Supervision for Learning

A Performance-Based Approach to Teacher Development and School Improvement

James M. Aseltine, Judith O. Faryniarz

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781416603276
• eBook ISBN: 9781416618324
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Traditional methods of supervision and evaluation focus on teachers' inputs: their lesson plans, instruction, and classroom management practices. But what matters most is the outcome they achieve: learning. This book introduces Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation (PBSE), a data-driven and teacher-directed approach proven to build educators' analytical and instructional capacity to address the learning needs of their students. It's a move away from disconnected annual goals and outside-in improvement initiatives, and toward the full integration of teacher evaluation, strategic professional development, and school improvement planning.

Supervision for Learning is an important resource for school leaders looking to

* Honor the judgment of teachers while targeting student performance in areas of essential knowledge and skills articulated in standards;
* Empower all teachers to use performance data as the basis for instructional decisions and monitor the effectiveness of these decisions through action research;
* Develop meaningful collaborative relationships with and among teachers; and
* Acquire authentic evidence of teacher and student growth.

Authors James M. Aseltine, Judith O. Faryniarz, and Anthony J. Rigazio-DiGilio explain the best-practice foundations of their approach and provide guidelines for its implementation. Sample artifacts and illustrative vignettes bring the PBSE process to life, clarifying the supervisor's role, the teachers' responsibilities, and the students' gains. You'll also find a planning and monitoring tool that maps milestones within the development and evaluation cycle, along with strategies for reconciling this approach with district reporting requirements and budget realities.

Note: This product listing is for the reflowable (ePub) version of the book.

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Chapter 1

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Reconceptualizing Supervision and Evaluation

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Marcia Williams, an 8th grade social studies teacher at Fairview Middle School, organized her students' papers into a neat bundle, ready for grading. Her "Period C" class had just left the room, and she could now turn her thoughts to the meeting she had scheduled for her planning period. It was mid-September and time to meet with Fairview's principal, Gary Mulholland, to discuss her professional objectives for the school year ahead.

At Marcia's end-of-year meeting with her principal last spring, Gary had shared his excitement about a different way of approaching the whole process of supervision and evaluation. Just a month earlier, he and his colleague administrators had taken part in a professional development program that provided in-depth information and simulation activities in a process called Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation (PBSE). The gist of it, Gary had explained, was collaborative effort between a teacher and supervisor to align the teacher's annual development plan with explicit student learning needs: choosing an area of "essential learning," analyzing related performance data, identifying a specific learning need within that area, and pursuing the professional development necessary to address that need more effectively. He had become convinced that this process would improve student performance at Fairview and dramatically enhance the teachers' capacity for effective instruction and assessment. Gary had arranged for his teachers to have their own training in the process during the two professional development days in August.

Her principal's enthusiasm had been contagious, and Marcia had approached the August professional development session with an open mind and a curious spirit. After the workshop, she had found Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation even more appealing. To Marcia, the model made sense, connected with many of the best-practice recommendations she continued to hear and read about, and seemed realistic about the challenges of the classroom. Most of all, she liked the model's consistent focus on student learning and building teacher capacity to address student learning needs.

But as much as the PBSE model appealed to her, Marcia was unsure about how to begin using it herself. She had thought about the model as she considered potential areas for professional growth, but the annual plan she was about to propose to her principal was more a reflection of her old habits than the new approach. She had decided to focus on furthering her students' understanding of economic globalization. In light of current events, this certainly seemed to be an authentic and appropriate consideration for social studies. It was part of the 8th grade curriculum and a topic that she found personally interesting. In addition, Marcia's 8th grade team was a close-knit group, and her colleagues had expressed interest in working on a year-long theme—perhaps one related to world issues. Economic globalization seemed to fit the bill.

