The Instructional Practices Inventory: A Process for Profiling Student Engaged
Learning for School Improvement
Jerry Valentine
August 2005
The Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI) is a data collection tool schools may utilize to support
school wide instructional change.The IPI is a practical system for understanding learning across
a school and then having critical conversations with school staff about learning. As I support
buildings in their work with instructional practices and am looking for ways to better collect data
around instructional practices, this tool provides a way to collect data. Many times we collect
data about what they teacher is doing during an observation and/or walk through rather than the
focus being on the student activity and learning. The IPI does 3 major things: (1) focus on
student learning rather than teaching, (2) provide a foundation for teachers collaboration and
reflection, and (3) is a formative assessment tool for monitoring and adjusting practices.
The IPI has protocols for collecting the data such as:
● Collected on a normal school day without interruptions such as assemblies
● Observations should last 1-3 minutes
● The data collection should be systematic so each classroom if observed multiple
times in one day
● The observer should code the predominant learning experience is if multiple are
observed
● The observer should code the initial learning experience if students make a
transition while the observer is present
● If there are multiple observers there should be partner coding and calibration for
reliability
The IPI is coded 6 different ways as seen in the cart below.
Observers would be tallying as they systematically visit every instructional setting multiple times
throughout a day. Those tallies are turned into percents and reported in a data table similar to
this.
This data table is showing the coding percents for schools labeled highly successful versus
those that are highly unsuccessful. Once the data is collected faculty need to be engaged in a
reflective conversation around the data, this may be done whole staff or during PLC time.
Question stems for reflective conversation:
● What can we learn about our current practices from the IPI data?
● Are there specific categories we want to work to increase or decrease?
● Are we currently involved in professional development that will enhance the
quality of learning experiences? If we are not what professional development will
enhance student learning experiences?
● What are two highly effective teaching strategies from categories 5 and 6 that
can be used in any content area and will enhance learning experiences for all our
students?
● What are some highly specific teaching strategies from categories 5 and 6 that
are more effective for certain content areas?
● What are two highly effective teaching strategies from categories 3 and 4 that
can be used in any content area and will enhance learning experiences for our
students?
● Do we understand the importance of engaging students regularly in higher order
thinking learning experiences?
● Do we have the knowledge and experience necessary to engage students in
higher order thinking learning experiences?
As I support buildings the IPI may be an excellent tool for collecting fair and accurate data about
student learning that will guide teachers in reflective conversations about instructional practices.
When buildings write their school improvement plans they often struggle with how to measure
instructional practices. It is easy to turn to data sources like benchmark assessments,
Scholastic Reading Inventory, Iowa Assessments, MAP Tests and others but none of these
actually measure instructional practices where the IPI actually collects data about student
learning and instructional practices.
Link to Article: The Instructional Practices Inventory: A Process for Profiling Student Engaged
Learning for School Improvement