Who's Teaching Teachers?

From Inside Higher Ed, a story on how prospective teachers are taught in US Colleges of Education. See: http://bit.ly/dhQOHH

Analyzing Teachers' Attitudes toward TPD: Surveys of Enacted Curriculum

Survey of Enacted Curriculum is an NSF-supported tool for funding and analyzing teacher professional development. The Journal of Staff Development (August 2010) just published data from several hundred middle school Math-Science Partnership teachers that documents their assessment of professional development in their content areas.

Research documents effectiveness of teacher study groups

On August 31, in our session on Teacher-Centered Professional Development, we discussed models of professional development--classroom observation and assessment; teacher study groups; open lessons; lesson study, etc.--that may be more beneficial to teachers as professional development options.

An article by the American Education Research Journal documents the effectiveness of study groups as an professional development model. From the abstract:

Randomized field trials were used to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG), a professional development model, on first grade teachers’ reading comprehension and vocabulary instruction, their knowledge of these areas, and the comprehension and vocabulary achievement of their students. The multisite study was conducted in three large urban school districts from three states. A total of 81 first grade teachers and their 468 students from 19 Reading First schools formed the analytic sample in the study. Classroom observations of teaching practice showed significant improvements in TSG schools. TSG teachers also significantly outperformed control teachers on the teacher knowledge measure of vocabulary instruction. Confirmatory analysis of student outcomes indicated marginally significant effects in oral vocabulary.

For more information, go here: http://www.nsdc.org/learningBlog/post.cfm/report-analyzes-the-impact-of-teacher-study-group-pd-model

What Teachers Want from Professional Development

Journal of Staff Development (August 2010) publishes survey of US teachers and the types of PD they say are most helpful. On a scale from 1-4 (1=no benefit; 4=greatest benefit), teachers rate the following PD activities as most beneficial:

1. Having opportunities to connect with teachers: 3.59
2. Crafting new methods of instruction: 3.51
3. Receiving support to reflect on results of classroom work: 3.25
4. Having assistance with locating and selecting materials and resources: 3.09

Three Relevant Web Sites about Teacher Qualifications

The following topics were touched on in The Teachers We Want; The Teachers We Need. See the following three web sites on teacher qualification; professional development in the US; and measuring the value of teachers:

1. Getting to "Good"
A new radio documentary from American Public Media, "Testing Teachers," probes whether good teaching can be taught or is innate. The documentary looks at various measures underway in Washington, D.C., and issues these raise about effects of poverty versus effects of instruction. It also asks what makes a teacher "good"? Who defines it? And how can a teacher transition into the category of "good" if he or she is struggling? Based on years studying teacher impact, economist Eric Hanushek, whose 1970 study brought focus onto the potential effect of individual teachers, says good teachers are born and not made, and a body of research seems to bear this out. However, the documentary then turns to the efforts of the Public Education Foundation of Chattanooga, Tenn., a local education fund that has paired with the Benwood Foundation to help Chattanooga implement a system of professional development for every teacher, built into teachers' work on a daily basis, along with a program of extensive new teacher mentoring.
See a transcript of the documentary: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/transcript.html

2. TPD flagging in the US
A new report from the National Staff Development Council and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education -- phase II of a three-phase study -- analyzes the status of professional learning in the United States, and finds some progress in increased support and mentoring for new teachers, but also finds the country has moved backward in providing the vast majority of teachers with the kind of ongoing, intensive professional learning that research shows substantially impacts student learning. In 2008, teachers had fewer opportunities to engage in sustained professional learning opportunities than four years earlier. They were also half as likely to report collaborative efforts in their schools than teachers were in 2000. The intensity of professional development -- which is closely linked to teachers' perceptions of its usefulness and its effectiveness in changing practice and improving student outcomes -- has declined in many instructional areas, including the use of computers for instruction, reading instruction, classroom management, and teaching ELLs and students with disabilities.
See the report: http://www.learningforward.org/stateproflearning.cfm

3. LA Times: Value Added
Adding on to Mary Burns' presentation about "The Teachers We Want; The Teachers We Need," The L.A. Times has published its value-added teacher rankings.
See: http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/

Session 1: The Teachers We Want; The Teachers We Need

Presenter:
Mary Burns, Education Development Center (USA)

"Good Teachers Matter"

This phrase is used so often that it's almost a cliché. Yet high quality teachers are the single most important factor in a child’s education.

--Measures of teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics.
--Research (Hanushek, 1992) estimates that the difference between having a good teacher and a bad teacher can exceed one grade level in annual achievement growth.
--Sanders (1998) and Sanders and Rivers (1996) state that lower achieving students are the most likely to benefit from increases in teacher effectiveness.

“Good Teachers Matter” in Industrialized Countries:



And good teachers REALLY matter in non-industrialized countries:


We all agree that good teaching matters. And we all use terms like “good” teachers and “high quality” instruction so often but without specifying what this means exactly. So...what exactly is a "good" teacher?

