Within the teacher evaluation policies black box: two case studies

This paper analyzes the relationship between teacher evaluation policies in Chile and Uruguay, teacher professional development, and teacher performance effectiveness. The analysis tries to understand the extent to which the existing processes for teacher evaluation stimulate an improvement in the quality of teaching. The comparison of two national cases with similar educational results but radically different educational policies allows the authors to take a close look within the ‘black box’ of educational policy-making. The paper is based on in-depth analysis of the PISA survey to heads of schools and in-depth interviews with teachers, heads, and key informants. The paper finds that policies aiming to strengthen teacher development and teacher performance through teacher evaluation cannot be understood in dichotomist ways; lack of attention to teachers’ perspectives and unintended effects of policy implementation can lead to marginal effects. Uruguay, where teacher evaluation policies have weak practical effects, has managed to obtain similar educational results to Chile. However, the experience of Chile shows that teacher evaluation can have an effect on teacher professional development and, in the long run, this may have an effect on the quality of teaching and student results.     

Imagining a profession: a beginning teacher's story of isolation

Policy documents informing the profession of teaching in Australia and elsewhere explicitly recommend nurturing those new to the profession working collaboratively with colleagues. Key to the development and growth of beginning teachers is the informal exchange of ideas and knowledge between colleagues – essentially through the functioning of a community of practice. In practice there are beginning teachers who do not experience productive professional collaborations. In this article we use positioning theory and discourse analysis as a methodological “hearing aid” to listen to the story of a beginning teacher, a global English speaker, as she tells of her personal experiences of being excluded by her colleagues as she begins teaching at her first school. Speakers of global English are defined, for this research, as those for whom English is not their first language but may be one of many spoken languages. This story reflects similar accounts gathered during a larger research study conducted by the authors that focused on the early career experiences of global English speaking teachers. We conclude with suggestions for ways forward through awareness and practical reforms.     

A new tool for practitioner-led evaluation of teacher professional development

Schools and education systems are being challenged to improve the evaluation of teacher professional development, yet there is a lack of practical tools for doing so. This article describes the development and validation of a new instrument to assess teachers’ perceptions of the impact of professional development. This instrument, designed to be time- and cost-effective, was theoretically grounded and, as evidenced by the results reported in this article, psychometrically sound. The instrument was completed twice (examining different types of professional development) by 393 teachers. The results for both data-sets demonstrated a strong factor structure with good internal consistency for all scales. Further data analysis indicated that the scales could effectively distinguish between the experiences of different groups of teachers. The finalised instrument, named the Impact of Teacher Professional Development Questionnaire, is presented in full, and the practical advantages and limitations of the instrument are discussed.     

Teacher professionalism: why are we still talking about it?

It is now more than 10 years after the publication of the monograph, The Activist Teaching Profession, which, at the time, could be described as a call to action for the teaching profession. I reflect here on how far has the profession progressed in responding to that call to action. The idea of a ‘call to action’ could be seen to born out of industrial rather than professional discourses: 10 years ago different factors were shaping teachers’ professional practice and identity and a call to action was a metaphor and a strategy to mobilize teachers. In this paper, I identify the factors that are still influencing and shaping the teaching profession and argue that different times require different responses and that current thinking and debates around teacher professionalism circulate around professional learning. In this paper, I argue that the time for an industrial approach to the teaching profession has passed. I make the case for systems, schools and teachers to be more research active with teachers’ practices validated and supported through research.     

教师的专业标准:澳大利亚的实践与探索

澳大利亚近些年来在教师专业发展标准的制订方面进行了不少有益的探究。既有全国性教师专业发展标准的推行,也有地方自订教师专业发展标准的颁布。这些标准各具特色,也有共性,如重视教师的道德素养、强调合作意识与能力等,对于我国制订合理的教师职业发展标准以促进教师专业发展,不无借鉴意义。     

试论发展性教师评价理念对教师专业发展的意义

要配合素质教育的全面推进，就必须全面提高教师的教育质量。本文从教师专业发展着手，分析了教师专业发展的提出、对它的理解和教师专业结构的三大构成要素，指出教师自身才是他的专业发展的重要保证。但外部评价机制的促进作用也不容忽视，从而引进“发展性教师评价”概念，并从发展性教师评价对教师专业结构三大构成要素的促进分析阐述了“发展性教师评价”对教师专业发展的重大意义。     

制度反思:高校教师业绩评估制度研究

高校教师业绩评估应以发展性评估为目的,以利用评估信息为未来改进工作服务。为此必须建立发展性教师业绩评估模式,注重教师的未来发展,强调对教师评估的真实性和准确性,实现教师的个人价值、伦理价值和专业价值的融合,提高教师的参与意识和积极性。     

Learning to teach writing through tutoring and journal writing

Structured reflection on practical teaching experiences may help pre‐service teachers to integrate their learning and analyze their actions to become more effective learners and teachers. This study reports on 12 pre‐service English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ individual tutoring of learners of English language writing. The data of the study are the writing journal entries that the pre‐service ESL teachers maintained during their tutoring experience. These journals had common elements: all were used by the pre‐service teachers to consider what funds of knowledge they bring to their teaching of ESL learners, to evaluate their roles as writers, learners and teachers and to reflect on the educational, social and cultural implications of teaching writing in English to speakers of other languages. This article describes ways in which both native and non‐native English speaking pre‐service teachers adapted their instruction to meet the particular needs of individual ESL writers and what they learned in the process. It provides insight regarding the value of using tutoring and reflection generally in teacher education and specifically in the preparation of teachers of ESL.     