Marcia arrived at her meeting with the principal with a proposed professional objective in hand. She began to explain a number of possible professional development activities, including reading about the world economy, collecting related newspaper and magazine articles and sharing them with students, investigating guest speakers who might present "real life" information about domestic and worldwide economic changes, and holding weekly team meetings to discuss how the global economy theme might be addressed in math, science, and language arts classes. She noted that she would assess her students' deepening understanding of economic globalization by engaging them in discussion around the topic at least once per marking period and taking notes on what they had to say. And as evidence of her professional growth, she would collect artifacts of her instructional efforts, including students' assessments and comments, and share them with the principal once at mid-year and again at the end of the year.

When Marcia had finished explaining her idea, Gary smiled and took a breath. Marcia's plan was timely, authentic, collaborative, and focused on enriching the 8th grade curriculum. It was fully in line with the type of supervisory process he had used with staff members for many years. But it was not in line with the plan to implement Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation. To bring Marcia on board, he would need to help her bridge the divide between past practices and the new approach: one grounded in analysis of student performance data, results-driven change, and a commitment to building instructional and organizational capacity.

The State of Supervision and Evaluation

Teacher supervision and evaluation is an important focus for principals and other administrators. Since the 1960s, our body of professional knowledge on this topic has grown, supported by the work of Acheson and Gall (1997), Goldhammer, Anderson, and Krawjewski (1993), McGreal (1983), Manatt and Manatt (1984), Peterson (2000), Stanley and Popham (1998), Hunter (1976), Eisner (2002), Scriven (1981), Stufflebeam (1991), and other pioneers. We have come to understand more clearly the nature and importance of specific aspects of quality teaching, such as building on prior learning, effective questioning techniques, productive and intellectually challenging activities, and reinforcement of lesson objectives (Marzano, 2003). We can identify student engagement, self- and peer assessment, and the opportunity for children to work collaboratively as important components of effective classrooms. Most classroom teachers believe that both children and adults need to take an active role in their own learning. And our professional vocabulary has embraced terms such as "constructivist learning," "discovery learning," "cooperative learning," "differentiated instruction," and "multiple intelligences."

Given the historical focus on instructional processes, it is understandable that many current supervisory practices look primarily at curriculum and instruction: what the students are learning and how they are learning it. This focus is evident in the typical pattern of supervision and evaluation: a new goal at the start of the school year; periodic classroom observation, with formal and informal feedback; mid-year and end-of-year meetings to discuss progress toward the goal; and the supervisor's end-of-year evaluation report that comments on the teacher's accomplishments and perhaps lays the groundwork for next year's focus.

This traditional process is not without merit. One-on-one goal discussions with a supervisor help teachers understand what school leaders believe to be important for professional growth. The traditional process also provides performance feedback and underscores that teachers are accountable for the work they do with students. In addition, the process acknowledges teachers' professionalism by giving them some latitude in choosing what they want to work on for the year and asking them to develop learning experiences related to that professional focus.

The Call for an Alternative Model

So why revisit supervisory practices? Why do we need a different paradigm for teacher evaluation? Here are some reasons to consider.

