Early Literacy Tutor Professional Learning Framework

Practice-Based Formal Learning

The National Student Support Accelerator recommends that the majority of the training for tutors be practice-based, meaning tutors are learning to implement the instructional and relational routines that they will teach to and use with students. This approach contrasts with lectures, workshops, or other modes of theory-based pedagogy. Further, we recommend that any formal professional learning sessions you offer once tutors are working with students remain practice-based.

All early literacy providers interviewed relied heavily on practice-based models of formal learning for their tutor training (e.g., analyzing live and video-based models; using rehearsals and other forms of practice, often with feedback from staff; etc.). Only one program has been able to overcome the hurdle of obtaining student permissions in order to have tutors record video footage of themselves to review and learn from, but most programs expressed desire to incorporate that pedagogy into their program in the future. To overcome this barrier and be able to use footage of tutoring session as part of practice-based formal learning, providers can consider (from most to least ideal):

• Asking caregivers to sign releases for filming before tutoring begins. Ensure releases clarify that footage will be used for tutor learning purposes only and will be kept behind a firewall.
• Setting up the recording device so that it only captures the tutor’s face/image and not the student’s.
• Using video blurring software to blur out students’ faces.

All programs interviewed ask tutors to learn from the science of reading research base; some ask tutors to read/watch/digest research in an asynchronous course first and then reference that as they learn how to implement their tutoring program. Others give tutors bite-size pieces of research in the context of learning how to implement their tutoring sessions. Either approach can work. Our recommendation is that resources that teach important theory or deliver key pieces of knowledge are tightly linked to the specific tutoring instructional routines for which tutors will have to apply that knowledge.

These practice-based methods of formal learning are similar to what research in teacher education has found to be effective (Ball & Forzani, 2011; Darling-Hammond, et al., 2017; Grossman et al., 2009; Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009; Lampert, 2010; Lampert et al., 2010; Lampert et al. 2013; Lampert & Graziani, 2009; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanaugh, 2013). To operationalize the work, we suggest a four-part learning cycle to structure practice-based formal learning that is based on the work of Teacher Education by Design (TEDD), a project of The University of Washington’s College of Education.

The Learning Cycle: An Overview

The graphic below, from TEDD, offers a visual representation of a four-part learning cycle. We make a slight adjustment to the center of the learning cycle -- what’s to be practiced -- to make it most relevant to tutoring providers. Tutors practice the instructional activities, routines, or interventions unique to their tutoring program, as well as the particular moves or pedagogies they are expected to use as they implement those routines with students.

A typical tutoring session might include a handful of such routines. For example, for each session tutors might use a socio-emotional check-in routine, a phonemic awareness game, a sound/spelling direct instruction routine, a word and sentence blending routine, a dictation routine, and a fluency text reading routine. Tutors learn each routine they will use with students by engaging in a complete cycle of learning. Each quadrant of the learning cycle represents a phase of professional learning, with associated activities that support tutors to learn from the practice of tutoring.

When introduced to the routine, tutors learn the pedagogies they are expected to use. For example, they might learn how to accurately model the production of sounds, how to guide student practice, and when and how to correct student errors or ask students to elaborate on their thinking. These pedagogical moves embed in the practice of the routines that are specific to a tutoring program.

As TEDD has structured it, each quadrant of the learning cycle has associated pedagogies that teacher educators use. These pedagogies can be used within tutor professional learning without much adaptation. Reflection is a feature of quadrants 1, 2, and 4.

Typically, the learning cycle bridges across tutors’ training and ongoing professional learning time periods. Quadrants 1 and 2 of the learning cycle begin in training, but quadrants 3 and 4 can begin only once tutors are working with students. If you are not able to teach tutors all of the instructional routines that they will use with students before they begin, then you can take any routine that tutors haven't learned through a full learning cycle after they have begun working with their students. TEDD encourages the work of Quadrant 4 to happen in group settings, so that educators can collaborate and learn from one another. Providers might choose to structure Quadrant 4 this way, or for logistical or other reasons, might need this analysis to happen between a tutor and coach. If providers choose this latter option, the work of Quadrant 4 can become a tool used in Feedback and Individualized Coaching.

Adapting The Learning Cycle for Tutor Professional Learning: A Closer Look at Planning and Implementation

Now that you have an overview of the learning cycle, continue reading for a more in-depth look at how you might plan for and implement the learning cycle with tutors. This learning cycle is most relevant when you are introducing new instructional routines to tutors; it can also be used when tutors need to refresh or refine an instructional routine about which they have previously learned.

