Principal and teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of Look 2 Learning

The term management by walking around (MBWA) has been used in the business setting by chief executive officers as a method of checking in with their employees and monitoring the continuing work of the business. President Lincoln practiced this same theory by getting out of his office to see the troops. The classroom walk-through is an educational technique used to monitor instructional teaching practices and curricular decisions by teachers. This mixed-methods research project was designed to study the effectiveness of a walk-through process to improve instruction through the perceptions of building administrators and classroom teachers. The walk-through program studied was Look 2 Learning (L2L). L2L is nonevaluative and collects data from talking with students about their learning rather than through the observation of teachers. Data are collected by teachers and building administrators and cumulative data are shared through a reflection process. Perceptions of L2L were collected through a Likert-scale survey, an open-ended question, and interviews from elementary and secondary educators. The data were collected from elementary teachers, secondary teachers, elementary building administrators, and secondary building administrators from two large school districts in the western states. Generally, educators were positive about L2L. Elementary educators were generally more positive than secondary educators. All groups agreed that classrooms were visited more since the implementation of L2L, data from L2L were used to discuss instructional strategies, most teachers were open to other teachers visiting their classrooms, and professional development activities had resulted from the implementation of L2L. Elementary building administrator, secondary building administrator, and elementary teacher perceptions were positive that the implementation of L2L had increased their knowledge about instruction