Schools of inquiry

In March the NSW Government announced its blueprint for improving schooling.  The action plan includes raising entry requirements for teaching courses at universities and ensuring the quality of initial teacher education is regularly assessed.  This is a positive move.

Attracting the best and the brightest is something that all education systems desire. Yet attracting is one thing, retaining teachers is something else when we continue to operate as Richard Elmore says as a profession without a practice.

I believe the most important work is preparing teachers to teach in today’s world.  The demands on schools are great, the work of teaching is complex and the needs of students are diverse.  Add to this the ubiquitous nature of technology and the need for a rigorous teacher education model is apparent.

Some time ago on bluyonder, I raised the idea of an apprenticeship for teachers.  Students would be able to connect the theory in practice by continuous exposure to models of good teaching in classrooms. Observation, inquiry, reflection, analysis and collaboration become the norm.  As knowledge and skills develop, student teachers under supervision either by a teacher educator or mentor actually learn to teach.

Coincidentally the British Government is promoting ‘higher apprenticeships’ for professions such as law, accounting, engineering and possibly teacher education. British Education Secretary Michael Gove has recently said he was keen to move away from higher education providers determining how teacher education was delivered:   “The best people to teach teachers are teachers.”

The best people to teach teachers are effective teachers.

Kevin Donnelly also reflects that since “former teachers colleges closed and education become the preserve of university-based faculties of education, teacher training has become overly theoretical and divorced from classroom realities.”

Linda Darling Hammond in her excellent paper asserts that schools of education must design programs that “help prospective teachers to understand deeply a wide array of things about learning, social and cultural contexts, and teaching and be able to enact these understandings in complex classrooms serving increasingly diverse students; in addition, if prospective teachers are to succeed at this task, schools of education must design programs that transform the kinds of settings in which novices learn to teach and later become teachers. This means that the enterprise of teacher education must venture out further and further from the university and engage ever more closely with schools in a mutual transformation agenda, with all of the struggle and messiness that implies.”

I can’t help but notice how many educators refer to experts who are either providing ideas or visiting schools. Why aren’t we looking to our teacher colleagues for guidance, support and ideas?  Elmore says you do the work by doing the work not having experts do it for you.  I wonder whether this is a symptom of below par teacher training courses? Are we training teachers they way we want students to be taught as they do at Singapore’s National Institute of Education?

The Australian Institute for Teaching School Leadership (AITSL) is about to begin assessing the quality of instruction at universities to ensure that all graduating students meet common standards. AITSL chairman Tony Mackay has flagged that new national standards for accrediting teaching courses would see a “shake-out” of programs offered by higher education institutes.

If the work of teachers is to be continually re-evaluated and shaped in response to the needs of learners and a changing world, then so must teacher training courses.  It is absolutely essential that the next generation of teachers are proficient practitioners; good clinicians and diagnosticians.

We must move away from a commonly held view that anyone can teach fairly well.  Teaching is highly specialised and complex work. As Darling Hammond says teacher training programs must help teachers “develop the disposition to continue to seek answers to difficult problems of teaching and learning and the skills to learn from practice (and from their colleagues) as well as to learn for practice. These expectations for teacher knowledge mean that programs need not only to provide teachers access to more knowledge, considered more deeply, but also to help teachers learn how to continually access knowledge and inquire into their work.”

In a previous blog I reflected on leadership from the inside out.  This is another example where this maxim applies. We have never needed better teachers than we do now.

In moving towards a culture of wide-spread excellence, perhaps we need to stop referring to schools of education and start referring to them as schools of inquiry.  Afterall, isn’t this what learning and teaching is about?

Delivery or design

There is no doubt that globalisation has created a greater demand for quality education and there are pressures to rethink the nature and rationale of our curriculum.  It leads us to ask questions such as how can we continue to confine knowledge within old frameworks? What possibilities are opened up by the availability of new tools for learning? What and how can we teach in a way that offers students a variety of new and challenging experiences?

Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a workshop hosted by the Association of Independent Schools South Australia (AISSA) on how the Australian curriculum could create the capacity for transformation. Also speaking was Rob Randall, CEO of ACARA who provided an update on the national curriculum.

While the national curriculum signals a shift from text book to e-resources and from prescriptive to a more flexible delivery, my point is that it is the teacher and not the curriculum that creates the capacity for transformation.  If we perceive the purpose of teaching as simply delivering a curriculum, then we not only perceive students as passive recipients but we diminish the purpose of education. Our role is to teach students how to think not what to think.

