The most effective teachers turn to their colleagues for advice (while weaker teachers don ’t bother)

By guest blogger Bradley Busch Teaching, it has often been said, is the one profession that creates all other professions. Therefore it is so important that we learn how to do it right. The ways that teachers learn from each other is likely to be an important part of this, especially how they discern each other’s expertise and whether they are inclined to seek advice and help from the most able. A team led by James Spillane at Northwestern University has published a study in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis that looks into these teacher behaviours. The researchers employed a mixed-method approach that spanned five years and involved staff from fourteen different primary schools in the US. This included surveys and interviews to explore how maths teachers conceptualised expert teaching, and then an analysis of student test scores along with teachers’ self-reported interactions with their colleagues, to assess if expert teachers behave differently from their peers.  The first part of the study focused on finding out what information teachers draw on to form their opinion of which of their colleagues is an expert. With schools nowadays awash with data to track student progress, one obvious way to assess which teachers are most expert is to compare their class test scores. However, results from this study suggest that those at the chalkface tend not to use this metric.  Over 90 per cent of staff referred to something other than student test scores, with comm...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Educational guest blogger Source Type: blogs