There are some professors who cater their courses to the undergraduate experience.
The Power of an Effective Teacher and Why We Should Assess It
Their material is a kind of touchstone between theory and the lived lives of their students. While listening to news of how teachers are still on strike in Chicago it becomes easy to vilify them. Hi Dustin, Thanks so much for your comment and for the great suggestion on how university professors can connect with students. Dear Wailea, Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I know teachers everywhere will greatly appreciate it. Great post Vicki , I definitely agree with your tips so then students will connect, respect, and feel more comfortable with a teacher who they feel cares about them. I am a teacher also and I can tell some additional way to show you care: Work with parents to show interest and concern for their children. From my experience of my own school days and having worked as a School Science Technician, I think the best, kindest teachers could teach any subject to anyone.
I did well in the subjects taught by my favourite teachers and vice versa. Thanks for your comments! Working with parents is a wonderful way to demonstrate care. I also agree that a great teacher can make any subject interesting. He made the topic come alive and, as a result, I have a lifelong fascination with the interconnection between the brain, neurotransmitters, and our mental health. If you support the Greater Good by December 31, your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar.
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Click here to watch the video about our newest idea, and to donate. Vicki Zakrzewski Vicki Zakrzewski, Ph. Warmly, vicki Vicki Zakrzewski 9: Warmly, vicki Vicki Zakrzewski In addition, the results show wide variation in effectiveness among teachers. The immediate and clear implication of this finding is that seemingly more can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers than by any other single factor.
Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the level of heterogeneity in their classrooms. Conversely, depressed achievement results resisted improvement even after a student was placed with an effective teacher, and the negative impact was discernible statistically for approximately three subsequent years. In a comparable study by researchers in Dallas, Texas, similar results were found in both math and reading during the early grades.
A similar analysis in reading found a percentile difference of 44 percentile points. The studies in Tennessee and Texas produced strikingly similar findings: Highly effective teachers are able to produce much greater gains in student achievement than their less effective counterparts. While the numbers help to summarize the cumulative academic effects of less effective teachers, we can only imagine the sense of failure and hopelessness that these children and their parents experienced during the years in these classrooms. Undoubtedly, the children wondered what was wrong with them when, in reality, it was the quality of their instruction.
A common yet misguided bit of folk wisdom has been that adversity, in the guise of an ineffective teacher, builds character and that a student can catch up the following year. The research indicates otherwise. Based on the findings from the Dallas Public Schools' Accountability System, the negative effects of a poor-performing teacher on student achievement persist through three years of high-performing teachers. Conversely, if students have a low-performing teacher, they simply will not outgrow the negative effects of lost learning opportunities for years to come. Thus, the negative effects of less effective teachers are being visited on students who probably need the most help.
They [the researchers] show that there are large additional components in the longitudinal effects of teachers, that these effects are much larger than expected, and that the least effective teachers have a long-term influence on student achievement that is not fully remediated for up to three years later. In straightforward terms, these residual effects studies make it clear that not only does teacher quality matter when it comes to how much students learn, but also that, for better or worse, a teacher's effectiveness stays with students for years to come.
Given the growing body of knowledge about the impact of effective teachers on children, it seems that educational policy is beginning to acknowledge the importance of classroom teachers in addition to curriculum standards and assessments. While licensure or certification is a significant indicator of teacher quality, these factors alone are insufficient for teacher effectiveness. As discussed earlier, teacher effectiveness is characterized by a far more complex set of qualities than one's professional preparation.
It includes dispositions and an array of planning, organizational, instructional, and assessment skills. Effective teachers are able to envision instructional goals for their students, then draw upon their knowledge and training to help students achieve success. How do we support and cultivate effective teachers for all our schools and all our children?
It is our belief that teachers want and need feedback, not only on the act of teaching, but also on the results of teaching. Timely, informative feedback is vital to any improvement effort. For instance, consider the role of a track coach, fitness trainer, or weight counselor. These individuals provide guidance on how to perform better, but the evidence of their effectiveness as professionals manifests in tangible results: Teacher evaluation systems are often intended to serve the purpose of providing feedback and guidance for improving professional practice.
