In education, we are sometimes told that teaching is an “art”, that there is a unique touch each educator develops with time and experience. This is true – time and experience can help us develop skills unconsciously and instinctively, and often helps us find answers we didn’t even know we were looking for.
Equally important is the “science” of teaching: consciously developing and applying a systematic, data-driven approach to improving instruction and learning outcomes. As an educational consulting company focused on professional development, self-assessment, and individual improvement plans for teachers, we believe the ideal operating situation for educators is in a culture where the entire school and its individual educators embrace continuous improvement. Through careful assessment, planning adjustments, and coordination of professional development programs within and across departments, while fostering a shared philosophy of self-assessment, and establishing measurable improvement plans and accountability, schools can create a healthy environment where students and teachers alike are unified as a team to create, and benefit from, a vision for continual growth and improvement.
Building a Whole School Culture of Continual Growth
Developing a whole school culture of self-examination and improvement begins with understanding the principles of the science of learning. Effective learning starts with exposure to new information, but it then requires engagement, feedback, and the reiteration, usage, and reinforcement of knowledge over time. When school administrations fully embrace these principles, they allow the creation of an environment where reflection, assessment, and data-informed judgements help point the way – and where the teachers work on it together more effectively.
Self-Assessment Tools and Reflection Logs
To help foster self-assessment, we work with teachers to implement reflective practices, such as weekly reflection logs. Teachers can record strategies that worked well, challenges they experienced, and identify areas for improvement. These logs can then be reviewed with our staff, department heads or peer mentors, providing a structured way for teachers to continually refine their approach.
For instance, we might help your school develop a process by which science department teachers could use self-assessment tools to track the implementation of inquiry-based learning activities – lab experiments, or observational data gathering, for example. We can help develop standards by which the students’ experiences of the lesson could be measured, either quantitatively or qualitatively, depending on the data available. Teachers can evaluate student engagement, content mastery, and retention, and document these data and reflections. This can give the entire department a basis for reviewing and learning from each other’s experience during departmental meetings, and teachers can gain insights from one another’s experiences. Then, no one feels like they are working by themselves anymore – they’re part of a team all working towards the same overall goal.
Coordinating Professional Development for Whole School Shifts
To create a culture of continuous improvement, we can coordinate professional development in a way that aligns all teachers and departments around a shared philosophy. This philosophy can be rooted in oals or statements of purpose adopted by the school as a whole, or it can be created by the administration and teachers. When administration and teachers engage in aligned professional development across departments, they not only improve individual practices but also contribute to a unified approach to teaching and learning within the school.
Workshops and Departmental Collaboration
The Oaks Center has worked with schools to help create and execute yearlong professional development programs, centered on formative assessment techniques. In these types of workshops, all the teachers in the school, from all subjects, learn to identify methodologies to conduct and prioritize frequent, low-stakes assessments to gauge student understanding. Some of these are usually techniques some teachers are already using, some teachers may be conducting these assessments without organizing and analyzing the results. For some other teachers, the concept might be something they haven’t run into before, or haven’t used very much. To pull everyone together to a more equal understanding of these strategies, departments can conduct collaborative meetings where teachers discuss how these strategies work, share techniques, and learn how others apply these strategies within their subject areas.
For some teachers, this might take the form of walkaround comprehension checks during readings, other teachers might be more comfortable using exit tickets to assess understanding. There is nearly endless variation on how Departments then get together periodically to share information, techniques, successess and challenges, and help each other with issues that present themselves. Coordinating efforts between teachers and departments has the effect of standardizing consistent, research- and data-centered assessments, regardless of subject or teacher, and helps build a more cohesive instructional strategy, school-wide.
School-wide Coordination and Collaboration
For a school to succeed in the shift to a continuous assessment/improvement model, teachers, departments, and administration need to find ways to work together – and then to work together better. Teacher collaborations across disciplines improves instructional consistency, helps to ensure equitable learning experiences for students, and pulls everyone in the school together in committing to the same high standards.
Cross-Departmental Learning Communities
One way the Oaks Center helps schools enhance whole-school coordination is to help and support schools as they set upcross-departmental groups, something like focus groups, composed of teachers from different subjects, grade levels, and areas of expertise. Sometimes these are known as professional learning communities (PLCs). Each PLC can choose to focus on a particular common goal, like assessing student engagement to learn what might help enhance it, or evaluating demonstrated critical thinking skills. Others might work on teacher self-assessment, or low stakes real time assessments of student understanding, how to conduct them, and how to improve them.
As an example, let’s think about a cross-departmental group – a PLC – working on critical thinking. Science, English, and social studies teachers might come together to develop strategies that promote analytical skills in different contexts – even work out synergystic concepts that can help teach more than one discipline at a time. Science teachers could design labs that require students to make evidence-based arguments, while social studies teachers might guide students in examining historical events from multiple perspectives, while working on how to identify misinformation and credible sources. The work students undertake in their science class – where answers are often more clearly right or wrong and sources are typically more straightforward – can help them identify valid sources for historical information in social studies. In both classes, they can strengthen their ability to construct sound arguments and apply the knowledge they’ve gained. This kind of coordination is not easily possible absent the conscious effort to find and seize opportunities to make it so. Cross-disciplinary PLCs can make more progress when they meet regularly which can ultimately align efforts across the entire school’s curriculum to support the development of critical thinking skills in all students.
