Written by Pete Musso, Ed.D., assistant principal curriculum and instruction, De Smet Jesuit High School, Archdiocese of St. Louis
As I exited a keynote presentation on the Science and Profession of Teaching (Daniel), at the annual winter Learning & The Brain: Teaching Engaged Brains Conference (San Francisco, CA), a participant asked: How can administrators help teachers apply an “evidence-generated” model within the context of a school’s existing teacher evaluation system? And while there was no clear response by any of the 90 people in the room, my mind immediately began wandering—and soon arriving at a feeling of consolation.
Creating an evidence-generating culture among educators in our school—instead of living out evidence-based teaching—is doable within the context of our existing process for teacher Growth, Renewal, & Evaluation (GRE).
What is an Evidence-Generating Culture, As Opposed to an Evidence-Based Culture?
Daniel alluded to the fact that a major conundrum teachers have when we attend conferences where research-based best-practices are presented is that such theories about practices are (externally) evidence-based, rather than (internally) evidence-generated. Based on brain science and educational studies, “if a teacher does this . . . this will happen . . . now, go forth and set the world on fire.”
And while evidence-based research is helpful, often times it is not easy to practically apply and often unsustainable in lived classrooms with real teachers and students. It also does little to invite teachers themselves to become researchers on the science of education.
However, an evidence-generating culture is created when school leadership encourages teachers to identify their own class-based areas for growth and use a simple framework to develop a plan to address the areas for growth—test and collect evidence to hopefully show how they improved their practices and reflect on those experiences. This evidence-gathering culture is important because it:
- is unique to each teacher—it starts where we are—is practically found in our classrooms,
- invites teachers to an authentic investigation (and research) of the science behind their own teaching and management—driven by them, and
- fosters not only self-efficacy but also the important quality of being reflective practitioners toward a growth-mindset.
Essential Question
How does school leadership invite teachers into the growth mindset, where they are researchers in their own classrooms—generating their own evidence that they are being successful with their own students?
Growth, Renewal, & Evaluation Process
Our current teacher evaluation process is called Growth, Renewal, & Evaluation (GRE). It is a framework that, by nature, is comprehensive and evidence-gathering with components that invite teachers to reflect on their classroom practices. But it is not currently evidence-generating—it doesn’t necessarily invite teachers to identify areas for growth and then use a process for developing strategies to address those areas, test and generate (collect) evidence of growth (or not). It doesn’t necessarily encourage teachers to be engaged in their own classroom-based research on the science of their own classroom-based teaching.
Our GRE components include variables such as unscheduled class visits; immediate, rubric-based written feedback, Cognitive Coaching-based reflective conversations, written conversation summaries, principal walk-throughs, end of course student surveys, parent perception surveys and a principal-facilitated evaluation conversation based upon a teacher- written reflection.
But while this is a reflective, teacher-centered process, it is perhaps shy of going steps further to invite teachers to become researchers in their own classes. There is an easy fix, but first a few centering questions from the Daniel keynote that left me in consolation:
- How can school leadership help teachers validate (for themselves) how effectively they are doing their jobs?
- What evidence do teachers collect, that proves their teaching is working?
- When can school leadership invite teachers into a framework or process to produce their own evidence of the validity of their teaching?
By improving two teacher-centered reflection pieces in our GRE, we can invite teachers into an evidence-generating culture.
Reflecting Conversations
Class visits are the impetus for the most important part of our GRE process, the Reflecting Conversation. This 20-minute conversation that follows each class visit invites the teacher to reflect on how her typical classes unfold (from bell-to-bell), share impressions, share student-based and teacher evidence of learning, discuss other classes, reflect on rubric notes, reflect on how the conversation has been helpful and verbalize next steps.
A simple tweak to these prompts of the Reflecting Conversation is adding these questions that serve as the start to an evidence-generating framework (notably, also similar to the Problem-Resolving Conversation in Cognitive Coaching):
- How would you like student learning or class management to be better? What do you want to improve on or change? What’s a problem to be solved? What are you unhappy about or curious to change? Finally, identify an area for growth:
- Let’s develop an operational definition for that area for growth.
- How or what might you change about your class, relative to that operational definition?
- What steps might you take and what resources might you consult?
- Provide a pre-measure picture of what things look like (now).
- Try the change over a period of time.
- As you implement the change, measure growth and improvement as a result of the change. Collect evidence:
- Look for/measure any side-effects.
- Come back and let’s chat about it.
Providing these additional prompts to our traditional Reflecting Conversation invites the teacher to be an evidence-generating researcher in the classroom.
Principal Evaluation Conversation
During the GRE process, teachers complete a prompt-based written reflection before meeting for the Principal Evaluation Conversation (mid-year or at the end of the third quarter, typically).
These prompts already invite the teacher to think about a lot, including areas for growth. And a simple tweak to these prompts is to add questions that serve as a follow-up to previous Reflecting Conversations that they have already had (notably, also similar to the Problem-Resolving Conversation in Cognitive Coaching):
- This year, perhaps you identified a specific area for growth during your Reflecting Conversations, and you worked to be an evidence-generating teacher. How did that go?
- Will you continue with this specific area for growth next year or pick something else based upon this exercise today?
Adding these questions to the existing self-reflection prompts for the GRE Principal Evaluation Conversation invites teachers to identify areas for growth from their classroom and school experiences, work on a process for becoming researchers who generate evidence of that growth and hopefully form habits for creating an evidence-generating culture in the context of the school.
