Do We Know a Successful Teacher When We See One? Experiments in the Identification of Effective Teachers

Abstract

The authors report on three experiments designed to (a) test under increasingly more favorable conditions whether judges can correctly rate teachers of known ability to raise student achievement, (b) inquire about what criteria judges use when making their evaluations, and (c) determine which criteria are most predictive of a teacher's effectiveness. All three experiments resulted in high agreement among judges but low ability to identify effective teachers. Certain items on the established measure that are related to instructional behavior did reliably predict teacher effectiveness. The authors conclude that (a) judges, no matter how experienced, are unable to identify successful teachers; (b) certain cognitive operations may be contributing to this outcome; (c) it is desirable and possible to develop a new measure that does produce accurate predictions of a teacher's ability to raise student achievement test scores.

Observer ratings of instructional quality: Do they fulfill what they promise?

“…The few existing investigations do not use G theory (e.g., Centra, 1975;Strong, Gargani, & Hacifazlioglu, 2011). As already mentioned, teacher ratings concerning instructional quality are important.…”

“…For a few years this deficit has been broached more and more (Tourangeau, 2003). However, in the field of instructional quality only few investigations have taken a look at the thinking and reasoning behind observers' rating instructional quality (e.g., Strong et al, 2011). Based on dual-process models in social cognition, one would assume that persons process information according to their expertise level (Fiske, 1995).…”

“…The analyses indicate that the ratings with the highest reliability (those of the untrained teacher students) do not refer to the most valid indicators. Additional evidence that high reliability does not guarantee high validity can be found in a study of Strong et al (2011). The authors asked different rater groups (e.g., teachers, university professors, trained raters) to rate teachers as effective or less effective in terms of students' achievement development.…”

Using Inquiry-Based Learning to Identify Issues and Develop Pedagogical Awareness of Teaching with Technology: A Self-Study from a Pre-Service Teacher Education Class

“…In the North American public school system, teacher effectiveness is often defined in terms of student success on standardized tests (Strong, Gargani, et al, 2011;Stronge, Ward, et al, 2011). In post-secondary contexts, the narrowness of this definition may not be as applicable as Stronge, Ward, et al's (2011) four dimensions of teacher effectiveness: instructional delivery, student assessment, learning environment, and personal qualities.…”

Nonverbal Immediacy as a Characterisation of Social Behaviour for Human–Robot Interaction

“…However, we still have relatively little understanding of what impact combinations of multimodal social cues have on learning in complex settings [101]. Correspondingly, we don't seem to be able to correctly identify highly effective teaching when we see it, raising questions about how to define what effective teaching consists of [110]. Social interaction can be considered as the bond between cognitive processes and socio-emotional processes [75].…”