Which Includes The Work of The Teacher

There are several theses that can be used as reference by the writer. Certainly, they are related to the topic that will be analyzed.

There are four lenses for examining teacher quality

Teacher Qualification

Subject-matter knowledge : this specific teacher qualification with higher student achievement varies are associated by grade level. The stronger correlations that exist between the achievement of secondary school students and their teacher’s subject-era expertise than exist between the succes of younger students and their teacher’s subject knowledge.

Advanced degrees : the given the salary incentives offered to encourage teachers to pursue graduate degrees.

Test scores : the stronger impact of test scores in this study may reflect the variation in scores as well as the specific content tested. So, teachers with higher scores had students with higher scores too.

Undergraduate institution : many of researchers proposed that the selectivity of the undergraduate institution a teacher may be a useful indicator to measure teacher quality.

Certification : a signal of teacher quality on teacher certification has been invastigares in various levels, such as, full standard certification, emergency certification, advanced or National Board certification, and subject-area certification. Full certification is unrelated or positively related to student achievement. While, emergency certification is generally unrelated or negatively related to student achievement. Teachers’ subject-area certification or authorization is one of the teacher qualifications most consistently and strongly associated with improved student achievement (Betts et al., 2003; Cavalluzzo, 2004; Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000).

Induction and mentoring : Frome et al. (2005) suggest that the percentage of teachers participating in mentoring or induction programs is positively related to school-level achievement rather than teacher level.

Professional development : several studies indicate that certain types of professional development contribute to teacher quality and student achievement.

Experience : some researchers said that during the first couple of years in the classroom, experience is positively associated with student achievement. While other several studies said that they are not detect meaningful differences between more and less experienced teachers.

Content-based pedagogical knowledge : teachers’ pedagogical knowledge as the strongest teacher-level predictor of student achievement.

Teacher characteristics : attitudes and attributes that teachers bring with them when they enter the classroom, such as expectations for students, collegiality or a collaborative nature, race, and gender .

Teacher practices : Aligning instruction with assessment, communicating clear learning objectives and expectations for student performance, providing intellectual challenge, allowing students to explain what they are learning, using formative assessment to understand what and the degree to which students are actually learning, offering active learning experiences, subscribing to cohesive sets of best teaching practice.

Teacher effectiveness : a “value-added” assessment of the degree to which teachers who are already in the classroom contribute to their students’learning, as indicated by higher-than-predicted increases in student achievement score.

Defining Teacher Effectiveness

Teacher effectiveness, in the narrowest sense, refers to a teacher’s ability to improve student learning as measured by student gains on standardized achievement tests.

The following five-point definiton from Goe, Bell & Little (2008, p. 8) is intended to focus measurement efforts on multiple components of teacher effectiveness:

Effective teacher have high expectations for all students and help students learn, as measured by value-added or other test-based growth measures, or by alternative measures.

Effective teachers contribute to positive academic, attitudinal, and social outcomes for students such as regular attendance, on-time promotion to the next grade, on-time graduation, self-efficacy, and cooperative behavior.

Effective teachers use diverse resources to plan and structure engaging learning opportunities: monitor student progress formatively, adapting instruction as needed: and evaluate learning using multiple sources of evidences.

Effective teachers contribute to the development of classrooms and schools that value diversity and civi-mindedness.

Effective teachers collaborate with other teacher, administrators, parents, and education proffesionals to ensure student succes, particulary the succes of student with special needs and those at high risk of failure.

Methods of Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness

Value-Added Models

Value-added models provide a summary score of the contribution of various factors toward growth in student. This models is ralatively new for measuring teacher effectiveness. The teacher can use classroom observations to receive a high score and value-added models is assess how well teacher promote student achievement through standardized tests.

Value-added have several advantages. Such as directly examine how a teacher contributes to student learning and considered highly objectives by some do not involve raters making subjective judgement.

Classroom Observation

This methods are the most common form of teacher evaluation and vary widely in how they are conducted and what they evaluated. It says the most coomon form because observation can be created by the district or purchased as product, they can be conducted by a school asministrators or an outside evaluator, they can measure general teaching practices or subject-specific techniques. They can also formally scheduled or unannounced and can occur once or may be several times in a year. Observation also provide significant and useful information about teacher’s practice if it is used througfully, but districts must take great care to administer them in ways that minimize rater bias and other measurement concerns.

