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Some of the key points I found interesting: - Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. - Great teachers were perpetually looking for ways to
by aik 15y ago
Some of the key points I found interesting:
- Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.
- Great teachers were perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.
- Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
- Great teachers frequently check for understanding, and don't make the rookie mistake of asking "do you understand?"
- For many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.
- What predicts success: A history of perseverance, or "grit” — defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals.
- Success as a teacher: Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction” — reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students.”
- Past performance is a great indicator of future performance.
- A master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom effectiveness.
- Important when measuring success: Were you prepared? Did you achieve your objective in five minutes (or whatever other time)?
Not mentioned in the article: A great book on this topic is "What the Best College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain. Ken does his own research into what makes a great teacher and has some fascinating findings. The huge effort that highly successful teachers put into their students is just incredible, though daunting, and gives me a lot of respect for the profession.
- tokenadult 15y agoA master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom effectiveness. Yes. The research consistently shows that the typical master's degree possessed by a K-12 teacher (a degree in "education") adds NIL value to the teacher's teaching. But most teacher contracts entered into by most school districts give automatic raises to any teacher who has a master's degree in any subject. No evaluation of effectiveness is performed, but the master's degree gives the teacher an automatic raise. That costs school districts all around the United States billions of dollars in the aggregate, all money that could be better spent for many other purposes. Bill Gates has commented on the wasteful spending on bonuses for master's degrees, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html and so has Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-26/news/29286099_1_public-school-teachers-chief-state-school-officers-english http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-26/news/29286099_1_public... It would be far better to give teachers raises if they do an excellent job of teaching, whatever degrees they have.
- aik 15y agotokenadult, you're often involved in the conversations on education and math education, often with insightful comments. I'm just curious -- what is your viewpoint specifically on how one should measure an "excellent job of teaching"? Do you think it is possible to form a link between student scores and teacher effectiveness? Is it possible in particular without incentivizing behavior that brings teachers to focus on artificial goals (test scores, money), and off the actual purpose of education (actual student learning/growth)?
- tokenadult 15y agoOne thing that would help would be assessment of student learning done by persons other than the teacher, so the teacher can't give in to temptations to cheat when students are tested. (This is one reason I encourage my mathematics students to take the AMC tests and participate in other programs in which they can perform to show what they do that are not run by me.) I think a lot more work still needs to be done on "value added," which is why I especially appreciate the submitted article. I mostly have the good fortune to teach "ringers"--the kids are already bright in math, and come to me as clients because the school lessons they receive bore them. A teacher who can take a child who was never particularly motivated by studying mathematics, and who has long since been turned off by lousy instruction, http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf which is a challenge I have rarely taken on, and who can motivate that child to child to excel is a teacher who is worth his or her weight in gold. I've requested from my friendly public library the book mentioned in the article, which had not been published at the time of the earlier submission, and I will try to find out what the book says about incentives that can be put in place in school systems to help teachers do their very best and to help learners learn better.