发展性教师评价——促进教师成长的重要手段

教师管理是学校管理的重要内容之一,教师评价是教师管理的重要环节,也是对教师进行管理的重要手段。但是在当前的学校管理实践中,教师评价仅仅实现了为人事决策提供科学依据的目的,而忽视了促进教师成长的目的。近年来发展性教师评价引起人们的关注,与传统的以奖惩为目的的教师评价相比,它能更好地实现教师评价促进教师成长的目的,因而它将成为促进教师专业发展的一个重要手段。     

Story Nights: an apprenticeship into literacy through bilingual story reading

This article documents an extended Mexican family’s social practices surrounding literacy as they engage with bilingual children’s literature in a unique context that draws from both home and school without the pressures of curriculum mandates. The research is situated within the southeastern United States where English-dominant practices permeate the school and community. Sociocultural and third space theories provide a framework for understanding the complexities surrounding language use and literacy development. Findings indicate the new space, Story Nights, provides for the development of connections to Mexican culture and a notion of community-based literacy learning. The author makes recommendations for classroom teachers, teacher education programs, and educational policy to be more inclusive of Latino/Latina English learners.     

Pedagogy through the pearl metaphor: teaching as a process of ongoing refinement

Using the analytical tools of broadening, burrowing and storying and restorying, this narrative inquiry examines a middle school teachers’ knowledge of her pedagogical practices through the strand of pearls’ metaphor that she employs to explain her teaching to herself, a beginning teacher whom she mentors and ourselves as researchers. Throughout the discussion, careful attention is paid to the pearl metaphor’s emergent, novel qualities and how the metaphor is held and expressed in the teacher’s unfurling practice. In the final analysis, four significant themes are unpacked: (1) the image of teacher as curriculum maker; (2) the idea of pearls, non-pearls and yellowed pearls; and (3) the concept of metaphors and the nature of metaphorical truth. Finally, a discussion of the veracity of the strand of pearls as way to understand teaching practice concludes the article.     

高校教师绩效管理：问题与对策

当前我国高校实施教师绩效管理存在以下问题:目标和定位上存在偏差;"自上而下"单方面的管理,忽略了沟通的重要性;侧重于绩效考核,忽视了绩效管理的其他环节;注重绩效评价的奖惩功能,忽视教师队伍及其个人的发展等.本文提出了解决问题的基本对策和途径:认真做好教师岗位工作分析,明确绩效管理目标,制定合理可行的绩效计划;进行持续的绩效辅导与绩效沟通,做好绩效信息的收集与记录;实施全面可行的绩效评估,切实反映出教师的能力水平;注重绩效评估结果的应用与绩效反馈,促进教师职业发展.     

A studio tells its story: student-teachers learn differently

The paper presents the story of an experimental learning studio in a teacher education programme at a college in Israel. The study investigates what students found significant in the studio and more specifically, the meanings students attributed to the experiences in the studio and how it constituted a site for learning. Open ended questionnaires distributed to 171 students were used and analysed qualitatively. The analysis indicates that the studio provided students with opportunities to see elements of ‘a lesson’ from creative ways of looking at teaching and learning. Students revealed capabilities of making inferences and implications to wider phenomena based on theoretical and practical knowledge. Thus transgressing boundaries of segregated disciplines can lead to meaningful learning and more motivated students.     

A story of culture and teaching: the complexity of teacher identity formation

Research in teacher education repeatedly suggests that the background and underlying beliefs held by pre-service teachers about teaching and assessment act to shape their interpretations of ideas, powerfully influencing their praxis and their developing teacher identity. This paper explores how a young New Zealand secondary science teacher, raised and educated in Māori-medium and then English-medium New Zealand schools, develops his identity as a teacher as he navigates a range of educational contexts and experiences. His views on assessment provide a focus. The paper presents a case study drawn from a two-year longitudinal study, comprising a series of interviews with the teacher, as he transitioned from a university graduate to a qualified science teacher working in his first school. The complexity of teacher identity development is highlighted, particularly for teachers for whom cultural identity and indigenous world view is important. It suggests that beginning teachers need more time in their pre-service teacher education to reflect on the influence their formative educational experiences have on who they are becoming as a teacher.     