In fact, most authors identify the fundamental purposes of teacher evaluation as improving performance and documenting accountability. The improvement function generally is considered formative in nature and suggests the need for continuous professional growth and development. Accountability is typically viewed as summative and relates to judging the effectiveness of educational services. Teacher evaluation traditionally has been based on the act of teaching and documented almost exclusively through the use of classroom observations. However, primary reliance on formal observations in evaluation poses significant problems e.
Despite these substantial drawbacks to the traditional evaluation process, the truly fundamental flaw in such an approach is the assumption that the presence of good practice during the observation equates to the academic success of students. If student learning is our ultimate goal, then it should be measured directly and not extrapolated from limited observations of classroom instruction. A more balanced approach to teacher evaluation would involve an assessment of the act of teaching as well as the results of teaching.
We don't suggest throwing out the use of classroom observation to foster teacher improvement; rather we advocate that teacher effectiveness be judged and demonstrated by both classroom instruction and the learning gains of students. Most educators would agree that they are responsible for student learning, but the profession as a whole has avoided evaluations based on measures of student learning, sometimes with good reason, given the unfair approaches that have been proposed. The solution, however, is not to continue with traditional strategies simply because they are benign and comfortable, but rather to develop fair and reasonable means of assessing teacher success with students.
A number of school systems and educational programs, to be discussed later in this book, have explored innovative ways of capturing valid and reliable data on student learning to inform the teacher evaluation process. Developing fair approaches for the assessment of teacher effectiveness requires an unflinching look at both the legitimate concerns that have driven the avoidance of a results orientation in the past, and the promising possibilities that make it more attractive in today's climate of greater accountability for student learning outcomes.
Often, accountability efforts in schools are reduced to simplistic mandates for students to reach specified achievement goals at certain points in time. While gratifying as a bottom line, these expectations ignore the complex interdependencies of the learning enterprise. Collective nature of accountability: Responsibility by all stakeholders.
Accountability should be thought of as a collective responsibility for supporting learning by parents, principals, superintendents, school board members, and teachers, to say nothing of the students themselves. Holding teachers accountable for student achievement without recognition of the roles played by these other partners in the educational process is patently unfair and can amount to scapegoating. Likewise, requiring students to attend summer school, or retaining them due to limited progress, avoids the collective nature of accountability if school systems have not provided the quality of instruction necessary for students to meet grade level expectations.
Ultimately, learning is a phenomenon that occurs as a result of the interactions between a teacher and student. Teachers cannot be solely responsible for student learning because it is an internally controlled activity. However, teachers are expected to optimize the conditions for learning. It is what they were hired to do and it is their professional obligation. Conditional nature of accountability: Resources and student needs.
Just as many actors affect the educational process, many variables affect the learning process within a classroom and are beyond the control of the individual teacher. These external variables include the level of support provided by the community and state, the availability of books for every child, the number of computers, sufficient instructional supplies, the support of curriculum specialists, and so forth. Within the classroom, the number and type of students can have dramatic effects on the level of academic achievement experienced by the class.
Class size does make a difference, especially when a teacher is expected to work with a large number of at-risk students, whether they are disabled, limited in their English, or poor. Measurement of student learning. One additional concern about the use of student learning assessments in the teacher evaluation process is the way in which learning is assessed. The traditional use of grades or standardized achievement scores is certainly suspect for a variety of reasons, including the Accuracy of grading procedures, Alignment of achievement tests with the curriculum, Diagnostic value of either approach for instructional improvement, and Single-point-in-time nature of these indicators.
In the absence of meaningful pre-test data, grades or achievement test scores at the end of the year are hardly valid measures of a teacher's influence during a given year; indeed, they reflect the cumulative effects of what students have learned at home and school over preceding years. A much more accurate measure of what a student has learned would be reflected by an assessment that is curriculum-aligned and administered both at the beginning and end of the year. When such learning gains are averaged over a whole class of students, we have a general indication of the magnitude of learning that took place with that group of children.
A more in-depth discussion of possible assessment strategies will be offered in Chapter 2. As has become evident, the interplay of factors affecting student learning is multifaceted and quite challenging. It is also difficult to reach consensus on how best to measure student learning. Given these complexities, many educators have avoided being too explicit or public about tracking student learning for the purpose of improving instruction or evaluating performance.
However, the current context of high-stakes accountability for students and schools found in most states, and which is being developed as a result of No Child Left Behind, provides an impetus and urgency for examining ways to assess teacher quality that are fair and realistic. Today, superintendents, principals, teachers, and students are being held accountable for higher levels of student achievement. Teachers are being pressured to produce results, yet often lack the necessary information and support to make data-driven instructional decisions.
The use of approaches such as those suggested in this book can offer feedback on how to improve instruction in a balanced and meaningful manner.
Effective teaching: 10 tips on what works and what doesn’t
Two primary purposes of teacher evaluation, as noted earlier, are professional growth and accountability. The use of data on student learning in the teacher evaluation process offers a potential tool for both improvement and for refocusing teacher evaluation on the accomplishments of teachers versus stylistic issues or their political standing.
Too often, personal opinions or biases contaminate the evaluation process and undermine the credibility and trust necessary for meaningful dialogue about instruction. Reliable and valid information on student learning helps to align the evaluation process with the fundamental concerns of schooling. There are numerous advantages to this approach. More objective measure of teacher effectiveness.
The importance of objective data in the evaluation process becomes more striking in a story from one principal in Dallas. As she entered the new school to which she was assigned, the outgoing principal informed her of two problematic teachers for whom she would need to begin laying the groundwork to dismiss.
One teacher tended to be scattered in her approach to tasks and had a somewhat disorganized room. Her students were often talking and moving around the room at will as they worked. The other teacher was brusque with her students, rigid with her class rules, and worked the students hard.
They were polar opposites in terms of style, but at the end of the year, when the new principal received the test data on the teachers in her building, she found that both of these teachers were top performers in terms of gains in student achievement. She decided that she could tolerate individual personality differences if children were being well served by these teachers.
This story offers a compelling message: Meaningful feedback for instructional improvement. Objective feedback in the form of assessment data also offers an invaluable tool for supervision. Feedback from colleagues or supervisors based on a few classroom visits is equally limited because of the narrow sampling of behavior it provides.
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Assessment data of student learning over a marking period or even half a year can provide substantive feedback on students' cumulative mastery of material. It provides a broader and richer sampling of the teacher's impact on students and permits the identification of specific patterns in the learning of content and skills that were taught. The evidence from schools that have been successful in increasing the achievement level of students, particularly those serving high-poverty and high-minority populations, has been that better use of data is a key ingredient in their success.
In a recent study of 32 schools in the San Francisco Bay area, the frequency with which teachers collected, interpreted, and analyzed data for instructional improvement was found to differ among schools that were closing the achievement gap versus those that were not.
What No Child Left Behind means for teacher quality
Barometer of success and motivational tool. In addition to providing meaningful feedback for instructional improvement, student achievement data can provide encouragement and a sense of gratification. Without concrete feedback on the results of their work, teachers can hardly hope to improve them. Data promote certainty and precision, which increases teachers' confidence in their abilities. Assessment is an integral facet of instruction. How do we encourage all teachers to embrace this practice to benefit their teaching and the learning of their students?
The purpose of Linking Teacher Evaluation and Student Learning is to present methodologies that have attempted to balance the competing demands of fairness, diagnostic value for professional growth, and accountability for student learning. The details of implementation are daunting; each methodology reflects years of careful consideration of the myriad issues that influence student learning and its assessment. All the models presented in this book have both advantages and disadvantages, but they have a proven track record for connecting teacher evaluation to student learning.
Across the United States, school accountability is a theme now commonly heard in the regular discourse among state government officials and local community members. Parents, policymakers, and educators alike have examined their public schools and are calling for, even demanding, improvement.
School reform efforts are taking a variety of forms, with two of the most prominent being a focus on higher teacher standards and improved student performance.