Inverting instruction in literacy methods courses: Making learning more active and personalized

Zawilinski, L.M., Richard, K.A., & Henry, L.A. (2016). Inverting instruction in literacy methods courses: Making learning more active and personalized. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 59(6), 695-708.

This article gave a new name to something I am already trying to do with the literacy methods classes I am now teaching. “Inverted instruction” is used here to describe literacy methods instruction that focuses on working on complex assignments (e.g., creating instructional materials or working with assessments) face to face with the input and support of the instructor and class colleagues during scheduled class time. Assignments that provide background knowledge (e.g., lectures and demonstrations) are completed outside of class, usually in electronic formats. The approach is dubbed “inverted” because it contrasts with the more traditional approach to methods courses in which the instructor “performs” and provides background knowledge and demonstrations during the scheduled class time, and the more complex assignments are completed outside of class, with teacher input (and sometimes peer input) usually occurring after the assignments are completed.

The authors here use the term “inverted instruction” and reject the more commonly known term, “flipped instruction”, because they claim that a “flipped” course has come to mean just a course where students watch videos online. In my own setting, courses that could be seen as “inverted” are often called “hybrid” courses. Zawalinski and her colleagues take pains to differentiate the kinds of courses they recommend from courses that are really just the same old thing but presented in a different delivery system (i.e., online). What is recommended in this article—and what I agree that future teachers need today—is something substantively different from the traditional approach.


In my own practice, I had already grown dissatisfied with doing things the traditional way a long time ago. The class meetings of the past sometimes focused too much on me and my “performance”, which was built on my synthesis of what I believed to be the important threads in the range of theory and research I had available at the time. I also had been presenting demonstration lessons that helped my students experience, deconstruct, and critique literacy instructional and assessment frameworks. I have received high ratings from students, colleagues, and administrators for the ways I did these things, but still, I felt less than satisfied with my students’ learning.

It seemed that being so instructor-focused was making my students too dependent on me. Furthermore, though my synthesis might be well-developed, it could only be one instructor’s synthesis. With all the excellent materials and resources now available online (which I was often incorporating in my presentations), why couldn’t I guide students to those resources and find ways to scaffold them through what they needed to know, but provide that in an electronic format? Could they learn just as much (if not more) from reading and viewing the material on their own time and at their own pace as they could from listening to me and (sometimes) trying to take notes? I used to think my demonstration lessons were irreplaceable, and they were the heart of my courses in the past, but now with the wealth of classroom videos online, I no longer feel that way. The videos, in fact, are more authentic and contemporary than my demos, which, though they were updated a few years ago in real classrooms, will still rapidly become obsolete. Every term, my students discover new videos online that they share with me, and some of those are better than the ones I have found. The days of the file folder full of course notes are gone!

I had already found that the practice of assigning complex, difficult, creative assignments as “homework” with input only after the fact (during grading time) did not work. I have already begun doing much more collaborative work during class time on such assignments. Some class meetings have become “workshop” days when students work together on projects and I meet with groups and individuals for conferences. I have broken complex assignments down into steps and instituted a “draft” process where the components of an assignment are drafted, then presented for peer and instructor qualitative feedback, then revised (perhaps more than once) before the projects are implemented (in field experience settings) and finally given a grade. With real children involved at the field experience sites, I have felt this reiterative process was necessary. The authors of this article on inverted instruction seem to be supporting my current inclination to expand this kind of activity in my courses.
Moving toward inverted literacy methods instruction is requiring a healthy paradigm shift for me. In terms of the traditional, long-revered Direct Instruction sequence (i.e., Input, Modeling, Guided Practice, Independent Practice) it might mean building course materials so students could get the Input and Modeling on their own, and focusing more on carefully planned Guided Practice and even some Independent Practice (both kinds of practice paired with immediate, need-focused instructor feedback) during scheduled class time.

If I think about this theoretical shift in terms of an even more revered traditional model, Bloom’s Taxonomy (no matter which version you choose), it means making students responsible for directing their own learning of the more basic kinds of information and understandings, perhaps even allowing alternative texts and formats that students could choose to get the background they need. Then, as they build on and apply that knowledge, and as they start analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, and creating literacy instruction, they will benefit more from face to face, focused feedback from instructors, peers, and also their mentors in field experiences.

As might be expected, any change in how we approach what we do will have challenges. I appreciated these three authors’ warnings about some of the perils of the inverted approach. They had to make students much more accountable for in-class participation, as well as for out of class completion of assignments that provided background knowledge. In an inverted class, it is no longer possible to sit in the back and be a “free rider”! The article’s authors share some of their ongoing struggles with that; though many students prefer the inverted approach, there will always be those who prefer the ways they are used to, especially if the new ways require more engagement and effort.

That can also be true of instructors; the authors here warn that they spent much more time in preparing for inverted instruction, and I do believe that! All the material that used to be lectures has to be set down in print and put into electronic form, and then the time spent in class working on projects, which used to be up to the students, has to be carefully planned and structured, and the instructor must be flexible and “light on her feet” during these often-unpredictable sessions.

The article has several figures, tables, and illustrations that will be helpful to anyone thinking about revising an existing course to be more inverted. The only thing that I wished for in the article was some kind of substantive data or evidence that this approach had good outcomes for these prospective teachers. Perhaps that will come later. This article is not really a research article but rather a story of how three different literacy educators implemented inverted literacy methods instruction. It is long on good details but short on hard data—what we do have here is only anecdotal data. What we probably need now is links to outcomes such as evaluations in school settings, or maybe to preservice teacher performance assessments. The “gold standard” would be if we could link this kind of methods instruction to the literacy learning of the children in the schools where these future teachers are working. Those kinds of evidence will be difficult to get, but will be powerful if they can be captured. In the meantime, I’ll definitely be continuing to try inverted instruction in my own classes.