This is going to be short, cause after reading two of the articles, I’m not really sure what to say. Sorry in advance for my disjointed post and negativity.
After reading the Pinata and Hamre article and the Connor et al article I’m left feeling disappointed. I felt like these articles could have done a lot more. They started out fine describing observation as a teacher accountability system, but then they were like hey, here’s a couple paragraphs of data that doesn’t amount to anything. I feel like if they would have provided more data of using their respective accountability systems could have added to their argument of using their proposed systems.
I also think I might be a little jaded. As I read through the two papers by Pinata and Hamre and the Connor et al about using observation as a teacher accountability tool and I’m reminded of the IMPACT system that’s in place in Washington DC that led to 241 teachers being fired this past summer. The IMPACT system also uses observations to determine teacher effectiveness by observing them five times out of the year, 30 min. each, to see if they meet a plethora of teaching requirements outlined in IMPACT. Thirty minute observations five times out of the year is not enough to time to gauge how well or poorly effective a teacher is. I think this system illustrates how you can take something proposed in research articles and make give it a bad rap.
Don’t get me wrong, I think observations are a good way to judge teacher effectiveness, we just have to be careful with how we execute it and what stakes are tied to it.
Tags: DDU
I liked Smagorinsky’s point about how the current system is training children to be “test-score producers.” In a way I see the current system also training teachers to be “test-score producers” as well. I think the first two articles boil teaching down to saying the right things to children a certain number of times. Then these kids say the right things back and that is considered learning. I just don’t think you can quantify how a teacher is interacting with a student using these methods. In fact, I would argue that you may not be able to successful quantify learning using any method. Like Smagorinsky says, learning depends on so many factors that are all tangled together and interdependent. To focus on one aspect of this web and say that it constitutes how much attention a teacher is giving a student over the course of a year seems foolish. I feel like a lot of the educational research that we read is humans trying to produce data from a situation. This leads to researchers forcing data production and often analyzing data that does not have a lot of substance to it. I feel that this is the danger of modeling educational research after scientific research (making it data driven).
Yeah, I guess using teacher observation is supposed to be better than standardized assessments of kids, but I see way to many problems with it – mostly because I think bad teachers can fake it too easily. Really, someone can be very engaging and create a safe and comfortable atmosphere for students, but that does not mean students are learning.
By the way, I’m getting very upset over the assessment problem….
I agree. The amount of time that IMPACT dedicates to observation is not nearly enough time to get a sufficient grasp on how a teacher handles their classroom. I also think that observation would be a great way to evaluate teachers, but finding a good system for that is difficult.
wow, I had not heard about IMPACT before. So frustrating that this seems to be a trend! There should be a rule that any findings from classroom obserrvation should be used to first improve the teacher in question, give them a number of training rounds before writing them off as no good. There is no easy answer to these problems.