Risky teachers: mitigating risk through high-stakes teacher evaluation in the USA

ABSTRACT

As a post-structural critique of US teacher evaluation policy, this paper aims to disrupt accepted conceptualizations of teachers by (1) identifying discursive constructions of teachers in political talk, action, and legislation; (2) unpacking the ways that these constructions operate to legitimize punitive accountability policies and practices; and (3) mapping the associated accountability practices used by one school district to understand how they function to manage teachers and shape teacher subjectivities. Drawing on data that include official federal- and state-level policy documents, policy supplemental materials, and local teacher evaluation materials, this analysis demonstrates how teachers have been discursively positioned as ‘risky’ subjects. By doing so, the means to mitigate such ‘risks’ are rationalized, insofar as high-stakes accountability policies and practices ‘make sense’ to protect the well-being of students and the country. This has enabled a set of intrusive and punitive mechanisms that assess and discipline teachers to behave as low-risk subjects.     

In search of the excellent literature teacher. An inductive approach to constructing professional teaching standards

This study makes a contribution to the development of empirically based, domain-specific teaching standards that are acknowledged by the professional community of teachers and which, therefore, have a good chance of being successfully implemented and used for professional development purposes. It was prompted by the resistance on the part of many teachers to the one-size-fits-all teaching standards imposed on them from above. We, therefore, looked for an alternative and canvassed teacher opinion about what makes an excellent literature teacher. Because our standards will be used to evaluate the profession, we also wished to know to what extent teachers satisfy (or would like to satisfy) their own ideal, and which factors influence their professional development. Contrary to earlier studies, we found that the professional community of literature teachers hold widely shared ideas about what constitutes excellence in their profession. We also found that almost 40% felt that their own level of professionalism fell far short of excellence, but that their professional growth was primarily hampered by external, contextual factors. If the government wishes to promote teacher ‘excellence’, the infrastructure for professional development will need to change so that teachers can acquire the knowledge and skills embodied in the teaching standards.     

Spinning a Web (Case) Around Professional Standards: Capturing the Complexity of Science Teaching

This study examines the intersection of two key reform ideas in science teacher education – professional teaching standards and the use of case methods. In this article, we track the historical development of what can be called second wave teaching standards and describe how those standards can be exemplified through multimedia web cases of science teaching. We describe a web case development project in which a group of experienced secondary science teachers work together over several months to video their own classes, and assemble video and audio commentaries of their lessons based on a set of science teaching standards. We conclude that the project was a rich professional development experience for those involved. Further, as the teaching standards movement gathers momentum in Australia and elsewhere, we contend that high quality multimedia cases linked to a standards framework show considerable promise as a vehicle to assist science teachers to reflect on their practice.     

Contextualizing Teacher Autonomy in time and space: a model for comparing various forms of governing the teaching profession

This study aims to develop a model for comparing different forms of teacher autonomy in various national contexts and at different times. Understanding and explaining local differences and global similarities in the teaching profession in a globalized world require conceptions that contribute to further theorization of comparative and international education. Drawing on a governance perspective and building on considerations of curriculum evaluation, the study argues that teacher autonomy is a crucial factor that has to be conceptualized in its national and historical contexts. It presents an examination of the teaching profession from both an institutional and service perspective. In both perspectives, teacher autonomy, framed by curriculum evaluation, can be regarded as both extended and restricted, but not necessarily at the same time. This point of view enables us to discuss different forms of autonomy in relation to each other. To support this idea, the study discusses cases of teachers in various contexts of time and space.     

Teacher effectiveness and teacher growth from student ratings: An action research of school-based teacher evaluation

Teacher effectiveness evaluations are considered an effective mechanism for promoting teacher growth. We implemented teacher effectiveness evaluations in three Chinese secondary schools over two years and (a) developed an action research framework for school-based teacher evaluations composed of five links, i.e., purpose and consensus, data collection and analysis, data interpretation and feedback, data use, and evaluation of the actions and (b) found that “school-based” instruments of student ratings have valid statistical properties, and teacher effectiveness can be regarded as a single-factor holistic concept in different schools. We also (c) analysed 2-year longitudinal data and identified changing trajectories of teacher effectiveness as an example for data feedback and use. Teacher effectiveness presents changing trajectories for different subgroups, representing different ecologies in three schools and provides insights for teacher growth. A (d) meta-evaluation of the actions shows that most teachers are positive about this evaluation, although differences are observed between schools.     

高校教师绩效评价中的公平问题探析

在对国内外高校教师绩效评价的现状进行阐述的基础上,运用公平理论,对我国高校教师绩效评价中存在的不公平问题及其产生的原因进行分析,从减小教师绩效评价中的不公平性和促进教师发展的角度出发,在教师绩效评价和相应的激励机制制定时要切实让学校的发展目标深入人心,把握好不同工作性质教师绩效的等价值性,充分考虑不同学科教师取得同类绩效付出的不等价性,以绩效评价结果的＂发展性＂运用替代＂奖惩性＂运用。