Well, as it turns out, we actually do know what makes a good teacher and though there may be more qualities than those listed here, there are generally 5 "ingredients" that continually span research on good teaching (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2009; OECD, 2009):

1. Content Knowledge:
--Students’ achievement is significantly related to whether teachers are fully prepared in the field in which they teach.
--Strong subject matter knowledge (research demonstrates that amount of college coursework math and science teachers had taken in their content areas and in subject-matter methods was positively related to student achievement gains).
--Teachers’ courses in content area and scores on subject matter tests correlate strongly with student achievement—former (content) show more frequent positive effects than latter (test scores)

2. Structured Instructional Approach:
A more direct, structured approach to teaching or a constructivist approach are central to educational discourse. Research (OECD, 2009) suggests that these different teaching styles be adopted as the teaching context (phase of presentation of the subject matter, type of students, etc.) requires. Evidence weighs in favor of constructivism--students do better when teachers organize hands-on learning and emphasize higher-order thinking

3.Pedagogical Content Knowledge:
Teachers’ preparation in content and pedagogy are associated with teaching practices, which in turn influence achievement

--Teacher integrates knowledge of the subject matter and knowing how to teach it.
--Teaching specific topics or skills by making clear the context in the broader fundamental structure of a field of knowledge.

4. Knowledge about how students learn and how knowledge is constructed:
--Teachers with good understanding of child development and learning—more likely to be effective in classroom.
--Teachers who have had coursework in learning and development are more likely to stay in teaching.
--Research on a set of very successful teacher education programs has noted that many of them have particularly strong coursework on child and adolescent development tightly linked to clinical observation and analysis of learning within school and out-of-school environments.



5. Efficacy:
--Teachers’ beliefs that they can be successful and that students can be successful.
--Teachers who have this are better able to motivate students because they believe they can teach the student what he/she needs to know and student can also learn what needs to be learned.
Teachers' level of caring and respect for students and provision of a safe learning environment
--Most studies have found a positive relationship between teachers’ beliefs about their efficacy and student achievements in core academic outcomes. The concept underlines the importance of motivation in teachers’ work.

To design good PD, we need to come to consensus on the qualities and characteristics of good teaching so we can design teacher education systems that address these 5 areas. Our PD activities, regardless of the approach they take, need to address these 5 areas.

Panel 1: Emerging Trends in Indian Education

Panelists:

Mr. Subir Shukla, Independent Consultant; Ms. Amukta Mahapatra, Director, SchoolScape, Chennai; Prof. B. Phalachandra, Professor, Regional Institute of Education, Mysore; and Ms. Madhu Ranjan, USAID

Governments across the world are re-defining the professional development of their teachers (in-service and pre-service) in terms of a ‘continuous, cyclical, growth-based’ approach.

In India there is growing recognition that qualitative changes in teacher behavior and classroom practice are inextricably linked to the provision of a dynamic, ongoing training process – one that is needs-based, inclusive of formal and informal experiences and girded by rigorous assessment. Yet, for the most part, it has proven difficult to translate this understanding into scalable professional development
models.

Some trends in Indian education:

1. Increasing Student Diversity: Briefly, India, like many nations that have promoted universal access to education is facing the challenge of "super diversity." Children who normally did not go to school are now attending school because of SSA (Education for All) and India' Right to Education Act. Teachers are ill equipped, and sometimes unwilling, to teach children from different castes, creeds, tribes, gender and linguistic backgrounds.

2. Poor Teaching Effectiveness: Many of India's teachers face tremendous deficits in inputs (formation, grades in school, levels of qualification, poor teaching conditions, poor building conditions, poor pay, mismatches in deployment, etc.) that impact their overall effectiveness. Additionally, many Indian states lack consistent measures of teacher effectiveness.

3. An Increase in Systems Thinking: Increasingly, there's a recognition, based in part on SSA, that education must be systematized with harmonization among components and vertical linkages in terms of outcomes. There's a growing recognition that teachers are not treated as professionals and a teacher effectiveness framework is under development.

This focus on teacher effectiveness essentially focuses on 3 components: competence, performance and effectiveness. Competence + enabling conditions = performance. Performance + supportive conditions = effectiveness.

4. Building Linkages: Increasingly, within India, there is a larger understanding of quality (relationships, processes and outcomes) with increasing expectations that each teacher teach the right things in the right way in the right amount for each child.

5. Focus on Outcomes: there's an understanding of what teachers needs are and an increasing focus on teaching standards (National Curriculum for Teacher Education and ADEPTS). NCTE is a licensing body but has no stated quality benchmarks.

6. Quality v. Quantity "Schizophrenia:" Because of its sheer size (1.2 billion people and growing 2-3% per annum) and young population (over 50% under the age of 26), India faces challenges unseen in any other country. This need for quantity (of teachers) has often overwhelmed the desire for quality. Reaching out to teachers needs to be "positively differential." Teacher Training Colleges need to help prospective teachers do practice teaching, reflective inquiry and engage in peer learning as part of their formation.

7. Poor Teacher Educator Capacity: Like many countries, pre-service education is a small component of India's overall teacher education system. Many teacher educators in DIETS lack practical teaching experience or taught so long ago in now discredited ways that they are ill equipped to prepare teachers in new methods of instruction and assessment and dealing with a highly diverse student body.

There is a major effort afoot to launch CRCs and BRCs across the country. There's a 3-5 year professional development strategy that states will need to develop (and not be able to change with the installation of a new government). There's also an increasing recognition by the Indian Government that many NGO education programs are seriously wanting.

Keynote Address: Dr. Govinda (Vice Chancellor of National University of Educational Planning and Administration)

Teaching, is an ancient, and formerly respected vocation in India. But in modern-day India, according to Dr. R. Govinda, teachers are no longer respected, and therefore, no longer professionalized. In times past, the "guru" taught as part of a social contract with a village or community. Now, teachers are laborers in a factory model of education where they are responsible to the state (in an employer-employee contract) but no longer to the community.

We need to professionalize teaching--to return it to a respected profession full of respected professionals who feel bound to a community, not simply to an employer.