Reading
Assignment
Building a
professional community is certainly a stated commitment of many school-based
educators. The benefits of working with others who not only support each
other, but who have enough trust and respect to be able to talk openly about
what is working and what is not working in their classrooms, is recognized as
being an important element in improving education for students. Judith Warren
Little (1982) considered the professional cultures of instructionally effective
schools and found that, in these schools, the interactions of teachers were
significantly different than had been traditionally found. In these schools,
teachers discussed teaching and learning with one another, they critiqued each
other’s work, and they collaborated on the preparation of lessons and materials.
In many current school situations, teachers are participating in collaborative
planning for instruction and other elements related to school improvement. However,
there is still a hesitation to actually observe each other and to
constructively critique the work of colleagues.
Roles and responsibilities of educators have changed. Educators are often involved in school-based and classroom-based reform initiatives. Teachers are expected to be self-directed professionals who are working effectively with others, making decisions on curricular and instructional changes based on solid, verifiable data related to improvements in student performance.
The Need for Teacher Self-Assessment
In a professional culture, teachers are asked to take responsibility in identifying what is working and not working in their classrooms. This is not a new task, for effective teachers have always paid attention to the student learning outcomes. One elementary teacher poses an important question:
“Teacher self-assessment is a very necessary part of the teaching process. As good teachers, don’t we ask our students ‘how did you get that answer, why do you think it worked or didn’t work?’ We expect our students to question their methods in order to have a better understanding of the learned knowledge. Shouldn’t we also expect this of ourselves?”
However, most have never been asked or been given the opportunity to talk with others about not only what they are doing, but why they are doing it, and then to be challenged to respond to the final crucial question -- how do they know it is working?
Many curricular programs or pedagogical approaches are adopted without an understanding about or the expectation to articulate why these decisions are being made. The possibility is very real that these decisions are based on availability, cost, or peer pressure resulting in a flurry of adoptions that change so rapidly that one cannot be sure of any real impact on student learning. Such a random process results in program adoptions that can be viewed as “faddism,” rather than what is so critically needed to make real, sustainable educational improvements. A high school math teacher expresses the frustrations often felt by teachers.
“Recently, our math department had the opportunity to take on the responsibility in identifying a new math approach that was not working for our students for a variety of good reasons. We collectively decided how to change the approach and what we expected the outcomes to be. We know that the new approach was (originally) the result of availability and decisions made by ‘experts’ whose job needed justification. We were more interested in the impact on student learning.”
The lack of opportunity or a challenge to explicitly talk about their practice has placed teachers at a disadvantage, leaving them feeling uncomfortable or even incapable of working in a profession that is expecting them to take ownership in many elements of their work that have traditionally been performed by others. For instance, as we are advocating in this book, teacher evaluation has come to value formative models as a way to empower teachers and to ensure that teachers are given ownership in the assessment and growth process. New models of professional development are asking teachers to identify, through self-assessment, areas for growth and to take the responsibility to develop strategies to accomplish these improvements. Teachers are being asked to observe each other’s work, to collect data that can assess the impact of the teacher’s practice on students, and to provide constructive feedback and suggestions to help improve teaching (Iwanicki & McEachern, 1984).
So the challenge is for educators to recognize the necessity of engaging in a more thoughtful, continual, and well-designed assessment of their own work. Educational accountability movements are not only recognizing that it is critical to ensure that teacher practices in classrooms are meeting performance standards, but are linking student outcome data to the assessment of an individual teacher’s effectiveness. In many states, educational accountability programs are reporting individual school’s outcomes in meeting expected academic goals for their students. Schools are examining individual teachers’ test scores on standardized tests to determine their effectiveness and to identify areas of needed improvement for the teacher or the school as a whole. Teachers are recognizing that it is even more important to develop an assessment model in their classrooms that will provide essential formative data related to the learning of their students. One middle school teacher reported the following:
“Self-assessment is perhaps the most under-emphasized assessment of all. I, like many teachers, have assessed by performance through the eyes of the administrator, the parents, the students, the end of course test results, and the allocation of ABC (accountability) money. A majority of the teachers at my school continue this method of self-assessment. There is little time or thought to discussions of collaborative teaching and learning, critiquing of each other’s work, or joint preparation of materials.”
