Improving Teaching at Scale: Design for the Scientific Measurement and Learning of Discourse Practice

The improvement of instruction in America’s classrooms has long been a concern of policy makers, education practitioners, and researchers. A relatively recent phenomenon, however, is the perceived urgency ofimproving teaching at scale,meaning in every classroom and school, not simply among teachers who volunteer for special projects or who have been singled out for improvement plans. This new call for improvement at scale has undoubtedly been fueled by the poor performance of American students on international assessments (see, e.g., Hanushek & Woessmann, 2009), as well as by public reports of “failing schools” that have surfaced due to the accountability