By Mark
Nearly every training and inservice repeats the same mantra: we must increase student learning. So we get shipped off to learn about a new strategy or a new tool or a new curriculum. We meet about goal setting and analyzing student data and impact on student learning. We are constantly doing extra in an effort to better the service we provide our students.
All that extra work, and it turns out there is something out there which has delivered a measurable impact on student learning, and it doesn't involve a special training or new curriculum.
Education Week recently published a review of some research which indicates that increasing the performance of a group of teachers may be as simple as including a highly effective and highly respected peer amongst their immediate ranks.
In essence, the idea is that teachers will "raise their game" in the presence of a more effective peer. And they provided data to prove it. In one example, they found that when a team of four teachers had one member replaced by a colleague who was widely acknowledged as "more-effective" than the teacher who was replaced, there was a "spillover" effect where the test scores of the teammates' students increased measurably and was sustained over time. This pattern was found repeatedly throughout the research:
"They said the question now is: Do the test scores rise because the
new teacher’s arrival is motivating peers to do better, because that
teacher is helping out other teachers by doing some of the teaching, or
because teachers are learning from their new colleague?
In
their paper, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Bruegmann argue that peer learning is
the likely explanation, mostly because they find that the effects
persist over time. In both math and reading, the quality of a teacher’s
peers a year or two before affects his or her students’ achievement,
according to their report."
This has broad implications, in my opinion. For one, it seems to confirm with data what many educators already share: peers and colleagues are more useful than coursework at helping us improve our practice.
There is also the question of whether labeling and reshuffling teachers might actually have some kind of negative impact (i.e., "We're moving Mrs. Smith in here with you so you can learn the right way to teach.")
So maybe it's not so simple. We can't just pluck some master teacher off a tree somewhere and add him or her to our team. Maybe the answer is to find a way to better identify those master teachers already amongst us so we can learn from them. I think this happens more in the elementary and middle schools than the high schools, where it is all too easy to close the classroom door and just do our own thing.
Since we know that funding won't always be there for outside trainings, bells, and whistles, what are ways that this untapped professional development resource–our own peers–can be better utilized?
Thanks for posting that, Nancy…though-provoking stuff!
Mark, this is a great topic. I hope you’ve seen Mike
Schmoker’s piece along this same line: Tipping Point: from “Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement” online at http://mikeschmoker.com/tipping-point.html. I know what I’ve seen in PD at my district as well. When we put groups of teachers together, frame the goal but give them time to work together, they do great things.
Teachers know what is best, they are highly educated, well-informed professionals, and sometimes we need to get out of their way and give them time to work together. And Kristin, I think what you point out is proof that teachers need more chances to work together so they know how to collaborate and coach each other.
I agree that most PD is money poorly spent. And I like Tom’s use of the word “systematic,” because if peer observations, peer coaching, or anything like that is going to work, it has to be scheduled in. We get way too busy to find the time to observe during our prep, or to communicate with the specialists sitting at district headquarters in order to use them.
But I also question the statement I hear so often that “teachers are the experts.” We are, in many ways, but we don’t always have the courage to give constructive criticism to each other and when we do have the courage our suggestions are rarely received with gratitude. Maybe we would improve our craft more willingly if a master teacher who wasn’t a colleague observed, coached, critiqued?
What I’d like to see is a systematic means by which teachers in any school could observe and learn from one another. Between teaching, correcting work and answering email, I rarely have the chance to see my colleagues, much less watch them teach.
The coaching idea is a good one… in fact, In some of the talks about revamping some systems I have heard of places where that is built into the contract for master teachers.
I guess I just found the report and data intriguing…sometimes teacher help other get better “by osmosis,” and yet so many of us sit through long, drawn out mandated “PD” which has virtually no impact on student learning. The resources expended to pay each person to sit through that PD would be better spend offering that .4 you talk about.
What I meant was “I’m a little tired of hoping incompetent teachers get assisted through osmosis.”
And I’m a little tired anyway, since today was the first day of school and my kids are AWESOME.
Gosh, Mark, such a huge and crucial topic. I have recently been thinking a lot about who should evaluate / coach / critique teachers. I believe the research that one great teacher’s skills “spillover” into other rooms, and that it takes time. Unfortunately, in that time a child has dropped out or fallen so far behind in his skills that he gives up, or has taken the same math class since 5th grade because he isn’t learning anything (and on that note, while I disagree with social promotion, I HATE our current system of “you failed pre-integrated. You’ll take pre-integrated again.”)
Wouldn’t it be a lot faster to have some system for identifying the great teachers, then making .4 of their contract peer coaching? And instead of “We’re moving Mrs. Smith in here with you so you can learn the right way to teach,” make it “You’re on probation because you can’t bother to keep kids in class and the kids who are, are sleeping. Mrs. Smith will be coaching you twice a week for first semester. If you don’t agree to this, resign.”
I’m a little tired of hoping to assist incompetent teachers through osmosis.