achieve that.

But here's the thing, building a high-performing teaching team is not just about programs.

The programs are the thing that help direct our attention and get everyone on the same page. They don't do the teaching. Let's reflect on those four quadrants again and the needs of different people. One of the teachings that comes with the Situational Leadership Model is that the key to success is in matching leadership style with the needs of the individual and recognising that different people will have different needs over time. If you mismanage people, as in your approach is not in alignment with people's needs, then things can go awry.

Manage someone one quadrant out from what they need and you get frustration. Manage them two quadrants out from what they need and you get anger. Manage them three quadrants out and things get explosive. That means that if you take an experienced peak performer and give them the high level of direction needed by someone in the second quadrant, there's a good chance that you'll anger the person.

Think about it this way: if you're skilled in teaching explicitly and have been getting real results for years, and someone comes along and says no, no, you should do it this way, let me step it out for you, and I only want you to do exactly what it says here. Guess what happens. There are likely to be terse words, but if you are new to explicit teaching or an early career teacher and someone gives you that same instruction, you'll likely be pretty grateful.

And this is why I think we get such mixed reviews on scripted instruction. Some people, those who are new to explicit instruction or only do it once in a while, will welcome that level of direction, but not everyone actually needs it.

This might also explain the journey that some schools have in adopting a scripted program. At the start it's all new, so the high level of direction might be appreciated by the team at the time. People get into a groove of how explicit lessons run, develop their skills and are then ready to move on and branch out.

But they can't because they've been told that they have to only teach doing and saying precisely what the book or bit of paper says.

They're just held too tight. They're mismanaged.

If we think about the explicit teaching model, it's a process of gradual release. We hold students tight in the early stages while they're building knowledge, skills and confidence and then give them space to apply these things for themselves. I think it's important to recognise that we all need this.

We all need to have the space to bring ourselves into the picture.

I heard this described another way recently, with a different analogy about martial arts. When someone's learning a martial art, their job is to do exactly what the instructor does and nothing else. They then have to be a carbon copy. Once they can do those moves without thinking to a high standard, they can start to adjust with a flick of the wrist or a different angle on a toe. It's when this is successful that they can branch out, but they're not held to being the carbon copy of the instructor forever.

It seems to me that a highly scripted program may suit newbies, but may not serve as well into the long term with more experienced people.

So where does that leave us?

How are we supposed to support our teachers who are at different points in their career and their explicit teaching journey?

I think that the answer here lies in a shift, and that shift is a move from discussion about scripted teaching to full guidance support. Full guidance resources and programs provide the high level of support that novices need to find their feet and that teams need to get on the same page, but they don't prevent a teacher from teaching in the way that reflects their experience or responds to the need of their students.

That brings me to a point that I'm quite firm on. No program or resource developer knows your students or what is going to happen in your classroom when you teach. It's just not possible.

Great teaching responds to the needs of students. It holds students' hearts and minds close and meets them in the learning.

I'm not talking about namby-pamby, fluffy instruction where you don't need any data because we feel the learning in our hearts. I'm talking about explicit, teacher-led lessons where you invite the students on a journey and they willingly come along with you.

There are moments in teaching when you feel the energy shift in the room.

You can feel the students' attention lock onto what you are teaching and know that you've pitched the lesson just right.

But this kind of moment doesn't come from cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all teaching, it comes from reading the room, adjusting pace, varying your language to enable or enrich, pausing to provide a bit more explanation when it's needed, throwing in a quick fun fact to pique interest and at all times responding to the needs of the students in front of you based on what you see in a lesson.

I'm not talking about making it up as you go. I'm talking about using full guidance resources to provide the foundation, structure and consistency across classrooms that you need to create a cracking whole school approach, and then that instruction being delivered in a way that responds to student needs. Yes, there must be elements of instruction that are not negotiable. You have to be clear about what teachers can and can't adjust, but I believe that there's room for both structure and response. You don't have to sacrifice one to embrace the other.

Do I think that great teaching can come from a scripted program? Well, yes, I do. But I also think that the critical ingredient is the teacher.

Do I understand why schools would choose one? Yep, I get it. You want to support your teachers. You want to get quick runs on the board. You want every student to receive high quality instruction.

But here's another thing. You can have all of those things and give teachers the room to be professionals. You can have consistency across classrooms, support teachers, get your school on the road to results and have learning done with children, not to them.

You don't have to choose.

The road to this outcome is full guidance resources that give teachers everything they need to provide full guidance to students.

So back to our question about whether great teaching can come from scripted programs. As always, it's less about the resource itself and more about how you use it. If your team is currently working through this issue and trying to make great decisions for the future, here are some questions you can discuss in your next leadership meeting.

1. If we're going to create a sustainable, long-term culture of excellence where teachers are supported to build capacity, what elements of instruction and resources will be necessary?
2. What is it about instruction that makes it effective and efficient for all students and teachers?
3. How can we help our whole team to build this understanding?
4. What percentage of instruction should be not negotiable?
5. What percentage of it should be negotiated with a team, and what percentage of instruction do individual teachers decide on? And once you know what those percentages are, name them up. Be really clear. How do we balance fidelity to a whole school approach with teachers having the room to use their professional judgment in their classrooms?
6. What role will data play in our approach and what are we looking for to know that instruction is effective?
7. How will we use data to measure impact and to identify teachers who may need more support or who might be going a little bit rogue with the instruction?
8. How are we considering the three elements of evidence-informed practice and giving weight to each? Those three elements are research, practitioner knowledge and the experience of students.
9. Where are we finding the win-win-win amongst all of these?
10. If we already have a scripted program in our school, what does it mean for us to respond to the reality that teachers have differing needs for direction and support?
11. How will we tweak things?
12. How will we adjust them to meet teachers where they're up to?
13. If we're looking for a program or suite of resources to support student learning, what's important to us?
14. How are we gathering feedback from our team and our students about what drives learning and progress in our school?

I'd like to finish this episode with an observation.

We have made some tremendous gains in literacy instruction in the last five years. It would be a great shame to see them rolled back. You know those pendulums that we're all so fond of talking about. I can see one swinging right past on its way to another extreme. We've come from a position of not really understanding the value of teacher-led instruction, of working under the assumption that if we put engaging things in front of children, they would pull the learning out of them and all would be well. So many of us have built a strong understanding of Cognitive Load Theory, of Information Processing Theory, of understanding the need to direct student attention and guide learning.

In the quest to standardise practice and not leave things to chance, we are in danger of holding on to teachers and holding on to instruction far too tight. No program writer knows what every child needs.

In our desire to not leave things to chance, we are in some instances trying to engineer all of the uncertainty out of instruction.

No process makes up for a lack of suitability to teach.

No script can replace professional learning, in-school coaching and the need to be constantly focused on growing teacher capacity.

We can't make teaching foolproof. What we can do is attract the best and the brightest teachers to our schools, remain uncompromising and unapologetic about the need for constant improvement and provide our teachers with the training and robust guidance that they need to do great work.

Having small scripts as part of a program is great. It helps everyone communicate about concepts with confidence and establish lesson structures.

But should every moment of instruction be scripted? Personally, I don't think so.

I think there's something lost when there's a piece of paper between us and the students. Instead, look for resources and programs that provide loads of guidance, while supporting teachers to use their judgment to respond to the needs of students.

If you're a Resource Room member or use one of our programs, that's exactly what you're getting.

Until next time, happy teaching everyone. Bye.

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Looking for a way to give your teachers full guidance while helping them build their skills? Download a brochure and sample unit here.