Translate

Wednesday 17 December 2014

How Should Teachers Be Evaluated?

In nearly 40 years of teaching in various institutions I have never encountered a teacher who enjoyed being evaluated. I have been both a teacher under evaluation and an evaluator of other teachers.  As a teacher I have never received an evaluation less than above average and in the last half of my career my evaluations were consistently excellent, yet I still cannot say that I approve of teacher evaluations.

In theory the purpose of evaluating teachers is to improve education.  In practice I have never seen evidence of this cause and effect, but I have witnessed plenty of evidence to the contrary.  Education is a very complicated business and there is no simple, efficient and effective way of determining how one teacher’s performance can affect outcomes.  Assessing student outcomes in order to evaluate teachers is simply unfair and counter-productive--it leads to “teaching for the test,” the marginalization of weaker student cohorts and rests on two false assumption:  1) that the ways students are tested are magically perfect measures of everything a student has learned and can do, and 2) that teachers are uniquely, 100% responsible for student learning.

In addition to student outcomes, there are a number of other ways that teachers can be evaluated:  administratively (punctuality, assiduousness, dress and comportment, etc) , or through self evaluation, or via cv and documentation (certified activities to improve pedagogical skills), through peer evaluation, class-room observations and student evaluations.  I have dealt with each of these approaches over the years without ever coming away with the impression that the process was achieving its objectives.  To my surprise, while trying to defend lecturers in the programs I was supervising against the nasty notes the Department Chair was sending to any part-timer who scored below average on student evaluations, I discovered that my University’s policy, on the books, was to include all of these approaches when evaluating any professor or lecturer.  In practice the only evaluation that the Department actually carried out on a regular basis was the student evaluation.  Here we have the basic problem with teacher evaluations, why they invariably go awry, no-one is interested in following through with the extensive procedures that would be necessary to make the evaluations credible.  Even if people were interested and determined enough to follow the various necessary procedures, they would find themselves dedicating most of the institution’s time, energy and resources to assessing teachers instead of educating students.  In the end, teacher evaluations are simply a means of turning teachers into scapegoats for everything that is wrong in the educational system, not to mention the problems of society at large.



Anyone who has ever stood at the front of a classroom should realize that teachers are being evaluated, measured and assessed by multiple gazes every minute of their teaching day.  Why should teachers be evaluated when so many other professionals aren’t and no-one is interested in even attempting to ensure that they are evaluated thoroughly and fairly?  Why does the issue keep coming up? Mostly, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.  We know that teachers are not well paid for the value of the work they do, and consequently Faculties of Education tend to attract the bottom of the barrel of University admissions.  The universities then exacerbate the problem by adopting a business model which dictates that they produce as many B.Ed.s as possible, the sausage-factory mentality, ignoring both the need for and the quality of what they are producing.  We then assume--quite wrongly, by the way--that the teachers who are produced under these circumstances can’t be very good and we therefore have to vigilantly assess them after the fact, as if there were some kind of recall mechanism in place to eliminate or repair defective teachers--which, of course, there isn’t (unless you believe in the Government of Manitoba’s plan to force teachers to  re-quality for their jobs every five years).  Contrary to the logic of the situation, skilled, determined, dedicated, effective, intelligent teachers do emerge year after year, not because of but in spite of the system.  Those teachers would, no doubt, like to be recognized, acknowledged, celebrated and rewarded, which brings us back to the many failures of how teachers have historically been evaluated, and the negative or inconsequent results of those evaluations.  There’s more to come on this subject.




The Greatness Trap: Why Good Is Good

You might have noticed that I am fixated on the expression “good teachers.”  All good teachers aspire to be great.  If you are consistently good, you can be sure that eventually one of your students will announce to you that you are a “great teacher.”  Accept the compliment graciously because your hard work deserves at least some of it, because these monumental moments are the real payday in a teacher's life, and because, according to the French aphorism,  “To refuse a compliment is to demand a second.”  At the same time, good teachers need to remain wary of how "greatness" can be a trap.

Do I sound like I'm talking to myself?  Yes, sort of, but I hope I was able to spot the signs of my own hubris and overcome it expeditiously.  Once upon a time, the Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities used to publish a section called "Popular Profs" in which my name was listed along with three others from my university.  (I would eventually realize that popularity is the kiss of death to a university career. 1) After a former student called me to alert me that I had been named in Macleans, I did wander around for a few days (or was it weeks?) thinking "Wow, I must be a great prof!"  Slowly it began to dawn on me:  "Okay, you're great!  So now what?"  

Thought number two: "If I'm already a great teacher, I shouldn't have to work so hard."

Thought number three wasn't really a thought; it was a behaviour.  A behaviour that caused me to look up a word in the dictionary, a word I already knew but I now had a more profound understanding of:  "mannered."   It means to be artificial, stilted, unnatural.  I was becoming mannered because I was trying to imitate myself, trying to repeat those small excentricities, warm tones of voice, empathetic glances, magnanimous gestures and concerned postures that I thought had made me popular.  As I recognized what I was doing, I also realized that I was spending way too much time thinking about myself, instead of what I was supposed to be thinking about, my students and what I was teaching.  It was time to simply acknowledge that I was lucky, to appreciate and make the best of my good luck, and get back to doing what good teachers do.