The standards and accountability movement has also affected teacher evaluation. Sanders and Wegenke (1999) advocate that all educators should be evaluators and that this should be a participatory process involving all stakeholders. The term “reflective practitioner” is taking on an even more real meaning. Teacher education programs, beginning teacher licensure programs and national efforts to recognize master teachers are placing a great deal of emphasis on the teacher’s ability to scrutinize the effects of their teaching on the learning of students. Teachers are expected to communicate with others about the decisions they are making to ensure effective learning for their students. For instance, the National Board for Professional Teaching Practices has adopted standards for practice and assessment strategies that require candidates to demonstrate such abilities. In order for teachers to achieve National Board Certification they must be highly reflective, be adept at examining and articulating decisions that he or she is making in their classrooms, and must demonstrate a capability to engage in meaningful assessment regarding the results of their teaching.
A Systemic View of Teacher Self-Assessment
In developing a model that considers teacher self-assessment as a whole, it is critical to more explicitly examine not only teaching practices but to identify elements that influence a teacher’s decisions and behaviors. There are a number of critical elements that influence a teacher’s decisions throughout the instructional process. For instance, teachers come to their classrooms with beliefs and assumptions about their role as a teacher, about their students, about their curriculum, and about what constitutes good teaching. These may have been formed during their formal development as a teacher (pre-service and in-service programs), from personal and professional experiences as a teacher through their years in the profession, and/or from their personal experience as a student in the classroom.
Furthermore, teachers also have personal behavioral characteristics, teaching and learning styles, and situational contexts that impact their attitudes, decisions, and resulting behaviors. These may result in a classroom that looks, sounds, and is very different from the one next door even though both may be effectively teaching the same grade and subject. Many who have had the opportunity to observe a variety of teachers’ classrooms have had to recognize and value the range of teaching styles that can each be deemed effective classroom practice. Observers have had to recognize their own biases and learn to accommodate by taking their own preferences out of the evaluative equation.
In recent years, assessment of teaching performance has primarily been focused on teacher behaviors in the classroom. Primary interest is on the decisions teachers make regarding the curriculum (formal and informal); the instructional design for their program, units of study and individual lessons; and the instructional approaches and specific strategies to be used in the delivery.
Effective teachers also consider the outcomes that result from their professional decisions and practices in the classroom. These can be viewed as learning outcomes and/or student behaviors that can be formatively assessed throughout the instructional process. For instance, a teacher may have a very specific learning outcome that will be assessed in a formal way at the end of a particular teaching sequence. However, s/he also desires that students become and remain very actively engaged in day-to-day classroom learning. These are both critical categories of outcomes that are vital to a teacher’s assessment of the impact of their teaching on their students.
The previous sections have outlined important components that should be examined related to teaching – the beliefs, assumptions and values that informs a teacher’s practice, the actual teaching decisions made in classrooms, and the outcomes that result from teaching. Reflective teachers typically engage in thinking about their teaching and the result it is having on their students. However, in many instances, teachers have not had an opportunity to reexamine and consciously develop explicit, well-articulated definitions about their beliefs and assumptions regarding key questions as what is good teaching? or what should an effective classroom learning environment be like? Because of the lack of attention to the explicit responses to these types of questions, educators may find that there is a lack of congruence between what we say we believe or know to be true and what we are actually doing in our classrooms.
Attention
to the determination of this congruence, or lack thereof, can be quite eye-opening
and can create opportunities for educators to engage in more meaningful
discussions. For instance, a teacher may say that his or her classroom is a
positive, productive learning environment for students. In order to determine
if that is so, it becomes imperative that the teacher operationally defines
this characteristic. What might that look like? What would be the indicators
that this is so? For example, does the classroom contain evidence of students’
work being on display? Do students freely ask questions or provide their
insights during lessons, and / or is the classroom itself well lit, cheerful,
and furniture arranged so that students can participate in appropriate ranges
of learning activities? Obviously, one teacher’s view of a positive classroom
learning environment may be entirely different from another’s. If teachers are
to engage in designing assessment strategies that answer critical questions
regarding their professional practice then this is an important phase.