Measurable Progress and Goals
Establishing measurable goals that allow teachers to see the impact of their efforts, and their progress, is critical. Using all possible data, qualitative and quantitative, schools track progress, celebrate success, and make informed adjustments to strategies, techniques and reporting. Concrete evidence of progress shows the way to making more progress, and provides data-driven feedback which is actionable, when done correctly.
Actionable Data and Student Feedback
The Oaks Center provides techniques, tools, and consulting to help schools develop database driven dashboards that combine metrics for the best transparency and to visualize progress or regress. Each teacher might be provided a dashboard that includes standardized test scores, attendance rates, and student engagement data. By comparing data over time, the dashboard can help identify trends, such as improvements in test scores for teachers who use formative assessment techniques more often, or in instances of increased student engagement when active learning techniques are used. These visualizations and confirmations help define the course forward.
Student feedback surveys, and other forms of collecting student feedback, can provide valuable qualitative data to individual teachers, departments, and PLCs. A teacher might gather feedback on how comfortable students feel asking questions during class. By juxaposing qualitative feedback data with quantitative performance data, we can show teachers a clearer picture of strengths and gaps, and help them develop strategies for improvement and growth. The data and analyses can be reviewed periodically and collaboratively in meetings where teachers collaborate on interpretations, goal setting, and strategy, for themselves and their students.
Creating the Roadmap for Growth
Every teacher is unique – their strengths, their experiences, and their areas for improvement are individual, even when they have characteristics in common with others. That means the strategy to help each teacher must also be as individualized exactly to their needs as possible. Individualized Improvement Plans (IIPs) outline goals, define success, and describe action steps towards goals. They can also define accountability to a timeline or a rate of progress, and they are designed specifically for each teacher. An IIP is intended to be a living document that remains relevant through constant revision, that evolves as the teacher evolves, and is changed and updated according to shifting needs and priorities.
Goal-Setting and Resources
Let’s think specifically about a teacher focused on improving their classroom observation skills and management techniques. Their IIP might outline a goal to reduce classroom disruptions (however that is defined) by 30% over the course of a semester. Attending a workshop on positive reinforcement strategies might be one action step, observing a colleague with strong management skills as they teach their class, and debriefing afterwards for questions and assistance might be another, and implementing regular check-ins with a mentor or coach might be a third.
The IIP gives the teacher a clearly defined, multifaceted path forward, allowing them to make more precisely targeted improvements and better understand the measured results. This concept can be extended by aligning IIPs across departments, to make sure plans take into account not only the individual, but the department and school as well, which helps create an environment where teachers get in the habit of the good practice of supporting each other’s growth through shared knowledge, and being open to collaborative problem-solving.
A Comprehensive, Whole School Approach
The key to creating a new and improved “whole school” culture of continuous improvement is an overarching and consistent strategy, combining all the types of tools in our toolbox: professional development, self-assessment, goal-setting, and data tracking. Continuous improvement is a practice that must be painstakingly woven into every aspect of school life, and by doing so, schools become an environment where teachers are active creators and operators in a dynamic, data-informed community, not just “teachers doing PD”.
Progress Summits
Progress summits bring the whole school together – teachers, department heads, and administrators. At these summits, progress toward schoolwide goals can be evaluated, insights from IIPs and be shared and reflected on, and milestones can be acknowledged and celebrated. Teachers can present case studies showing new techniques that were effective in boosting student engagement, and departments can work on improving cross-disciplinary coordination.
This is the time, four times a year, when departments set specific goals for the coming quarter based on the data that has been collected and reviewed over time. If a goal is to increase student engagement, for example, departments might agree to implement and evaluate a new active learning strategy at intervals. The quarterly summit provides a structured opportunity for the school to reflect, as a whole, on progress, strategies, and renew and reinforce their commitment to continuous growth and improvement.
Coordinated professional development, proactive self-assessment, individualized improvement plans, and accurate analysis of data to measure progress helps schools achieve a genuine, lasting philosophical and cultural shift towards active, energetic teaching and continuous improvement.
In this model, teachers no longer feel isolated in their growth efforts. They are together with their whole school, reaching for shared goals, helping each other, and through all these efforts, improveing their students’ results and growth. Through a comprehensive, schoolwide commitment to improvement, schools create an environment where every educator is empowered to reflect, grow, and make a lasting impact on their students. Implementing a holistic whole-school approach can enhance teaching effectiveness and create a collaborative, inspiring, data-informed community.
The science of teaching and learning provides a powerful foundation for transforming schools in a positive way.
