I read several postings today in the National Journal Online on assessing teacher effectiveness.
The voices in the article are those of leading educators for whom I have great respect, but I contend that we still often perpetuate thinking that is firmly rooted in 20th century ideas of learning.
Consider the following:
In the 20th century, for all practical purposes, opportunities for learning were largely limited to schools, with their vastly superior resources, and their tight grip on defining what would constitute learning. These assumptions were often based on the individual teacher’s definition for a particular class period. In that ancient world, measuring “teacher effectiveness” made some sense. After all, the teacher was the “middle man” brokering resources, opportunities and documentation.
Welcome to 2009.
Today student learning is not limited to 8 to 3, nor September to June. Yes, students could always learn outside of class but several factors have changed significantly. First of all, with the growing importance and use of standards, we are defining what a learner should know and be able to do. Second, with the use of ubiquitous technology, students can control the time and materials for achieving those defined standards. As Jeff Jarvis noted so succinctly in his book What Would Google Do?, “the age of the middleman is dead!” Today, the only place a distinction exists between “formal” and “informal” learning experiences exists is at school. Who gets “credit” for “effectiveness” when a student may have learned something by accessing a website from the Smithsonian or NASA or PBS or any of hundreds of thousands of available resources? Would we block those simply because they would interfere with measuring the impact of a classroom teacher?
We need to completely rethink our definition of an effective teacher and how to evaluate effective teaching for the 21st century, rather than keep working from models of 20th century learning.
If all students in a 4th grade class, or an Algebra I class were exactly on “level” at the end of the year would that be the mark of an effective teacher? Heavens no! As any teacher or parent will tell you, if you take 30 individual kids and put them into a class, you do NOT have a single class; you still have 30 individual learners, each one of them with a different pace and style and set of interests. 20th century models demanded that we treat them as a group. Welcome to the 21st century! At the end of the year, the effective teacher would have taken each as far as s/he could go.
Teacher effectiveness should never be tied to false notions of “student achievement” because those are tied to assumptions that student can and should learn at a uniform pace and variance from that pace is indication of a problem. Data regarding the impact of time on learning another language, for instance, do not show that students with X number of minutes or hours or days of instruction “should” be at Y level. Instead, the data show an increasing variance in the standard deviation from grade to grade.
We need to invent a learning system and a teaching system and yes, even evaluation systems for the 21st century. We must stop trying to “improve” or “reform” a system that ignores the fact that we must leave the 20th century and its assumptions about teaching and learning behind.
Teacher preparation programs and “professional development” might just need a reinvention as well…. Until we show (and I do mean show…model, demonstrate, and coach) teachers how to facilitate learning for 21st Century learners, we are not going to change the current system.
Fantastic. I am very glad you do what you do, Tom.
I had a discussion the other day about the purpose of School. I have mixed feelings about it to say the least.
I attended college for 4 & 1/2 years but ultimately grew disillusioned with the whole thing and quit.
I now own a pharmacy, am happily married with two kids, happy and healthy and doing well.
I discovered that I could learn anything I wanted to learn without going to class. If I just stayed home and studied on my own terms I’d understand the subject better and I’d score higher on exams.
I think it was Mark Twain who said, “I’ve always enjoyed learning, but I haven’t always enjoyed being taught.”
I love what you’re doing, Tom. Long may you run!
When my principal (at the large urban middle school where I taught for 10 years) observed me for “effectiveness” his tools were interesting to say the least.
We were judged on placement, neatness, and size of posted, written learning objectives. How many students were on-task, raised their hands, and asked probing questions seemed to be important as was how far up Bloom’s taxonomy my questions were. In other words, everything had to do with how I was running the show, pulling the strings and intellectually manipulating the students.
What the kids wanted to learn didn’t matter, how fast they could learn it didn’t matter, their different learning styles didn’t matter, their desire or lack thereof to get information from a 39 year old adult male didn’t matter, the fact that many of them already had the material down cold didn’t matter.
Maybe it’s time to consider the fact that most public school teachers can be almost totally irrelevant and possibly a deterrent to serious learning. If that’s the case, what does that say about the purpose of “Instructional Leaders”/administrators in our schools?