The evaluator can see the full dynamic of the classroom, so that observation are considered the most direct way to measure teaching practice.

Principal Evaluation

Some experts says that pricipal evaluation is also one of the most common forms of teacher evaluation because principal evaluation considered a special case of classroom observation, and some of its distinct issues are detailed. It says the most common because principals are most acknowledgeable about the context of their schools and also their student and teacher population.

They employ multiple purposes of evaluation techniques: to provide summative scores for accountability purposes, inform decisions about tenure or dismissal, identify teachers in need of remediation, or provide formative feedback to improve teachers’ practice.

The reaserchers’ results says that it is mixed. Showing on the one hand that principal evaluations may be as accurate as value-added models in identifying teachers’ ability to improve student achievement but on the other hand, that principal ratings may be biased by various factors and are more accurate in some contexts than others.

When choosing an instrument, they have to pay attention to its intended and validated use. So, administrators should be fully trained on the instrument, should be establish rater realibility and suld be occur periodic recalibration. To ensure the realibility, observations should be conducted several times per year and it is preferable to ensure that observations capture more complete picture or teacher practices trough a combination of announced and unannounced visits.

Analysis of Classroom Artifacts

Analysis of classroom artifacts concludes lesson plans, teacher assignments, assessments, scoring rubics, student work, and other artifacts to determine the quality of instruction in a classroom. Evaluators can glean a better understanding of teacher creates learning opportunities for students on a day-to-day basis through classroom artifacts.

However, the essential thing to the validity this method is accurate scoring. So, the scorers must be well trained and calibrated.

Portofolio

The definition of portofolio are the collection of materials compiled by teachers to exhibit evidence of their teaching practices, school activities, and students progress. Materials are collected and created by the teacher for the purpose of evaluation, so it makes portofolio are distinct from analyses of instructional artifacts. It is requires how teacher reflects on the materials and explain why artifacts were included and how they relate to particular standards. It may be contain exemplary work as well as evidence that the teacher is able t reflect on the lesson, identify problems in the lesson, make appropriate modifications, and use that information to plan their future lessons. Portofolio material includes teacher lesson plan, schedules, assessments, student work sample, assignment, videos of classroom instruction and interaction, notes from parents, reflective writings, and special awards or recognitions.

Self-Report of Practice

The self-report of practice intended the report on what the teachers are doing in the classroom and may take the form of surveys, instructional logs, or interviews. The main focused of self-report are measures on broad and overarching aspects of teaching that are though tobe important in all contexts, or they may focus on specific subject matter, content areas, grade levels, or techniques. It may consist of straighforward checklists of easily observable behaviors and practices, rating scales that assess the extent to which certain practices are used or are aligned with certain standards, or indicate the precise frequency of use of practices or standards.

Student Evaluation

Student evaluation commonly come with a form of a questionnaire that asks students to rate teachers on a Likert-type scale. Students’ lack knowledge about the full context of teaching are sometimes makes it not a valid source of information.

The advantages of this methods are cost-efficient, time-efficient, can be collected unobtrusively, and can be used to track changes over time (Worrell & Kuterbach, 2001).

The Concept of Professionalism

The author says that the concept of professionalism is used in different senses and somewhat difficult to define. Hoyle (2001) states that professionalism is related to the improvement in the quality of service rather than the enhancement of status.

Autonomy is one of the main focuses featured in professionalism characteristics. Autonomy is a component of teacher professionalism and it provides both an individual decision making area to achieve one’s aims and an effect on controlling the situations related to his/her work. Autonomy not only functions as a buffer against the pressures on teachers but also means of strengthening them in terms of personal and professional sense (Friedman, 1999).

Different Perspectives on Teacher Professionalism

“Being good at his/her job”, “filfulling the highest standards”, “achieving excellence” are the teachers’ professionalism qualifications based on the educational context.

There are two versions of teacher professionalism in scholarly debates. There are “old professionalism” and “new professionalism” which is emerged upon the changing social, political and cultural circumstances.old professionalism consist of exclusive membership, conservative practices, self-interest, external regulation, slow to change and, reactive. Meanwhile, the characteristics of new (transformative) professionalism are; inclusive membership, public ethical code of practice, collaborative and collegial, activist orientation, flexible and progressive, responsive to change, self-regulating, policy-active, enquiry-oriented, knowledge building.

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