J Educ Change (2016) 17:379–383

DOI 10.1007/s10833-016-9288-2

Bringing effective instructional practice to scale:

Santiago Rincón-Gallardo1 • Brahm Fleisch2

Published online: 31 October 2016

It’s been two decades since the publication of Richard Elmore’s (1996) ‘‘Getting to
Scale with Good Educational Practice’’. In this article, Elmore argued that
substantially transforming instructional practice at scale and sustainably had proven
to be an elusive challenge. He pointed out that even in cases where new ideas had
sought to radically transform teaching and learning in schools, the instructional core,
understood as the relationship between teacher and student in the presence of
knowledge, had changed very little, that noticeable changes tended to occur in a
relatively small number of schools and classrooms, and that they didn’t last very long
in the few places where they were adopted. Twenty years later, the challenge of
bringing effective instructional practice to scale remains a pressing and elusive
challenge for education systems around the world. The urgency of the challenge gets
heightened when one considers that school systems around the world, even the high
performers, are far from effectively preparing our younger generations to thrive in and
productively contribute to improve a rapidly changing and unpredictable world.
The past few decades have seen the emergence of varied initiatives and strategies
in diverse contexts that have successfully managed to improve, transform, or re-
invent instructional practice in large numbers of schools across entire public
education systems, with demonstrated improvements in student learning. While
necessarily imperfect, these examples provide a rich source of practical and
empirical knowledge about the strategies and conditions under which effective
instructional practice may be successfully brought to scale.

& Santiago Rincón-Gallardo

123
380 J Educ Change (2016) 17:379–383

Overview of the special issue

This special issue brings together original articles by reform leaders and scholars
who have developed and/or studied relatively successful approaches to large scale
instructional change in a diversity of contexts: Escuela Nueva in Colombia, the
Learning Community Project in Mexico, the Gauteng Language and Mathematics
Strategy in South Africa, Pratham’s Literacy Strategy in India, the Ontario Literacy
Strategy in Canada, and Long Beach Unified School District’s system-wide
instructional strategy in California, United States. Following the six cases are
commentary papers by Richard Elmore and Michael Fullan. The two concluding
essays pull together common and divergent threads across the six cases, derive key
lessons, and articulate critical perspectives for the future of improvement in the
education sector. While Elmore raises fundamental questions about the very project
of policy-driven improvement, Fullan argues that, though elusive, whole system
improvement centered around deep learning is doable.

A mosaic of contexts, theories of action, and strategies

As can easily become evident from simply looking at this list, the collection of cases
presented here significantly broadens the scope of countries and contexts
conventionally studied in by educational change scholars. While it includes two
well-known North American systems, the majority of the cases presented here
highlight successful but so far not so widely known large-scale instructional change
initiatives in the Global South. As Charles Leadbeater (2010) has pointed out, some
of the most powerful educational innovations are arising in emerging rather than in
developed economies, where the needs are greatest and conventional solutions are
expensive and ineffective. At a time when conventional schooling, even in high
performing systems, is falling short of adequately preparing children and youth for
the future, we believe that the cases from the Global South presented in this special
issue offer important clues for the educational change field moving forward.
In addition to the broad scope of countries represented in this special issue, the
six approaches to large scale instructional change presented here represent a wide
range of contexts, theories of action, strategies, and locus of development. Yet they
share in common a relative degree of success in improving or transforming the
instructional core across hundreds or thousands of schools, with demonstrated
positive impact on student learning.
Each author brings their personal style, preferences in structure and tone, and
choices about which features of the large scale instructional change in question to
highlight most. At the same time, we deliberately asked each author to address
seven key points:
1. Relevant contextual information about the country/region where the reform
under consideration was launched.
2. A description of the observable instructional practice(s) or principles
advanced through the reform initiative.

123
J Educ Change (2016) 17:379–383 381

3. An account of how participating teachers learn the new/improved instruc-

In many ways, the editors of this special issue stand on opposite ends of the
spectra within which the large-scale instructional change initiatives presented here
fall. Indeed, throughout the development of this special issue, we took part in heated
and in many cases still unresolved debates about the direction and strategies that
educational systems should take moving forward. One of us values the hierarchical
nature of conventional instructional practice and educational policy. The other
prefers to subvert these and turn them into horizontal relationships of dialogue and
mutual learning. One of us endorses the view that in emerging economies with weak
educational systems the best first step is to secure basic acceptable instructional
practice through highly prescriptive procedures controlled by the central office. The
other believes that radical instructional innovation and collective teacher autonomy
is a moral imperative and should be the point of departure to educational change
initiatives in the Global South. One believes that educational systems in the Global
South should aspire to emulate high performing districts from developed economies.
The other sees in the institutional frailty of education systems in the Global South an
opportunity to radically depart from conventional schooling and invent the public
education systems of the future. One sees the problem of changing the instructional
core as an essentially technical matter. The other sees it as fundamentally cultural
and political. Each of the cases presented here fall somewhere within these spectra,
sometimes closer to one end, sometimes closer to the other. Through our constant
conversations and debate we, the editors, have enriched and refined our own
thinking and forged a strong friendship. You, the reader, will likely find some
strategies and approaches more attractive than others. But our hope and invitation to
you is to let the rich mosaic of narratives presented here to expand and deepen how
you think and/or go about changing instructional practice at scale.
Before concluding this introduction, let us offer a few working definitions and
theoretical foundations underpinning the theme discussed here, starting with the two
concepts that weave together this special issue: effective instructional practice and scale.