1. The focus in education has shifted from the centrality of teaching to the importance of student learning. Over the past 10 years, this idea has been embraced not only by educators, but also by parents, communities, and legislators. The now-widespread use of content standards as benchmarks for student learning is a prime indicator. National professional organizations, state departments of education, and many local school districts have identified and publicized what students should know and be able to do at each grade and within grade clusters for many of the content areas.
2. We live in an age of ever-greater accountability. There is near-ubiquitous sentiment that educators need to demonstrate through performance that their efforts are resulting in student learning. Educators are expected to be able to prove that students are learning what they need to know at challenging levels of understanding and as a result of what and how teachers are teaching.
3. Education literature and professional development initiatives are increasingly focused on data-based decision making. For the classroom teacher, data-based decision making means looking at student work carefully and analytically and using the findings to inform instructional planning. Yet, many teachers have not received the training they need to confidently examine student work from an analytical perspective.
4. Traditional models of supervision and evaluation focus on the process of teachers' work rather than its outcome. During traditional classroom observations, supervisors are the persons collecting data: they take notes, analyze those notes, give feedback and direction, and write up a report. Outside of any pre- and post-observation conferencing, teachers rarely participate in analyzing and drawing conclusions from these data or, more importantly, from student performance data.
5. The traditional emphasis on instructional processes delimits teachers' professional growth. Once classroom teachers become familiar with and even expert in effective teaching strategies, they usually maintain their proficiency but are less likely to continue refining their practices and striving for further improvement. It's certainly true that many master teachers use their considerable instructional skills to great effect in their classrooms, and perhaps even mentor colleagues new to the profession, but their own professional growth curve often flattens. Then there are the cases of teachers whose knowledge of classroom pedagogy has surpassed that of their supervisors' and who must determine future professional challenges on their own.
6. Traditional teacher supervision and evaluation may not explicitly link instruction and student learning or provide for differentiated instructional contexts. As in our opening scenario, teachers' intentions are typically laudable when it comes to selecting a worthy focus for professional growth. However, to make a real difference in student learning, supervisors and teachers must follow a more strategic and contextualized process. Even when a teacher's plan involves collecting verbal student feedback, the relative lack of performance data makes it difficult to gauge how much of an impact those efforts really have on student learning. In addition, a more traditional protocol for supervision and evaluation is basically a "one size fits all" approach; the supervisor's similar pattern of involvement and interaction with all members of the teaching staff—meet, observe, comment, evaluate—limits the opportunities to help each teacher achieve maximum growth.
7. Traditional methods of teacher evaluation rarely help teachers make a direct link between their professional growth and what the standardized test results and school improvement plan indicate are the real student learning needs. A teacher's draft goal may be appropriate for her curriculum area, but is it appropriate for her particular group of students and their learning needs? Will it benefit them when they encounter standards-based assessments? Will it help the school achieve its overall improvement goals? Linking the work of many faculty members through the focused goals of the school improvement plan helps create a sense of professional community in which members from diverse curriculum areas can contribute to the growth of all students. When all teachers are working on meaningful and connected goals—goals that are measurable and directly linked to the overall mission of the school—then real progress will be possible for all students, not just those fortunate enough to be in a specific teacher's classroom.

An Overview of Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation

The process of supervision for learning described in this book offers both teachers and their supervisors the opportunity to work together to improve student learning. It draws on assessment research (Darling-Hammond, 1996; Iwanicki, 1998; Peterson, 2000; Stiggins, 1989) and extends best practices in teacher supervision and evaluation in the following ways:

• It focuses more on instructional results than instructional processes.
• It emphasizes setting meaningful and achievable professional goals, measured in terms of improved student performance.
• It asks educators to individually and collectively analyze student work, and use these data to address learning needs in areas of essential knowledge and skill throughout the curriculum.
• It asks teachers to design focused interventions to strengthen and enhance student learning in the target area.
• It asks teachers to develop a plan for continuing professional growth that is related to the focus for improved student performance and that further establishes them as role models of lifelong learning.
• It requires teachers to use evidence of student performance to demonstrate that learning has taken place.
• It marshals the power of mutual collaboration and commitment by the teacher, the supervisor, and additional "expert resources."
• It links the work of classroom teachers with the goals of the school improvement plan.

KEYSTONE

Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation requires teachers to reconsider their approach to their work. It asks them to make different decisions and use different procedures; to focus narrowly and deeply on content related to essential learning; and to commit to improving their diagnostic and problem-solving skills along with their instructional skills.

An Introduction to the Criteria of Excellence

Fundamental to Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation are the "Criteria of Excellence." These Criteria, found in their entirety in Appendix A, identify key processes, competencies, and achievements that the teacher and supervisor will accomplish through their work together. They are organized into six phases, or distinct components, of a full cycle of teacher growth.

Teacher Preparation. This is the process by which the teacher begins to collect information about student learning needs and to develop an emerging idea for a clear, narrow, and standards-based area of essential learning as an appropriate focus for an improvement objective.

Initial Collaboration. The teacher and supervisor analyze student data more deeply and finalize the focus and details of the improvement objective and the professional development plan.