Planning for The Learning Cycle

• To plan Part One (Introduce):
  • Select the instructional routine, activity, or intervention you want tutors to learn or refine.
  • Gather relevant research related to this instructional routine, to help tutors understand the evidence-base for the content and pedagogy of the routine and build some judgment about why it works. Make sure that the research you choose is user-friendly for your tutor population. Consider resources in the Early Literacy Tutor Training Recipe Book and the Continuous Learning Resource Bank.
  • Secure a video model of a tutor or staff member enacting the instructional routine, or prepare someone to model it live (with or without students or tutors participating as students).
  • Create a few questions that help focus tutors’ attention on the structure of the instructional routine. For example: students’ learning goals, what tutors do/what students do, what content students are learning, how students will demonstrate what they can do at the end of the session, etc.
• To plan Part Two (Prepare):
  • Establish norms to create a productive learning environment and to support tutors to make their tutoring practice public.
  • Decide what format the rehearsal should take (pairs, small group, whole group; rehearse all or part of the instructional routine; staff member embedded in each group or not; virtual or face-to-face), given the dynamics and needs of the group.
  • Consider what coaching moves might be helpful to use with this specific group of tutors, including:
    • directive (what to do next); evaluative (draw attention to tutor moves and how they are connected to student’s learning); playing the part of student (offer up a challenge that will help support the group’s learning); facilitate discussion (invite discussion about a problem of tutoring practice that emerged in the rehearsal)
• To plan Part Three (Enact):
  • Ask tutors to implement the rehearsed instructional routine with students.
  • Ask tutors to gather the resulting student work (e.g., written dictation of words or sentences; a recording of a student blending words; a recording of a student’s oral reading; a reader’s response notebook entry; etc.).
  • Ask tutors to record video of the session, to be examined in Part Four.
  • Support tutors to learn how to gather recorded video so that the tutor and all students can be heard clearly, providing this support at first if needed.
  • Ensure students have provided appropriate permissions to be filmed, or ensure tutors have the camera aimed only at themselves. This latter option is only applicable for face-to-face tutoring models.
• To plan Part Four (Analyze):
  • Decide whether to do one or both:
    • View and discuss a volunteer tutor’s video whole group
    • Each tutor views own video and processes (solo or with a coach)
  • For whole group sessions, review the video of the session from the volunteer tutor and adapt a small number of questions specific to the session, so you can facilitate a productive conversation.
  • For individual coaching sessions, ask tutors to bring representative student work and their own video enactments. You may choose to review the tutor’s video or student work in advance to be better prepared.

Implementing The Learning Cycle

Part One: Introduce

• What is the instructional routine, activity, or intervention?
  • (Optional but recommended) Tutors engage in the instructional routine as a student
  • Read a step-by-step summary or description of the structure or activity
• Let’s decompose the instructional routine
  • Small group & whole group discussions to “unpack” the routine, using some of the following questions:
    • What do you notice about the routine? What are its core components? What do tutors do? What do students do?
    • What was the content being worked on (the phonemic awareness, the phonics, the language structure, the knowledge conveyed through text, etc.)?
    • Where do you see high expectations within this routine?
    • Were students’ identities valued in this routine? How can students’ identities, languages, and home cultures be used as a bridge to learning through this structure?
    • What moves can tutors make to support students to think, talk about, and practice with that content?
    • Do opportunities exist to build sociopolitical consciousness (or the ability to analyze the political, economic, and social forces shaping society and one’s status in it) through this routine?
• Let’s set / revisit norms for screening video
  • Set whatever norms the individual or team needs to screen video from an asset-based perspective. Some sample norms to consider are: (1) Assume there is much we don’t know about the children, the tutor, and their history together. (2) Focus on what children are doing, how they are engaging with the content and with each other. (3) Assume good intent on the tutor’s part.
• Let’s see the instructional routine in action
  • Skim the plan matching the enactment of the instructional routine tutors will view (e.g, a specific tutoring session)
  • Choose one:
    • View a video of the routine being enacted with students through a specific session OR
    • Observe a live model of the routine being enacted through a specific session
  • Debrief the instructional routine in action, through pair, small group, or whole group discussion, using some of the following questions:
    • What is the content students are asked to work on?
    • How does the routine allow children to share and build their ideas about that content?
    • Does the routine allow students multiple opportunities to practice? How so?
    • How does the content, and how children are working with it, support them toward mastery of the lesson’s objective?
    • How does the tutor prompt for student thinking?
    • In what ways did the tutor’s pacing support student engagement and learning? Were there missed opportunities?
    • In what ways does the tutor hold high expectations for all the children?
    • Were students’ identities valued? How are student’s identities, languages, and home cultures mirrored back to them and used as a bridge to learning?
    • Did opportunities exist to build sociopolitical consciousness (or the ability to analyze the political, economic, and social forces shaping society and one’s status in it)? How were they seized?
• What are the purposes of the routine?
  • Ask tutors to reflect independently, pair-share, and then have a few volunteers share with whole group:
    • What benefits can this routine afford students?
    • What benefits can this routine afford tutors (in service of students)?
  • (If relevant for your program) What ideas from the research you read/viewed previously support the structure of this instructional routine?