Theoretical foundations

Instructional practice is broadly defined here as the set of interactions that occur at
the level of the instructional core, that is, the relationship between a teacher and a
learner in the presence of knowledge (City et al. 2009; Cohen et al. 2003). Effective

123
382 J Educ Change (2016) 17:379–383

is used here to qualify those instructional practices and the underlying principles,
that enhance or deepen student learning. The term is considered to be context-
specific and relative to the point of departure of the system where changes in
instructional practice are fostered, as well as to the theories of action underlying
specific instructional change initiatives. In some cases, it may involve improving
existing practices, whereas in others it may require substantially transforming the
dynamics within the instructional core. In South Africa and India, where children
are barely learning to read and write in schools, the Gauteng Language and
Mathematics Strategy and Read India have introduced basic conventional literacy
instruction to substantially improve student learning. In Mexico and Colombia, the
Learning Community Project and Escuela Nueva endeavored to transform teaching
and learning in rural schools, radically departing from conventional instructional
practice, with demonstrated improvements in student learning. In Ontario and in
successful school districts in the US, where conventional instruction is consolidated,
making instructional practice effective may involve a combination of improvement
and innovation. As a final remark, with the expression effective instructional
practice we make reference not only to its outcomes (improved or deeper student
learning) but also, and more importantly, to the actual process that takes place when
teachers and students interact in the presence of content.
Coburn (2003) proposed a definition of scale that shifted from simple replication
in a large number of sites or by a large number of actors to a concept composed of
four interrelated dimensions: (1) Spread, that is, the expansion of reform practices to
new sites or groups; (2) Depth, or the extent to which practice is transformed in
meaningful and deep ways; (3) Sustainability, understood as the creation and
adaptation of policy and infrastructure systems to support the consolidation and
expansion of deep improvements in practice over time; and (4) Ownership, or the
transfer of knowledge and authority to sustain the reform to the actors at the ground
level. For the purposes of this special issue, we adopt this re-conceptualization of
scale.
The six cases in this special issue seek to contribute to the theoretical and
practical integration of the micro-dynamics of pedagogical change and the macro-
dynamics of large-scale reform. Empirically-based theoretical developments on the
link between classroom practice and education policy have re-conceptualized
education reform as an iterative, non-sequential and complex process that requires
the support from and mutual interaction between multiple actors and contexts
(Coburn 2004; Datnow and Park 2009). The special issue builds on this theoretical
understanding with a specific focus on effective instructional practice and the
strategies and conditions under which it can be brought to scale.

Looking ahead

Twenty years ago, Elmore (1996) pointed out the need to develop practical theory to
understand how people learn to do things differently and how institutions can enable
such learning as a prerequisite to successfully tackle the problem of bringing good
pedagogy to scale. Twenty years later, the question of whether educational systems

123
J Educ Change (2016) 17:379–383 383

will be up to the task of enabling and spreading at scale the kind of deep learning
that humans are inherently capable of and that will be required for the future of
humanity and the planet remains unanswered. In their commentary papers, Elmore
and Fullan offer two easily distinguishable takes on this question. While Elmore
sees the future prospects of education systems with well-founded pessimism
(educational systems operate under a logic that prevents, rather than enables,
learning), Fullan presents a more optimistic picture (substantially changing
pedagogy to deepen learning in entire education systems, while elusive, is doable).
In our view, the way forward is best captured by Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) call to
act with the pessimism of reason and the optimism of will. It is our hope that this
special issue will contribute to our understanding of what may come next in the
quest to make powerful learning the legacy of future education systems.
Given the tensions and substantive disagreements surfaced in both the articles and
the concluding essays, this special issue sharpens the debates for the next generation
of scholars working on problems of educational change. It is our hope that these
debates, informed by research, will challenge and advance our understanding of the
very possibility of going to scale with instructional improvement.

References
City, E. A., Elmore, R. F., Fiarman, S. E., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional rounds in education: A
network approach to improving teaching and learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Coburn, C. (2003). Rethinking scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational
Researcher, 32(6), 3–12.
Coburn, C. (2004). Beyond decoupling: Rethinking the relationship between the institutional environment
and the classroom. Sociology of Education, 77, 211–244.
Cohen, D. K., Raudenbush, S., & Ball, D. L. (2003). Resources, instruction, and research. Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25, 119–142.
Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2009). Conceptualizing implementation: Large-scale reform in an era of
complexity. In G. Sykes & D. Plank (Eds.), AERA handbook on educational policy research (pp.
348–361). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
Elmore, R. F. (1996). Getting to scale with good educational practice. Harvard Educational Review,
66(1), 1–26.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Leadbeater, C. (2010) ‘‘Education innovation in the slums’’ TED talk. London. http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=6X-8TA4RBog Accessed June 1, 2014.

123