I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Guest Blogger Candice DePrang
A peer review program introduced in Toledo, Ohio in 1981 moved a little closer to home about ten years ago. Yesterday’s Washington Post article profiled the progress of Montgomery County’s Peer Assistance and Review Program, “that identifies struggling teachers and tries to help them improve.”
Peer review is just one of the many answers to poor behavior management skills and low performing students that characterize the classroom of a struggling teacher. Paramount to the transformation of peer review programs are mentors that supply their mentees with promising practices based on rigorous research. Teachers need excellent examples of these practices modeled in context, with a chance to demonstrate their improvement over time. Districts seeking to improve student outcomes by increasing teacher quality through a peer review program will realize the culture shift “from 'gotcha' to support” that currently exists in local administrations. Strengthening the culture means strengthening the teachers with evidence based research practices – not necessarily intuition or the solely stories of other classrooms– to help them establish and sustain a structure in their classroom that creates a space where students learn.
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2 comments:
Candice, nice job. Teachers do need excellent examples.
Really there is no doubt that mentoring is the strongest solution (even stronger than peer review). It seems that there is a desire for quantitative results, so when administrators choose between the two, they tend to choose the peer review. When we look at this from a qualitative perspective, the real bottom line is: a strong, supportive mentoring program needs to be in place from the beginning, so that teachers do not find themselves in the boat of "struggling."
I wonder if there has been any research done on stand alone mentoring programs in the schools (i.e. separate from peer review, pay/dock for student performance, etc.)? I know there is a lot of literature on this for higher ed.
Probably the biggest hurdle for this on the higher ed level is the need for a "champion." If there is a center or a faculty member who feels passionate about this sort of teaching-development, then it succeeds. If it is left to a secretarial or adminastrivia person, then the program tends to fizzle after a year or two.
If faculty members are learning in context with one another, they will most likely increase the learning environment for their students, and as a result, we will see a substantial change in student learning.
(Updated last sentence:) If faculty members are learning in context with one another, they will most likely increase the *quality of the* learning environment for their students, and as a result, we will see a substantial change in student learning.
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