Linking Authentic Instruction to Students’ Achievement Using Peer Coaching: Social Studies Best Practices Grant

In an effort to improve teaching and learning and to assist teachers in implementing the graduation standards, the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning sponsored a project called Linking Authentic Instruction, which provided a group of predominantly secondary social studies teachers in the Minneapolis School District the opportunity to participate in a series of professional development seminars. The goals of the seminars were for teachers to be able to: 1) Translate the theoretical framework that links the Minnesota High Standards and authentic pedagogy (instruction and assessment) into practice; 2) Create peer-coaching teams to embed the authentic instruction criteria into daily practice at each participating site; 3) Implement model lessons and score their own students’ work. This report is a result of an evaluation done to answer these questions.