Hubris (the pride that comes before a fall) is only half the story of the "greatness" trap.   

Greatness, like all stereotypes, labels, myths and identities, becomes the standard against which you are measured and measure yourself.  If your preoccupation with greatness causes you to work extra hard, to take on extra responsibilities and go beyond what is expected of you and find extra satisfaction in your work, then it can be a good thing.  However, if it becomes a distraction and source of stress, or traps you into something that doesn't support good teaching, then it isn't.  You already know what I'm talking about here.  How many times have you heard, in a sarcastic tone,  something like:  "Well, if you're a feminist then shouldn't you  . . . . "  Or, "'If you are an environmentalist  then you should . . . ."  Or, "If you are such a great teacher then you should . . . ."  

You should stand up proudly for your beliefs, but recognize that any label can be turned into a trap, a means of manipulation.

Here’s a case in point I came across in National Affairs

Wow, “common sense” and “decades of empirical research”! Talk about seductive! So, what’s the “great teacher” test?  In fact, that’s the point of the article, the necessity of testing, evaluating and grading teachers.  And who is going to decide who and what the great teachers are?  Some administrator or pedagog who hasn’t been near a classroom in the last ten years no doubt.  

To avoid the traps, stay focussed on what you know good teachers do.



1. This is, of course, anecdotal evidence, but when it comes to "popularity as career suicide" what other kind of evidence is there.   Three members of my department had, over the years, been identified as "Popular Profs" in The Macleans' Guide.  After being identified as "Popular," one was forced into early retirement.  The second was denied a full-time position, and I was blocked from promotion.

Thursday 11 December 2014

How Much Do Good Teachers Matter?

Sometimes the question is more important than the answer. Periodically, in the midst of a teaching session, I would ask myself this question: How much does the quality of my teaching really matter in the overall education of my students?  

Considering all the potential factors which could determine how well or much a student might learn, how big a difference could the time a student spent with me really make?  Relative to everything else that might be going on in a student’s life imprinting itself on mind and body,  if I imagined myself to be responsible for 2% of a student’s total learning in any given year, I would be claiming a lot.

If you believe in compound interest, 2% is a lot.  A 2% increase in knowledge compounded annually, will produce a life-changing increase in knowledge of 65% over a 25-year period (according to my compound interest calculator).  Put another way, at the risk of sounding biblical, good teachers plant seeds which they have sound reason to hope will grow over time and make a difference in the lives of those they’ve taught.

But the answer isn’t what is important about asking this question.  The question is important in its own right, even without an answer, because it reminds teachers of the limitations of their short-term influence.

Why should teachers remind themselves of their limitations?  For one thing, it’s a mental health issue.  In my experience, wherever teachers gather the phrase “burn out” is used all too frequently and glibly, but teachers do need to pace themselves.  There is no limit to how much work any individual might put into teaching.  No matter how much or how well you might do, when it comes to teaching there is always room to say I could have done more or better.

And there are no limits to what we might imagine the effect of a teacher might be.  Unfortunately, when we fail to achieve fantastic, imaginary goals, it is a typical  human response to do less rather than as much as we are able.  The Danes are repeatedly identified in global surveys (much to their own surprise) as the happiest in the world.  The reason they score so well on happiness tests is their modest expectations. Maintaining low expectations shouldn’t  be an objective, but teachers need to allow themselves to enjoy the satisfaction of their achievements--even if those achievements might not count as world-changing  or award-winning in anyone’s books.  Being able to say “that went pretty well” at the end of a class is a monumental moment in a teacher’s life, and the accumulation of those positive memories, the why and how and wherefore of them, is what makes good teachers good teachers.

There is another, and perhaps more important reason, that teachers need to question and recognize the limitations of their influence:  it’s focus.  Teachers need a version of The Serenity Prayer.  You know, the one that alcoholics recite:  “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  

With teachers courage matters, but they also need determination, conviction, passion, optimism, idealism, skill, concentration and focus to do what they can do, taking care of the details, the immediate, the one-on-one, the minutia,  being on time, well prepared, creative and caring, without being distracted and overwhelmed by what they can’t control or do anything about at the moment.   I recently heard a Navy SEAL being interviewed (he was part of the team that assassinate Osama Bin Ladin).  He described losing his courage, freezing up, unable to move while in the middle of a rock-climbing exercise.  The instructor rappelled over to him and reminded him “your universe is three square feet.”  The trick is to stay focussed on the three square feet that matter right now, finding the next crevice and toe hold, and avoiding the paralysis of thinking about all those things that could happen, that might go wrong, that you can’t do anything about.  It is difficult to recognize and easy to forget how hard and how essential it is for teachers to stay focussed on what they want to achieve in the moment.  How much you matter doesn't matter!  What matters is what you are doing right now!



"Three Days of the Condor" and the Tenth Anniversary of "The Sour Grapevine"

Sharing Intelligence I'm still obsessing over " sharing intelligence ."  May 15th was the tenth anniversary of this blog.  I w...