Initial Monitoring. The teacher begins to participate in professional development and to implement strategies that support student learning, making necessary adjustments as the process unfolds.

Mid-Cycle Review. At mid-year, or another appropriate midpoint, the teacher and supervisor review progress to date, examining artifacts related to teacher initiatives and, if possible, student work, and modifying the plan as needed.

Secondary Monitoring. The teacher continues to carry out the professional development plan and deepens learning related to student needs by using more refined assessment methods to inform instructional decisions.

Summative Review. At the end of each cycle, the teacher and supervisor review evidence linking teaching strategies to student learning outcomes, and develop written reflections that detail teacher growth and suggest ideas for further development in the next cycle.

At first glance, the Criteria of Excellence resemble a traditional cycle of teacher supervision and evaluation: a professional development objective is established and the teacher and supervisor meet at a midpoint and end point to review the teacher's progress. That said, they are distinguished by two important purposes:

1. The Criteria of Excellence establish a clear process for supervision and evaluation, offering a generally sequential roadmap for the teacher and supervisor to follow throughout their work together. Significantly, this process mirrors the full cycle of what may be termed "applied action research," with the overarching intent to bring about improved teaching practice as evidenced by improved student performance.
2. The Criteria of Excellence make explicit the knowledge and skills associated with teacher development to improve student learning, establishing a set of standards that can be used to assess and track a teacher's growing expertise. Each phase of the Criteria outlines several associated competencies or accomplishments (called indicators); supervisors and teachers may judge a teacher's competency with each indicator as "competent," "emerging," or "just beginning." Underlying this purpose of the Criteria is the assumption that an effective teacher is one who judiciously and systematically uses pupil performance data to inform modifications and improvements in practice.

The chapters that follow offer a more detailed portrait of how the Criteria of Excellence work in practice, with special emphasis on the Teacher Preparation, Initial Collaboration, and Summative Review Phases. The Initial Monitoring Phase, Mid-Cycle Review Phase, and Secondary Monitoring Phase, while less fully detailed in this text, contribute to the cycle of professional growth by providing an opportunity for the teacher to acquire and apply new learning, collect and analyze student performance data, and receive formative feedback from the supervisor and perhaps other resource personnel as well.

Because each teacher's professional maturity is unique, the Criteria necessarily offer some flexibility. They are a clear guide for the work of the teacher and supervisor, but they are not prescriptive. While working within any phase of the Criteria, the teacher and supervisor may decide that the teacher needs additional professional learning to achieve full competence for any specific indicator. However, it may not be necessary for the teacher to be fully competent with every indicator in sequence before she participates in other activities outlined in the Criteria of Excellence. For example, although a teacher may be working on the preliminary skills of identifying essential areas of learning and analyzing student performance data (associated with indicators in the Teacher Preparation Phase), she will still create a plan for professional development (associated with indicators in the Initial Collaboration Phase) and go on to review new learning and accomplishments with her supervisor at mid-cycle and end-of-cycle conferences (associated, respectively, with indicators in the Mid-Cycle and Summative Review Phases).

KEYSTONE

Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation gives teachers a higher degree of control over the evaluation process as they work on a self-selected improvement objective aimed at bringing their students to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword by Jay McTighe
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Reconceptualizing Supervision and Evaluation
• Chapter 2. Getting Ready to Target Improvement
• Chapter 3. Working Together to Initiate Teacher Development
• Chapter 4. Creating Individual Professional Development Plans
• Chapter 5. Differentiating Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation
• Chapter 6. Managing Performance-Based Supervision and Evaluation
• Chapter 7. Pursuing Teacher Learning to Inform Instructional Interventions
• Chapter 8. Evaluating Teacher Growth and Development
• Chapter 9. Developing Culture and Capacity in the Learning Community
• Chapter 10. Applying the Model to Administrators
• Epilogue
• Appendix A. The Criteria of Excellence
• Appendix B. Sample Artifacts
• Portraits of PBSE Success. Three Case Studies
• References and Resources
• About the Authors
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright