The Instructional Playbook: The Missing Link for Translating Research into Practice

In schools, every day is “game day.” Every day, teachers need the best resources and forms of support because students deserve the best we as educators can offer. An instructional playbook aims to serve as that kind of support: a tool that coaches can use to help teachers match specific learning goals with the right research-based instructional strategies.

Coaches have enormous potential to help teachers learn and implement new teaching practices, but coaches will be effective only if they deeply understand the strategies they describe and their explanations are clear. The Instructional Playbook: The Missing Link for Translating Research into Practice addresses both issues head on and offers a simple and clear explanation of how to create a playbook uniquely designed to meet teachers’ instructional needs.

The idea of an instructional playbook has caught fire since Jim Knight described it in The Impact Cycle (2017). This book helps instructional coaches create playbooks that produce a common language about high-impact teaching strategies, deepen everyone’s understanding of what instructional coaches do, and, most important, support teachers and students in classrooms.

A joint publication of ASCD and One Fine Bird Press.

Review

“Implementation is the core to success—and this elegant guide to creating playbooks provides the tools to make coaching real, deep, and have high impact.”
—John Hattie, author of Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement and Laureate Professor at Melbourne Graduate School of Education in University of Melbourne, Australia

“The use of an instructional playbook has revolutionized how our teachers think about how they teach. A playbook moves the conversation beyond simply talking about what works to doing what works.”
—Ray Swann, Deputy Headmaster and Head of Crowther Center at Brighton Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia

“Creating an instructional playbook is as much about the process as it is about the product. The chance to reflect on teachers’ most frequent requests, to sift through the tools in a team’s collective toolbox, to research and refine thinking collaboratively, to edit for clarity in language and purpose, and to learn from peers is a priceless learning opportunity for coaches and other stakeholders.”
—Jacqueline Zimmerman, Secondary Instructional Coach Facilitator at Katy ISD, Texas.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ ASCD (November 25, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 209 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1416629920
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1416629924