When classroom observations are grounded in curiosity, they're more likely to give teachers the feedback they need--and want, write Sean Conner and Jennifer Froehle. Thoughtful questioning (over telling and directing) prompts teachers to construct their own understanding of strengths, needs, and next steps.

This study sought to explore the sources of foreign language teaching anxiety experienced by non-native preservice English as foreign language (EFL) teachers. Fourteen preservice Saudi EFL teachers enrolled in a public university participated in this study during their teaching practicum. The study used a qualitative research design with an…

Decisions about hiring are never easy, especially in education. Sharpwood Elementary School has an open teaching position and the principal is charged with hiring the best candidate. The principal knows that a diverse teaching staff benefits all stakeholders in a school, especially students, and he wants to honor that expectation. The staff really…

Understanding Consequential Assessment Systems for Teachers (UCAST) studied a large urban school district in the United States as it adopted a new teacher evaluation system. This project studied 1,000 principals as they were trained to use this new system, and followed them into their first three years of implementation. This article features a…

Due to the shortage of World Language and English as a Second Language teachers, recruiting, retaining, and supporting aspiring second language teachers in the completion of their teacher licensure program is crucial. One barrier to the profession for these teachers is edTPA. Research has suggested that non-native English speakers (NNES) who…

Using the Danielson Framework for Teaching, we compare educators' perceptions of the effectiveness of traditional and co-teaching student teaching models. This study frames student teaching as a community of practice with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development as a key feature of the experience. This study uses a mixed methods sequential design.…

Background/Context: Despite noted difficulties with defining and assessing teacher dispositions, U.S. state education departments and national accreditation agencies have included dispositions in mandates and standards both for determining teacher quality and for assessing the quality of the teacher preparation programs that certify them. Thus,…

The purpose of the study is to close the gap in the literature regarding the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model (MTEM) that lacks large scale empirical investigations to assess the predictability of the model. The study thoroughly reviews the extant literature from all teacher evaluation frameworks, particularly focusing on the large body of…

Teacher evaluation systems often include classroom observations in which raters use rating scales to evaluate teachers' effectiveness. Recently, researchers have promoted the use of multifaceted approaches to investigating reliability using Generalizability theory, instead of rater reliability statistics. Generalizability theory allows analysts to…

Collaborative school reforms and teacher evaluation reforms both show promise for improving teaching and learning in American schools. However, these reform movements have largely been implemented separately from each other, and because they are predicated on very different assumptions about how schools and teachers contribute to student learning,…

This study investigates how uncertainty works in science policy debates by considering an unusual case: one in which uncertainty-based arguments for delay come from the scientific community, rather than industry actors. The case I present is the central use of value-added modeling (VAM) in the evaluation of individual teachers, a controversial…

Using a newly created teacher evaluation instrument, Inter-rater Reliability (IRR) analyses were conducted on four teacher videos as a means to establish instrument reliability. Raters included 42 principals and assistant principals in a southern US school district. The videos used spanned the teacher quality spectrum and the IRR findings across…

Teachers, as frontline providers of education, are increasingly targets of accountability reforms. Such reforms often narrowly define 'teacher quality' around performative terms. Past research suggests holding teachers to account for student performance measures (i.e. test scores) damages their job satisfaction, including increasing stress and…

Research provides an undeniable connection between teacher quality and student outcomes. This quantitative study investigated reasons that principals recommend non-renewal of a teacher's contract and the barriers that challenge their ability to address ineffective teachers. Data were gathered using a survey that was completed by over 3,200…

Evaluating the teaching performance of lecturers in higher education is important for both the Universities and the faculty themselves. Having information about teaching performance is essential to bring about change in student learning and assessment, to incentivize lecturers, to appraise lecturers and to make important administrative decisions.…