Title: Bill Gates: Teachers need real feedback
Source/Author/Date: http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_teachers_need_real_feedback. Filmed April 2013 at TED Talks Education. New York, New York. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
Key Points:
- Teachers don’t receive enough systematic feedback to help them do their jobs better, and they deserve that!
- Since there are no international systems for gauging teacher feedback system, Gates looked at what countries have the highest achievement ranks. Then he asked, do they have systematic feedback in place?
- FYI, globally the U.S ranks 15th in reading proficiency, 23rd in science, and 31st in math.
- Shanghai, China ranks number one in all three categories.
- What they do: new teachers watch master teachers, weekly focus groups, and required to observe other teachers and provide feedback.
- “Measures of effective teaching”, MET, is the program Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to build. It is a teacher feedback and improvement system. This will help teachers gauge their performance, and receive the tools necessary to make the improvements.
- Watching video of yourself teaching is a great method of self-monitoring and improving your own practice.
- Estimated investment is $5 billion dollars
Relevance:
This holds particular relevance for me. I was researching a project for another class and found most teachers feel unprepared to manage classroom behaviors. One of the research-based suggestions in another article was to have teachers observe and give feedback, as well as observe other expert teachers. This research agrees with the findings of the Gates foundation. I hope America can find a way to invest in our teachers and our future.
Audience: Teachers and political leaders.
I think self- and peer-assessment is a valuable tool. We have instructional rounds in our district. Teachers take a couple hours and visit other teacher's classes, either in their own school or in another school in the district. It can be a powerful tool, but I have found two major drawbacks:
ReplyDelete1) Teachers often change their lessons when they know that someone is coming into their room to observe. This defeats the purpose of the observation. It also raises the question that, if the teachers being observed change their lessons to make them more interesting/in depth/richer, why are they not doing that on a regular basis?
2) There is a lot of ego that goes on in a school at times. To tell someone that there are areas that need improvement is something that many people cannot hear without becoming defensive.
Kristen I really liked your points about observing master teachers and being observed. I feel consistent observation will only improve our overall school system. Mainly because we as educators will have the opportunity to see master teachers teach. It’s all well and good to go over classroom management in our college courses, but seeing it done effectively is a huge difference. I also agree that “satisfactory” ranking, just isn’t good enough. If we can get detailed feedback on how we are doing, this I believe would increase our success. If some teachers don’t like this idea, then perhaps they are in the wrong profession. The end game is to help our students access their education. So, any help should be welcome, even if its news we don’t necessarily want to hear.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the watching the video of yourself and making improvements. This reminds of when athletes do film review and see what they are doing good and where they can improve - would be kind of cool to do it for teaching. There seems to be a lot of areas the U.S. can improve for supporting and improving their teachers. There is a lot of pressure to do well, but it seems there is not a lot of support or resources to help teachers do well.
ReplyDelete