Free Custom «Teacher Evaluation and Professional Learning» Essay Paper

Summary

Though technological issues of teacher evaluation are the most regularly tackled by researchers, still other vital issues need to be observed. The most precisely brilliant teacher evaluation scheme can be implemented in a school locality, but be fated to disappointment if the sociological changes are not tackled.

Teacher evaluation can be an efficient professional growth tool, and channel for ongoing and pertinent learning, and development for all concerned. Modern studies such as The Effect of Widget (Weisberg, 2009) performed by the Teacher Project, and "Lake Wobegon" (Donaldson, 2009) propose that present teacher and principal assessment measures can be quite unproductive. In accurately evaluating high-class instruction, and directing essential improvements owing to a cognitive prejudice or deceptive superiority, this results in approximately all educators getting suitable or advanced ratings. Leaders and educators concur that several teachers and principals are not as efficient as the assessments depict. Conventionally, the consequences of evaluations have had negligible if any effect on developing teaching or learning. Several leaders have been verbal about their distress with current teacher evaluation measures and schemes.

 

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It is reasonable to inspect the core bases that have led us to this point. Numerous causative factors embrace uncertain or insufficient values, inadequate time, communal bargaining limits, and feeble evaluation apparatus to manage the course, such as reduced methods for data contribution, personalization, and distribution. In many regions, these issues are intricate by a managerial culture that does not hold constructive comment and provides inadequate accountability and slight inspiration to encourage frank and applicable evaluations. Given this situation, it is no doubt that it may appear to intimidate if not unattainable, to chase a vision of the review process that is a thorough, fair, and significant course to assisting teachers and principals progress their professional practice further.

Numerous aspects have brought teacher evaluation to the front position of today's learning discussion. Foremost, new centralized plans such as Race to the Peak have evidently recognized renewed prospects for comprehensive, consistent, and apparent measures for yearly, performance-oriented assessment. Second, in an ever more spirited situation, communal schools are rarely anxious to certify that their teachers are doing well. Third, learning reform format that center on high-class teaching and augmented awareness to value-added evaluation  models have offered a major push to revise the mode in which we review the teacher labor force. Fourth, and possibly most significantly, researchers point out that "a fine-designed and executed assessment scheme may be the most efficient means to raise scholar accomplishment".

An additional actuality is that school regions are gathering plenty of data given the sustained focus on proof, and the recently transformed stress on data- conversant decision-creation that drive regions in numerous ways. In pockets of transformation around countries, several states and some regions, are trailing data on the development of scholar, programs, and schools in time to devise new ways to efficiently assess teachers and principals by creating links between teacher performance and learner accomplishment.

My Learning Plan, a Professional Development Management and Evaluation System (PDMES) permit proprietors to realize the novel necessities around shaping the efficiency of specialized learning by gathering and examining  assets of information concerning what teachers are learning, and the consequent amendments in practice and learners outcomes. This prominence on looking for proof concerning the link between instruction and scholars learning was voiced lately in Education Week: "The money used up on professional growth could be better trailed to make sure that it has an effect on scholars learning."

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Although the importance of employing student accomplishment data as one measure of teacher and principal efficiency may be undisputed, numerous regions are looking for strong connections between educator assessment and expert growth. Danielson (2009) states the concept in this observation: "An efficient teacher assessment scheme achieves two important things: it ensures classic teaching and it encourages specialized learning." She clarifies that we vary the focus from check-up to combined reflection. To accomplish this, we may require setting up structural, artistic, and practical changes.

It appears that we should ensure good employment of all the specialized growth data. This data is summative in the online assortment of educators and principals, thereby facilitating a series of constant educator development. We can achieve this by integrating professional education histories into educator assessment discussion and by facilitating evaluators to propose significant specialized learning objectives, and topics to the assessed. In this system, the measures for assessment and courses related to expert growth are apparent and knowledgeable through the joint information. For instance, assessing reports may direct targeted expert learning skill, relevant lessons or augmented induction sustenance or universal planning and association time.

Teacher appraisal that is fine managed, apparent, and engages educators and principals in just, objected, and thorough investigation of their practice can be a channel for forming genuine learning societies. Such societies will be places where coaching and learning are mutually reliant, practical feedback foster ongoing development, and conversant decision-making and constant progress is not only predictable, but also realized. It is against this background that the research is tries to examine the relationship between teacher evaluation and professional learning moderated by years of teaching, or school type.

Research Questions      

The study will attempt to answer the following two questions;

1. Is there relationship between teacher evaluation and professional learning? If so, is the relationship moderated by years of teaching?
2. Is there relationship between teacher evaluation and professional learning? If so, is the relationship moderated by school type (private or public)?

Research Methodology

This area sets out various stages and phases that will be followed in completing the study. The following subsections are included; research design, target population, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and finally data analysis.

The focus of this study will be quantitative. However, some qualitative approach will be included in order to gain a better understanding and possibly enable a better and more insightful interpretation of the results from the quantitative study. This research will be conducted through an explanatory research design. An explanatory research design is a non-experimental inquiry in which researchers look for the cause and effect relationship by structuring groups of objects or individuals. The independent variable of these objects is present or present at a number of levels. Finally, the researcher should determine whether the groups differ in the dependent variable.

Study Population

Target population in statistics is the specific population about which information is desired. A population is a well-defined set of people, services, elements, and events, group of things or households that are being investigated. This definition ensures that population of interest is homogeneous. The target population of this study will be high-school teachers. The target population should have some observable characteristics, to which the researcher intends to generalize the results of the study.

With respect to evaluation, this study will utilize a questionnaire to collect primary data. The questionnaire is designed to include both structured and unstructured questions. The structured questions are used in an effort to safeguard resources like time and funds as well as to facilitate an easier analysis as they are in immediate usable form. Unstructured questions are used to encourage the respondent to give an in-depth and felt response without feeling held back in revealing of any information.

This study will collect quantitative data using a self-administered questionnaire. Nevertheless, where it proves difficult for the respondents to complete the questionnaires immediately, the questionnaire will be left with the respondents and will be picked later. Before administering the questionnaire to participants, a pilot study will be carried out to ensure that the questions are relevant, clearly understandable and make sense.

The pilot study aims at determining the reliability of the questionnaire including the wording, structure and sequence of questions. This pilot study will involve 30 teachers, conveniently selected since statistical conditions are not necessary in the pilot study. The purpose will be to refine the questionnaire so that respondents in the major study will have no problem in answering the questions. Expert opinion will be requested to comment on the representativeness and suitability of questions and give suggestions of corrections to be made to the structure of the questionnaire. This will help in improving the reliability and validity of the data to be collected. The results of the pilot study will not be included in the actual study.

Before processing the responses, the completed questionnaires will be edited for completeness and consistency. The data will then be coded to enable the responses to be grouped into various categories. Data collected will be purely quantitative, and it will be analyzed by descriptive analysis. The descriptive statistical tools help in describing the data, and determining the extent used. Data analysis will use SPSS and Microsoft Excel to generate quantitative reports through tabulations, percentages, and measures of central tendency. Tables will be used to present responses and facilitate comparison.  To quantify the strength of the relationship between the variables, that the researcher utilized, he or she will conduct a regression analysis to determine the relationship between teacher evaluation and professional learning.

The regression equation will be as follows:

RQ1:

DV=β₀ + β₁ IV

DV= teacher evaluation

IV= professional learning

β₁₌Coefficient of determination

RQ2:

DV=β₀ +β₂ IV ₂

DV= Teacher evaluation

IV ₂ =   Professional learning

β2=Coefficient of determination