What is instructional capacity and how is it created in schools?

Based on Jaquith, Ann. "Building Instructional Capacity: A Research Brief." 2009

What is Instructional Capacity?

Instructional capacity is essentially having all the necessary resources to provide high-quality instruction to students. These resources are not just materials, but also include knowledge, relationships, and organizational structures.

There are four main types of instructional resources that are needed for a school or district to provide high quality instruction:

1.Instructional Knowledge: This includes teachers’ knowledge of the content they teach, how to teach it effectively (pedagogy), and how students learn.

2.Instructional Materials: This includes things like curriculum, textbooks, teaching tools, and assessments, and also includes the know-how to use them.

3.Instructional Relationships: This refers to the quality of relationships among teachers, and between teachers and administrators which should be characterized by trust, respect, recognition of expertise, and openness to learning from each other.

4.Organizational Structures: This includes things like common planning time for teachers, instructional leadership roles, and structures that support collaboration, learning from peers, and a shared understanding of effective teaching.•These four types of resources are interconnected and work together.

How is Instructional Capacity Created?

•Instructional resources can exist within a school or district but may be underutilized.

•Creating instructional capacity means that resources are generated through their use.

•The framework proposes a cycle of instructional resource use where resources, actions, and schemas (how we think about resources) are mutually influencing.

•This process is embedded in a context with four key dimensions:

◦Purpose (why)

◦Content (what)

◦Structure (how)

◦Participants (who)

•The use of instructional resources in a specific setting affects the extent to which additional resources are created and used over time.•Instructional resources are not a finite supply that gets used up, they should be thought of as generative elements.

•Paying attention to the context in which resources are used is key to their creation