When I was at University I majored in European and Australian history with a minor in English Literature. I trained as a History teacher but my first job was as a full-time English teacher at a secondary school. As you would expect, I was concerned because I was not a ‘trained English teacher.’ On the first day, I met with the English master who told me it didn’t matter because all I needed to know was contained in the English syllabus. The document listed the content, the prescribed hours and the specific texts I was to follow. The syllabus became ‘the bible’ and I wasn’t to deviate from it. These approaches were ill conceived even as we used them.

Dewey said ‘the notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of pre-digested materials.’

When we change the construct of the curriculum from content to learning, we change the nature of teachers’ work. Teachers move from being deliverers to creators, from sages to learners and from cogs to critical thinkers.  If we think about the relevance of a curriculum in today’s world as everything intended to promote wisdom and learning then we give teachers freedom to be creative and responsive to helping students make connections between their lives and the world.

The less prescriptive a curriculum is, the more opportunity there is for experiential learning; giving students space to discern information and construct their own knowledge. Personalising learning means finding out what matters to students and then designing a curriculum that invites them to deepen their understanding, ask questions and importantly fail. Diane Laufenberg, an American History teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia discusses this in her TED talk.

I know I’ve written about Singapore’s skinny curriculum before but we should all be working towards a goal of ‘teaching less, learning more’.  When the curriculum is centred on learning, students become active participants rather than passive recipients.  Their focus shifts from why do I need to learn this to how can what I have learned make a difference.  What better way of empowering students to become active citizens then giving them a voice in their own learning.

Albert Einstein said: “I never teach my pupils; I just provide the conditions in which they can learn.”  I hope the national curriculum is an opportunity for teachers to see themselves as designers and therefore critical to the process of improving education for all students.

Learning leaders

As I’ve mentioned previously, our focus as a system this year is on good teaching and good teacher practice.  We know what the research tells us about good teachers and student learning outcomes.  This of course is based on a very important assumption – the quality of leadership. Michael Fullan calls the principal the “nerve centre of school improvement” and while they may not have a direct impact on student learning outcomes, what they do is critical to large scale and lasting improvement.

Schools without quality leadership are like orchestras without conductors.  Sure teachers can teach but an effective leader knows the research, develops the knowledge and collaborates with others to bring it all together.  Clive Gillinson writing in the Guardian in 2009 reflects on the role of the conductor:

Any player who has worked with great conductors knows that what they bring to their performances is the difference between competence and inspiration. It diminishes and completely misunderstands great music-making not to think there is any difference between the two.

Sometimes when we talk about effective teachers, we assume that we already have effective leadership at the helm.  This is not always the case.  Fullan in his paper Quality Leadership, Quality Learning states that reviews of research literature on school improvement highlights the “key role of the principal, for better or worse, i.e there are no examples of school-wide success without school leadership; all examples of school failure include weak or ineffective leadership.”

How do principals account for a lack of school wide success?  How do we deal with this as a system?  Past attempts to improve leadership have been ad hoc or too focused on individual attributes.

Over the weekend I began reading Leading with Inquiry and Action by Matthew Militello, Sharon Rallis and Ellen Goldring.  The foreward was written by Richard Elmore.  I have always respected Elmore’s grounded approach – a good mix of common sense and encouragement.  In reflecting on the American education system, he says this:

Every generation of American educational leaders, from the end of the 19th century onward, promises that it will be the generation to transform the practice of leadership into the practice of instructional improvement, and so far, every succeeding generation has failed at that fundamental task.  The leadership of instructional practice has been consistently and systematically displaced, generation after generation, by the bureaucratic demands of “running” schools and the by the “real-world” demands of school bureaucracy.

This summation could equally apply to education systems in other parts of the world.  Why?  Elmore says the answer lies in the observation that “education is a profession without a practice” or more accurately, “an occupation aspiring to be a profession that has not yet discovered its practice”.

He goes on:

We do not, as a field, define a set of practices that everyone who enters the sector has to master as a condition of being able to practice, nor do we insist that people who practice in the field continue to learn their practice at ever-increasing levels of competence and expertise over time.

I agree with Elmore’s observations.   Systems have failed because there has been little investment in school leadership.  We have focused our resources and efforts on the periphery without seeking to change the culture and structure of schools.  We haven’t insisted or enabled leaders continue to learn their practice.  Building system leadership capacity leads to greater accountability.

In addressing the core issue of leading schooling too often we start from the outside and work in. Right on the edge, we usually find things like judging school leaders using blunt instruments like student performance, data and rankings. Further in you find things like “taking things off” leaders to allow them to do their job. This may free up time but it does little to address the inherent problem. Such approaches only serve to demean the complexity of the leadership challenge.

A more constructive approach is to start from the inside out. This means a sharp focus on the core requirements for leading a contemporary school. The research and data show us that the key responsibility of leading has to be around the work of teachers, how they teach, how we know they are effective and how we can continue to build their capacity. If the leader doesn’t know how to do this then they have to be taught how. It requires leaders to be effective practitioners with a deep understanding of learners and pedagogy.

Last year our system focus was learning by inquiry.  Inquiry is critical to how we understand our learners and their contexts in what and how we teach.  Yet there is little point in learning by inquiry if we don’t apply it.  Leaders need to be inquiry minded AND action oriented. This is how we become a profession with a practice.

It’s about good teaching

We have begun the shift from success for some learners to success for all learners.  This requires all teachers to be effective not just some.

Our system focus this year is on good teaching.  As leaders we are responsible for ensuring that teacher professional learning leads to changed practice and changed practice leads to improved learning outcomes for all students.

I could spend the next few paragraphs restating why it’s about good teaching but I think this video expresses everything I wanted to say.

It’s a matter of trust

When Billy Joel wrote the lyrics to It’s a Matter of Trust, he probably wasn’t thinking about the Finnish education system.  Yet the more I read the literature on high performing systems, I am convinced that trust is at the core of the cultural change needed to reshape schooling.  It’s not new nor is it rocket science.

Michael Fullan says that you build trust through behaviour.  John Hattie tells us that the ability for teachers to develop trust within the classroom is key to making students feel OK about making mistakes and asking questions.  In Visible Learning, the highest “effect sizes within teacher student relationship came from empathy, warmth and encouragement of higher order thinking.”  A report on a teacher education model for the 21st century by Singapore’s National Institute of Education emphasises the need for teachers to create cultures of care and trust.

As noble a calling as teaching is, the profession has been tarnished by a lack of trust, suspicion of teachers’ work and a top down approach to school improvement.  Richard Elmore wrote in 2007 that a “non-professional teaching force is a compliant and easily managed workforce.”  This view of teaching according to Elmore grew out of the late 19th and 20th century.

What differentiates high performing systems from others is trust.  Trust permeates from the highest to the lowest levels: governments trust schools to deliver quality education, parents trust teachers to meet the learning needs of their children and teachers trust students to set and achieve their own learning goals.

I know Finland is the system du jour and some may be tiring of hearing about the Finnish way but I read a superb reflection in February’s Phi Delta Kappan magazine by its editor in chief, Joan Richardson.  When I re-read the passages I highlighted in the article I am still astounded by the culture of trust that has been built not in one school but in every single school.  How is this done?  By driving responsibility down to the classroom and school level.  This is similar to the principle of subsidiarity and it’s a term we don’t often hear in discussions about school improvement or teacher quality.  Teachers have control over what they teach and how they teach and how they assess students.

The rationale behind Finland’s competitive teacher education program is quite simple: there are no mentoring or teacher evaluation programs and that’s the way they want it. Teachers are trusted to do their best not in their first year of teaching but throughout their careers.  This is a quote from an education official from the Finnish National Board of Education:

We trust our teachers. They will find the best solutions, or they will create their own.  They are doing very well without inspections and testing. If students are not happy, they go home and tell their mothers, and the mothers call the principal. That’s a fine inspection system.”

It exemplifies the level of trust between schools and parents and reinforces the critical role parents play in education.  It is not just the responsibility of teachers or parents or governments – it is a collective responsibility in which the accountability lies with the professionals – teachers and leaders.  Imagine knowing that if you sent your child to any school in Finland they would receive the same level of care and personalised learning regardless of academic ability, learning style or background.

For me, the gold standard is the fact that teachers are free to work from home when they are not teaching.  As Richardson observes, the working conditions of Finnish teachers are closely associated with being professionals instead of the highly regulated working environment of American teachers.  Can you imagine this happening in our schools!

Where does trust begin? With our students; believing that each one is capable of learning and will become life-long learners.  It is on this belief that teaching begins.

If we are to build the same culture of trust then we need to face the facts and look at the evidence.  This is a call to be courageous; to recognise that what was once off limits or sacred is now open to critical reflection and change. All this represents the fact that interdependence has to be the new norm. Isolation and mistrust are death to innovation and change.

