Studies of communities of professionals determined that they have common beliefs or behaviours associated with the idea of professionalism. These common beliefs or behaviours include the sharing of a common body of knowledge (curriculum) as well as the use of standards of practice put into practice when exercising their knowledge on behalf of their clients (students). In addition, professionals strive to “improve practice and enhance accountability by creating means for ensuring that practitioners will be competent and committed. Professionals undergo rigorous preparation and socialization to that the public can have high levels of confidence that professionals will behave in knowledgeable and ethical ways”, stated by Darling-Hammond and Goodwin, 1993, p. 21, as referenced in the article Systemic Reform in the Professionalism of Education 1995.
The expectations for new and senior educators learning about research-based best practices for assessment and improvement of instruction should include having a clear understanding about how to make informal and formative assessments as well as how to make professional growth plans that are self-directed with some helpful critiquing from their peers. Such expectations are applicable to all educators no matter who their learner demographic happens to be. Such expectations will ensure the likelihood of improvement and refinement of instructional practice. The ultimate result will be seeing an increase in the level of student academic achievement no matter what the demographic. The knowledge and skills likely to be acquired after educators learn about research-based best practices are how to effectively improve their instruction through the application of differentiation of instruction and assessment to all academic and/or special education curriculum.
The vital questions answered through the next several blog posts include:
What is good teaching and how do we know it when we see it?
What are the key elements to the improvement of instruction?
Why are educators responsible for improvement of instruction?
How do educators and administrators support each other in improving instruction?
Throughout the next several blogs, I reference the Framework for Teaching developed by Charlotte Danielson (1996), based on the five core propositions of the 2002 USA National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Danielson has stated, “Decisions that teachers make in designing and executing instructional plans are far from trivial. Professional educators must assume responsibility for understanding content, the cultural environments from which their students come and the design of coherent instruction. Teaching is a profession – we mush have no doubt about that. But if it is to be treated as a profession, then the responsibilities as well as the benefits deriving from that status must apply (Danielson, 1996, p. 27). Therefore, self-assessment geared to reflective self-improvement of instructional methods must be part of the process.
An outstanding approach to learning best practices of assessment and improvement of instruction is observation of experienced teachers, either in-class or through viewing pre-recorded instructional sessions from video or DVD. Three questions educators can reflect upon while observing an experienced teacher’s instruction are:
- What did you find as evidence of effective teaching?
- What could you suggest to the instructor to improve the lesson or as an alternative instructional strategy?
- How would you choose to provide feedback to the instructor?
My first observation was of an experienced elementary teacher since this was the age group to which I was oriented. The instructional video I viewed was entitled: Integrating Primary Botany Lesson
The evidence I found of effective teaching in the video, Integrating Primary Botany Lesson, included:
- The educator’s planned use of a community newspaper to grab the children’s attention showed some of the instructor’s understanding of the available resources familiar to the students, thus igniting meaningful connections in the children, drawing on prior knowledge, and engaging them with an object they had previously seen and/or even explored in their family environment (Danielson, 2007).
- The teacher guided the children’s discussion with intentional, purposeful, and well prepared essential questions. The essential questions were experienced fully selected to kindle meaningful connections, as well as to encourage the transfer and integration of the previous science lesson’s vocabulary about plants. In addition, the teacher included a brief spelling patterns review, with a language arts story about gardening the children read previously as well as with their real-life experiences doing gardening activities external to the school environment. Thus, integrating science with literacy and connecting to authentic real-life individual experiences outside of school time. Because of the teacher’s questioning technique and clear communication, the resulting instructional class discussion was engaging to the children (Danielson, 2007).
- The teacher encouraged the children’s deductive reasoning processes using strategized verbal sequencing about what is necessary to grow healthy plants, though this was unsupported by visual images of what plants need to grow, “a generally overall strategy suitable to the students as a group” (Danielson, 2007, p. 41).
- The interactions between the students as well as between the teacher and students were respectful indicating a positive climate for learning. As well, the teacher’s act of printing the children’s answers on the chalkboard reinforced and validated their answers thus increasing the probability that they would answer questions more often. It was clear from the children’s quiet, calm, and relaxed sitting manner they had been pre-taught acceptable behavior in such group discussion situations.
Here are the suggestions I would share with the instructor to improve the lesson or as an alternative instructional strategy:
To improve the lesson, I would suggest the instructor provide as a visual aid a large poster representation of the steps necessary to grow a plant using both images of each step paired with text containing the essential vocabulary that is aligned with the unit’s curriculum. As an alternative instructional strategy that would serve to integrate the primary botany lesson with reading and the actual experience of gardening, I would suggest to the instructor to involve the children in an authentic performance activity of interest to each of them such as planting a seed of their choice to grow.
For the example of integrating a primary botany lesson, the learning activity I would suggest creates high interest for the children personally so that their natural curiosity is stimulated. Natural curiosity occurs due to either connections children make with their own lives, or something that is mysterious to them. In addition, the children ubiquitously agreed they enjoy playing in dirt, and some in mud. Therefore, there is strong evidence supporting the enjoyment and fun an individual gardening project would provide. The activity I would plan is the growing of a fast-growing edible plant of each child’s choice. Examples of edible plants include the leaves of dandelion, pot marigolds, gem marigolds, borage, daylily, nasturtium, pansy, squash blossoms, as well as Herb flowers like Anise Hyssop, Basil, Bee Balm, Chives, Cilantro, Dill, Fennel, and Garlic (TWSG, n.d.). This gardening activity would provide practice and experience for each student to be able to transfer the knowledge learned in science botany and the readings about gardening through the activity of gardening. Each child would daily log in a personalized journal the sequence they followed to grow their edible plant as well as reflections about each day’s observations as well as what they enjoyed and what they did not, using either traditional writing or electronic methods. This experience would also encourage their use of reflective and higher-level evolving thinking skills as well as help them retain the knowledge and essential understandings through the process of transfer by way of doing (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).
The following is how I would choose to provide feedback to the instructor:
I would provide feedback to the instructor through a 2+2 peer review method where I would offer two positive comments about her/his instructional methods with one or two suggestions to try out as an action-research investigation.
References
Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing Professional Practice. A Framework for Teaching (2nd Edition). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Merrill/Prentice Hall (2004). Case 4: Integrating Primary Botany Lesson. Elementary Video Case Studies. Merrill Education Media Series. ISBN: 0131186426. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
TWSG (n.d.). Fastest Growing Vegetables. Retrieved on January 13, 2011 from http://tightwadsurvivalguide.com/TightwadTipsGrowingVegetables.aspx
Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd Edition). Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.