Greetings!
Last month we highlighted a report that presented a list of effective
teacher characteristics. A few of you posted interesting responses on the
bulletin board:
"All of the items listed for the definition of teacher
effectiveness are symptoms of the effectiveness of the school/district as an
organizational system." -Richard
"In one of the criteria they noted the needs for formative
evaluation which for me implied that teachers collect data about learning at
that moment and have the tools and permission to make directional corrective
changes in their teaching/ student's learning." -Ryan
Do you have an opinion? Join the conversation on the bulletin board.
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Teachers Teaching Teachers
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 The research we are highlighting this month focuses on how
to spread effectiveness. "Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The
Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers," by C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias
Bruegmann, claims that teachers are more effective when they are surrounded by
effective peers. Their findings
include: - A teacher's students have larger achievement
gains in math and reading when he/she has more effective colleagues.
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Less experienced teachers are more affected by
the quality of their peers than are more experienced teachers.
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Teacher effectiveness is affected as much by
former peers as current peers.
As a result of their findings that novice teachers are most
affected by their peers and that novice teachers are the less likely to be effective,
the authors argue, "This would imply that the high concentration of novice
teachers in inner-city schools could be partially detrimental to student
performance at these schools in both the long and the short run."
C.
Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann. "Teaching Students and Teaching Each
Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers." NBER Working Paper No. 15202. (National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2009). Read an Education Week article about the report. You can also purchase the full report here: www.nber.org/papers/w15202.pdf.
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