To paraphrase an old song, “trust changes everything…..”

Re-phrase it

One of the things that I enjoy when attending conferences is meeting like-minded and passionate teachers.

Last month I presented at the Re-think and Re-imagine Conference at Deakin University and ran into Thom Fraser.  Thom is a Year 6 teacher at Warrnambool Primary in Victoria and has developed a literacy program called Re-phrase it. The program allows students to set and track their own learning goals. Tom says it’s in response to thinking about how 21st century students learn.

I see Thom as a teacher who has not only taken up the challenge of improving the learning outcomes for all students but who is learning and sharing about his practice along the way.  He tells me that he has done several radio interviews on how the literacy program works.

What you see when Thom speaks is his passion and his energy for teaching and his commitment to challenging each student. Could Thom could be our benchmark?

The great divide

I noticed a number of news articles last weekend on school funding prompted perhaps by the announcement of a federal election in September.  I’ve always stated that we need a common sense approach to school funding.  Australia is not the only nation to be facing tough economic times so we need to become smarter when it comes using funding to improve the learning outcomes for every child.

In education, we strive to achieve an alignment between the work of schools and the central office and a coherence in what we are working towards.  This must also apply to state and commonwealth funding.  As the Grattan Institute’s Ben Jensen points out, in recent years the federal government has substantially expanded its involvement in education to “good and bad effect.”  Jensen admits that while some federal programs have been significant milestones such as a national curriculum, many have had little impact on learning outcomes and therefore our rankings internationally.

The school laptop program is just one example of the great divide between state and federal government. The five year program cost taxpayers around $2.4 billion,  however the NSW state government is now seeking a funding guarantee to begin replacing more than 250,000 outdated computers and to ensure the 1:1 ratio is maintained beyond 2013.  The federal government will not commit to extend the funding which is why principals are now asking where the money is going to come from.

Jensen is correct in saying that Australia scores poorly when it comes to linking policy design to implementation.  The above example demonstrates putting the cart before the horse, or the tool before the teaching.  Countries such as Singapore, Finland and South Korea have drive education reform with a strong framework for improving teaching; a revision of curriculum/assessment and finally how technology could support this. All this located in a cohesive and comprehensive values base reflected in policy.

Jennifer Hewitt also wrote in the Financial Review that:

The education system is failing students because of fundamental flaws in the approach to teaching and teaching methods, rather than inadequate funding models.  The problems are less about money and more about policy choices.

While these countries don’t have two tiers of government, it may be that our federal government needs to articulate an educational vision for today’s learner in today’s world while state governments work together on developing system wide strategies. Funding could then be directed into the ongoing training of all leaders and teachers so that implementation becomes effective at the local level.

In explaining its “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” initiative, the Singaporean Ministry of Education said the initiative: will be the cradle of thinking students as well as thinking adults and this spirit of learning should accompany our students even after they leave school.  The capacity of Singaporeans to continually learn, both for professional development and for personal enrichment, will determine our collective tolerance for change.

To tackle this divide, we can’t rely only on numbers and comparisons. Great learning theory (Bransford et al) tells us that learning is about context, connections and meta cognition. We have to learn how to do the work of improving student learning outcomes. A coherent framework will enable us to deliver on our rhetoric of quality schooling for all students.

Knowledge work

Several years ago I attended a conference where Daniel Pink was one of the keynote speakers.  I had never heard Pink speak before but I remember being impressed by his ideas and thinking.  Not long after that I read ‘A Whole New Mind‘ and to this day it remains one of the books in my professional canon.

It’s hard to believe Pink wrote A Whole New Mind in 2005.  So much in the world has changed in that seemingly short period of time and yet many organisations including schools still seem to operate within an industrial paradigm.  According to Pink (p50):

We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers.  And now we’re progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

I’ve been reflecting lately on this notion of a knowledge age – are we a knowledge society? Have we really embraced new ways of thinking and working smarter?  If you read job ads for example, it doesn’t look like any significant shifts have been made in the way we recruit, hire and train people.  Using social media to advertise roles that are 20th century in their design is as futile as using iPads to teach a 20th century curriculum.  How many organisations in Australia are redesigning knowledge work but more importantly how many school systems are?  How long before we actually fulfill Pink’s prediction of a conceptual age?

