Teachers are being assessed on a daily basis by principals, peers, students and even parents. But change isn’t easy, and can be complex. So what really helps improve teaching?
Monash Education assessment expert Ilana Finefter-Rosenbluh outlines some key research findings.
1. Principals don’t always get teacher assessment right
Principals are educators, they know teaching standards and understand the complexity of their school culture. Part of their job is to help teachers assess and improve their practices. While this combination is full of promise, research shows that principals’ ideas of good teaching don’t always align with those of teachers, policymakers or students. In fact, informal assessment of teachers by principals only showed a weak link to the standardised outcomes of students. Many principals are also reluctant to give teachers critical feedback or struggle to provide clear enough assessment that is needed for teaching improvement.
ACTION
Establish trust in teacher-principal relationships and build a shared understanding of professional expectations and standards.
2. Peer observations can be great but may also involve serious ethical issues
Who can understand your professional success and struggles better than your colleagues? Teachers can learn a lot from each other’s feedback, and research shows that supportive collaborative learning structures can be beneficial.
However, like any other social interaction, peer feedback can have some unpredictable and complex implications. Teacher-peer observations can become an exercise of teacher surveillance and can negatively influence students’ learning experiences.
My research has shown that peer observations can even be a source of an ethical discomfort. They have the potential to compromise the privacy of both teachers and students, ruin classes, and confront educators with some complicated questions like:
- Should these kind of observations count as formative assessment (intended to improve teaching) or summative assessment (intended to judge)?
- Should teachers ‘massage’ their feedback to protect their colleagues, but then compromise their students’ needs?
- Should teachers violate confidential codes for the sake of the greater good?
ACTION
Set clear and transparent peer observation procedures. Create a safe space for principals and teachers to have a robust discussion about the ethical conflicts that arise and their complexities, and negotiate appropriate ways to proceed.
3. Students can give feedback but are teachers open to it?
Student-voice based assessment of teachers has been found to be much more productive than any observation conducted by adults. Students have first-hand insights into what happens in the classroom and what can help them learn, and they have the ability to create real change when given the proper space and trust from adults. Our new Monash research project implementing nearly 1000 student feedback surveys in Victorian secondary schools showed the value of specific feedback in making small yet productive changes to teaching.
Like many other assessment practices for this one to succeed, teachers need to be open to the idea, value their students’ voices and be prepared to act on their feedback.
Teachers also need to allow enough time to build meaningful partnerships and establish mutual goals to improve classroom practices.
Our research showed that one way to enhance teachers’ openness to the idea of using student feedback in schools is to remind them of their own right and need to provide feedback to their principals.
ACTION
Consider having a 360-degree feedback culture in your school. Teacher voice is just as important as student voice in establishing and promoting effective practices of assessment.
4. Professional development fosters teaching improvements but there is little consensus about how it works
Every year, teachers take part in professional development programs, both in their schools and off-site. Designing and implementing these programs requires a significant investment from state and federal governments.
While the idea of teacher learning to improve student learning makes sense, evidence shows the typical professional development experience is not high quality, without clear links to improved teaching or student outcomes.
However, a consensus is emerging about the particular characteristics of ‘good’ programs, including:
| A focus on active learning opportunities |  |
| Content knowledge and how students learn content | |
| Links to high teaching standards | |
| Extended duration | |
| Provides opportunities for teachers to engage in leadership roles | |
| Collective participation of groups of teachers from the same school, year level, or department | |
ACTION
Schools and regions are expected to build infrastructure to design and implement meaningful professional development plans for teachers to improve student learning.
Acknowledge that individual teachers may have different needs, interests and motivations which should be identified and addressed in programs that also pay attention to the people that provide them. Program providers should have long histories of working with educators, need to be very much familiar with educators’ work and with the complex problems they face, and base their guidance on their own personal experience and expertise. Teachers’ emotional responses towards the program’s demands must be taken into consideration.
References
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Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181–199.
Donaldson, M. L. (2010). No more valentines. Educational Leadership, 67(8), 54-58.
Finefter-Rosenbluh, I. (2016). Behind the scenes of reflective practice in professional development: A glance into the ethical predicaments of secondary school teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 1-11.
Finefter-Rosenbluh, I. (2020). Who’s afraid of the students’ voice? About teacher evaluation and considering students’ role in school improvement. In J.S. Brooks & A. Heffernan, A. (Eds.), The school leadership survival guide: What to do when things go wrong, how to learn from mistakes, and why you should prepare for the worst. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Gehlbach, H., Robinson, C. D., Finefter-Rosenbluh, I., Benshoof, C., & Schneider, J. (2018). Questionnaires as interventions: can taking a survey increase teachers’ openness to student feedback surveys? Educational Psychology, 38(3), 350-367.
Harris, D. N., Ingle, W. K., & Rutledge, S. A. (2014). How teacher evaluation methods matter for accountability: A comparative analysis of teacher effectiveness ratings by principals and teacher value-added measures. American Educational Research Journal, 51(1), 73-112.
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Kennedy, M. M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching?. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 945-980.
Kimball, S. M., & Milanowski, A. (2009). Examining teacher evaluation validity and leadership decision making within a standards-based evaluation system. Educational Administration Quarterly, 45(1), 34-70.
Page, D. (2017). Conceptualising the surveillance of teachers. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(7), 991-1006.
Wilkerson, D. J., Manatt, R. P., Rogers, M. A., & Maughan, R. (2000). Validation of student, principal and self-ratings in 360" feedback for teacher evaluation. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 14(2), 179–192.
