A New View of Growing Teacher Expertise

Recently, I finished Susan Brookhart's book How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data (ASCD, 2016).  We have so much student data coming at us as educators - it is important to remember that not all data can be treated the same, and it is not all meant for the same people to use.  

Brookhart creates four quadrants by placing assessments on a spectrum of "formative vs. summative" and "large scale vs. classroom-focused" (yellow boxes below). But all this data is meant for different people, so I have added the red boxes to represent who are the prime users of each type of assessment data (see also Stiggins & Chappuis for more on this).

But as I was reading, I couldn't help but think about how we use data from teacher evaluations. (Or rather, how we do not use data from evaluations.) What different kinds of data do we collect?  Who are the prime users of this data?  Our quadrants might look like the chart below at first.  Note that the users of the data do not change, but the yellow boxes are empty.  In essence, we are asking, "What kind of data would be most valuable to each user?"  This also leads to dangerous discussions such as "What kinds of data promote expertise?"

I'm guessing that the majority of the evidence that you collect (if you are an evalutor) or that is collected about your practice (if you are a teacher) is on the "summative" end of the spectrum.  And since many states are systematizing the collection of teacher practice and SLO data, you could make an argument that most evaluation data is in the upper-right quadrant.  Look whom that data is meant for - district leaders, boards, and state officials.  Perhaps if you have an evaluator who makes more time for it, or if you have an observation cycle where not every year is a summative year, you might get to the lower-right quadrant.  But the left side is largely empty.  What to do?  Especially if these are the areas that benefit practice and innovation.

Here is one possible view of a "balanced" system to growing teacher expertise.  I have adapted it from Brookhart's quadrants.  

In the upper-left quadrant, we have schools studying themselves using school-chosen, educator-gathered, non-judgmental, iterative data.  The principal works with teachers to answer the question "What practices do we want to see and study?"  And then someone gathers that data and reports back to the staff on a regular basis to see if it is happening and with what level of quality. What to measure?  Consider what the instructional vision for your school is.  Or consider some top-tier Hattie strategies.  

In the lower-left quadrant, we have teachers studying themselves.  This is where instructional coaching and reflection come into play.  I often wonder: some doctors are "hospitalists" who specialize at overseeing the care of a vast array of inpatients.  Principals should develop the capacity to be seen as "instructionalists".  Leaders who are experts at strategies, coaching, and spurring reflection.  Teacher reflection is perhaps the strongest of the motivators towards innovation and expertise. 

I had these thoughts while reading Brookhart's book, but the next book I am starting is Frontier & Mielke's book about redefining the process of teacher evaluation and growth.  I think there will be many more connections in it to the quadrants above.