One of the biggest problems as outlined in the article “Redesigning Knowledge Work” is there aren’t enough knowledge workers across the private, public and social sectors.  According to the authors, this is only going to get worse based on research by the McKinsey Global Institute which suggests that by 2020, “the worldwide shortage of highly skilled, college-educated workers could reach 38 million to 40 million.”

The article cites a number of organisations redefining the jobs of experts, transferring lower-skilled work to other people within the organisation.  Reading this article prompted me to think about schools in a knowledge age.  If principals are our most skilled, then what work could they transfer or outsource to enable more time to develop the talent of teachers? Do we see this as the most important task for principals?

Richard Elmore says, a knowledge based economy requires a knowledge based teaching profession.  The way to get there is to invest heavily in the knowledge and skill of all teachers.  And yet in the past, it has been the norm for lower-skilled people (ie teachers aides) to work with students who need the greatest intervention.  We know now that we need our most skilled teachers working with those students to ensure improved learning outcomes.

Historically, we have often begun with the staff and adopted the strategy rather than looking at what critical skills our strategy requires and identifying the best talent to deliver it within classrooms, schools and across systems.  Why can’t schools look beyond their communities for the most skilled teachers?  Shouldn’t we be deploying the best people to get the best results whether it is around a learning strategy or capacity building?

While most education systems want teachers to become knowledge workers, it is much harder to change industrial processes and cultures.  The authors suggest three points that would underpin new ways of working:

1. Excel at attracting, motivating and retaining specialists
2. Develop mechanisms for cultivating specialists who have the potential to take on leadership roles
3. Capture the knowledge so that others can benefit from it

In some ways, our system is working towards these but change doesn’t happen overnight.  The question many educators and systems need to ask is whether we want teachers to have a working knowledge or do we want teachers to be knowledge workers?  If the answer to the latter is yes, then what are we doing about it? Are we that afraid of the possible answers and the need to redefine what it is to be a teacher in today’s world

No easy fixes – just good teaching

In monitoring the commentary yesterday on the release of Australia’s latest rankings in PIRL and TIMSS exams, there was general agreement that our performance was well below par. A country like Australia cannot tolerate poor performance. We must lift our standard of learning and teaching and do so as a matter of urgency.

In noting the response, there was the usual long line of experts, policy makers, academics, teacher union and parent representatives across the various media channels all pointing the finger at the other saying teachers need to do better, spend more, get paid more, be smarter, get better training, work better with parents, and so on.

Glaringly absent in the commentary was the voice of the professional teacher.

If everyone agrees that good teaching makes the biggest difference to student learning why aren’t we looking to the profession to help drive the changes needed to ensure continuous school improvement?

We spend so much time and energy in the education sector adopting, adapting and applying – or arguing against and avoiding – yet another shortsighted, secondhand or unproven reform or initiative. As a veteran in the educational game I have lived through many of these reforms before and know they don’t work, so yesterday’s commentary about why Australia’s performance is below par and how we can ‘fix it’ made me throw my hands up in the air. When will we ever learn?

There are no easy fixes here. We have to be brutally honest if we are to substantially change our existing practices. We know they are not delivering the best for every student, so we need to stop tinkering at the edges and start transforming schooling. Old mantras need to be tested; everything must be scrutinised.

And the only way to do the work is for teachers to do the work. And if they don’ t know how – to learn the work. The simple fact is we need to get the distractors out of the way so good teachers and school leaders can get on with the job.

It would be nice if we all got paid what we thought we were worth. Additional pay might get a teacher up in the morning but it certainly won’t be the reason why they persist with a student who just doesn’t seem to be making progress. All the good teachers I know do the job because they love the job; even when it’s difficult and demanding. They persevere; they try everything in their toolbox and then some, to ensure that the kids in their class are getting it. And more than that – that they are thriving.

Think about the teachers you know that inspire you or challenge you. They aren’t doing the same thing they did last year or even last month, they change and flex to suit the needs of their students. They spend much of their time finding new and better ways to engage students; to make learning interesting, relevant and meaningful for their students. The learning experiences they create range from using pen, paper and string to fully charged, connected, digital experiences. Like the teacher from Northern Beaches Secondary College featured in last week’s Sun Herald who dug up half the school yard to create an archaeological site for her students. What motivates this breed of teacher? What makes them tick?

Often in the teaching profession we mistake complacency with collegiality. We convince ourselves it is better not to celebrate excellence or elevate a few shining examples for fear of denigrating the whole profession. This is wrong thinking.