Part Two: Prepare

• (If necessary) Let’s revisit the routine in action
  • Take this step if significant time has passed since tutors engaged in Part One
  • View another video or live model of the instructional routine in order to remind tutors of the structure’s component parts, the content ideas children can work on through it, and the types of moves tutors make to support children’s learning.
• Let’s prepare the instructional routine you’ll rehearse within this session
  • Read the objective or goal of the routine
  • Read the plan for the tutoring session and its routines and discuss:
    • What is the content students are asked to work on?
    • How does the routine allow children to share and build their ideas about that content?
    • Does the routine allow students multiple opportunities to practice? How so?
    • How does the content, and how children are working with it, support them toward mastery of the lesson’s objective?
    • How does the tutor prompt for student thinking?
    • How can you hold high expectations for all students throughout this routine?
    • How can your children’s identities, languages, and home cultures be present and valued in this lesson? How can they be used as a bridge for learning?
    • Do opportunities exist to build sociopolitical consciousness (or the ability to analyze the political, economic, and social forces shaping society and one’s status in it)? If so, are you prepared to maximize them with students?
• Let’s set / revisit norms for rehearsing
  • Set norms that allow the team to make their practice public in order to grow and develop together.
    • Set whatever norms are important for the team. People who have done this work often say it is important to have a norm around being descriptive of what children and tutors can do instead of using evaluative labels such as “high” or “low.”
• Let’s rehearse
  • Tutors rehearse all or strategic portions of the instructional routine, in pairs, small groups, or whole group.
  • The facilitator may decide to interject or pause the rehearsal at certain moments to offer directive feedback (what to do next) or evaluative feedback (draw attention to tutor moves and how they are connected to students’ learning).
    • It is not recommended that anyone but a named facilitator make these moves.
  • The facilitator and other tutors may play the part of a student (and offer up a challenge that will help support the group’s learning), remembering to be generally cooperative with the tutor.
  • After the rehearsal, the facilitator invites group discussion about problems of practice that emerged in the rehearsal.

Part Three: Enact

• Tutors enact the lesson in their classroom community, capturing video footage and gathering resulting student work and ensuring this is representative of all children in the community.

Part Four: Analyze

• Let’s set / revisit norms for screening video
  • See Part One
• (If using) Let’s screen and discuss a volunteer tutor’s lesson
  • Express appreciation to the volunteer!
• • Screen footage
    • If time allows, you can screen one time through to get the general flow of the instructional routine and on a second viewing, allow tutors to call out “pause” to share noticings and wonderings.
    • Consider using five focusing techniques to support tutors to learn from video, as outlined in Evidence of Practice: Video-Powered Professional Learning, a book that offers 12 video-based strategies for facilitating professional development. This Edthena blog post describes each focusing technique. These focusing techniques are neutral to what tutors are focusing on, but help tutors build skill at learning from video. Tutors can spot, break down, and interpret high expectations for all students, just as they can the gradual release of responsibility in a phonics instructional routine.
• • Facilitate discussion about the sample tutoring session. This discussion is not fishbowl, with the volunteer guide answering the questions, but is intended to be in the whole group, using the sample session as a rich representation the whole group can deconstruct to advance learning. Sample questions can include:
    • What specific goals did the tutor have for this tutoring session? How did those goals play out in their enactment?
    • Did the tutor’s enactment of the routine afford all students multiple opportunities to practice? Were there missed opportunities?
    • In what ways did the tutor’s pacing support student engagement and learning? Were there missed opportunities?
    • How did the tutor respond to student thinking? Were there example interactions that advanced student understanding? Were there missed opportunities?
    • In what ways did this lesson support students to build or strengthen optimal mindsets about learning?
    • In what ways did this lesson hold high expectations for all students? What was the impact of those high expectations on students? Were there missed opportunities? What was the impact of missed opportunities on students?
    • In what ways were student’s identities, languages, and home cultures present, affirmed, and used as a bridge for learning?
    • Were opportunities leveraged to build student’s critical consciousness?
• (If using) Let’s screen and discuss our own tutorials
  • Tutors screen their own footage
  • Solo or with a coach, tutors reflect on that footage. The same sample questions used above can be considered.