Imagine the outcome if the medical profession didn’t push the boundaries, risk failure, dust themselves off and try again? Forget organ transplants, brain surgery or even penicillin. None of these life saving techniques or treatments would be around today if the few hadn’t persevered and looked for new and better ways of doing the work, and they wouldn’t have perfected and improved these techniques and treatments if they hadn’t shared their learning with their colleagues.

The same needs to happen in teaching. The best thing the profession can do for itself is identify innovative practice – excellent practice – and showcase it, celebrate it and share it. In essence good teachers need to teach other teachers how to do it too.

As I mentioned in a recent post, thought leader Don Tapscott says we need to share our intellectual property in order to ‘lift everyone’s boats’. This is true of the teaching profession in driving school improvement. Not one individual has all the answers. Good ideas require more than one head, great ideas even more heads. One teacher won’t improve the learning in their school in isolation… nor will two teachers. They might make a difference to the kids in their class but without the collective responsibility of all teachers in the school working together to lead the improvement agenda their influence will be limited.

I know I run the risk of alienating some of my colleagues, but that’s not my intention. After yesterday the last thing I want to do is point the finger.

What I do want to do is challenge the profession to take back the agenda; to work together with their colleagues and school leaders to drive change and improvement; to challenge the status quo; to find new ways, better ways; and to make that difference to the lives of their students. There is no other way to improve learning except through good teaching.

If we can reflect honestly on Australia’s performance, we can identify new possibilities rather than rehash old programs or experiment with new ones. We just have to focus with determination and precision and address the central issues related to the practice of good teaching.

Beyond the black-belt

There is a saying in martial arts that when a student makes it to black-belt, the real learning begins. We should be seeing teaching through the same lens. When teachers enter the classroom for the first time, the learning begins and it must never stop.

Professional learning and feedback go hand in hand to improve teacher effectiveness.

Research shows that ongoing professional learning is critical to improving teacher effectiveness but so too is the role of teacher evaluation. Without evaluation, professional learning cannot be individualised to improve teacher practice.

Last year, the Grattan Institute published its report into teacher appraisal, Better Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: Improving Performance, which shows that a system of teacher evaluation can increase effectiveness by 20 to 30 percent. The problem in the past has been the ad hoc nature of teacher evaluation – often infrequent or failing to provide teachers with valuable feedback and/or strategies to improve student learning gains.  By integrating teacher evaluation into every aspect of teaching and learning, we create a culture of success for teachers, which leads to success for students.

Linda Darling-Hammond discusses the role of teacher evaluation in an article in the November 2012 edition of Kappan and states that systems must ensure “teacher evaluation is connected to – not isolated from – preparation and induction programs, daily professional practice, and a productive instructional context.”

Darling Hammond outlines five key features of a teacher effectiveness strategy:

1. Common state-wide standards for teaching related to meaningful student learning and shared across the system (what should teachers know and do to be able to support the learning of every student)
2. Performance based assessments based on these standards (linking teacher effectiveness to student learning gains)
3. Local evaluation systems aligned to the same standards for on the job teaching based on practice and student learning (creating a continuum of competency for professional learning at every stage of teachers’ careers)
4. Support structures to ensure trained evaluators can mentor teachers
5. Aligned professional learning opportunities

These points illustrate the need for the teaching profession to work collaboratively to develop a common language around learning, a common understanding of what good practice looks like and a common process for measuring it.

Jason Culbertson’s article, Putting the value in teacher evaluation, also reflects on a teacher evaluation system called TAP which is currently being used in 380 schools around the US.  The TAP evaluation system includes a number of classroom observations every year by experienced evaluators. This is followed by conferencing in which the evaluator and teacher examine an observed strength, weakness and an individualised plan for improvement.

According to Culbertson, the most important result from this process is the common language developed around what effective teaching looks like. The standards provide teachers with a very clear understanding of what “performance looks like at various levels of expertise in a range of classroom practices and skills” which led to the most accomplished teachers ‘recalibrating their expectations’.

What appeals to me about the TAP method is that strategies are not only selected by ‘master teachers’ based on analysis of student data but are road-tested and refined in classrooms before teachers introduce it into their own classrooms.  In this way, teachers are not dropped into the deep end to ‘sink or swim’ but are given a solid foundation on which to trial, collaboratively reflect and if necessary, refine strategies to improve student learning.

It is easy to assume that teachers should instinctively know how to improve their practice or that they begin their career armed with all the knowledge and skills required.  But as Darling-Hammond and others point out – teachers just like students, need clear objectives, constructive feedback and opportunities to succeed.