We present an outline for a year-long training session for potential departmental leaders. This outline is based on training led by the author over one academic year. The training consists of nine sessions with an emphasis on active learning among the participants.

Several state policies link high-stakes consequences to teacher evaluations, which tend to be heavily weighted by observation scores. However, research has only recently investigated the validity of these scores in field settings. This study examines the sensitivity of teacher observation scores to the number of observations assigned by state…

Until recently, legal challenges to the use of value-added models (VAMs) in evaluation and teacher employment decisions in federal court had been unsuccessful. However, in May 2017 a federal court in Texas ruled that plaintiff-teachers established a viable federal constitutional claim to challenge the use of VAMs as a means for their termination…

Beginning in 2009, the United States (US) federal government spearheaded a nationwide teacher evaluation reform effort, encouraging states to change their process of evaluating teachers. School principals, the primary evaluators of teacher performance, act as middle leaders in the sense they must attempt to balance messages from federal, state,…

The purpose of this commentary is to push the boundaries (real and perceived) of how we think about teacher accountability, education and the purpose of schooling in contemporary times. It takes as a starting point a view that recent changes to the Every Student Succeeds Act does little to shift the underpinning logics of high-stakes teacher…

The 50-State Comparison on teacher employment contract policies provides a national comparison of teacher employment contract policies in all states. All of the information was gathered from and focused on state statutes and regulations. State case law was also utilized for metrics related to collective bargaining. Data collection focused…

The purpose of this study was to discover and uncover elementary teacher descriptions of their experiences with receiving and acting on principal feedback through the Instructional Coaching and Feedback Cycle (ICFC). The ICFC is a feedback cycle that consists of short principal observations of teacher instruction followed by immediate feedback to…

Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), as a measure of students' academic growth, have been broadly used in the evaluation of teacher effectiveness. In this research I employed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design and incorporated four studies to investigate using SLOs in teacher evaluation in South Carolina (SC). For Study 1 and Study 2, I…

In this paper, we put forward the OTTO Model as a means for developing data literacy in pre-service teacher education. The OTTO Model was developed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data drawn from a three-year study investigating the nature and development of pre-service teachers' data literacy. The aim of the study was to…

Teaching practice periods are intended to prepare pre-service teachers for their professional lives as teachers. With this in mind, we have developed a tool for gathering feedback from learners taught by teachers-in-training to provide these pre-service teachers with feedback that contributes to their professional development. This study presents…

This paper discusses how pedagogical theory can be used in conceptualizing a collaborative teaching development program in higher education. A theoretically driven teaching development program can be of benefit to both the reviewer and the reviewee by providing (a) a foundation for the reviewee to examine their educational content being reviewed;…

This qualitative study investigated the effect of Saudi EFL post-observation conferences on female teachers' professional development through assessing teachers' reflection. It also examined to what extent these conferences are considered reflection-enhancing. Moreover, it contributed towards filling the gap in the literature regarding this area…

Ten years ago, many policy makers viewed the reform of teacher evaluation as a highly promising mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Recently, that enthusiasm has dimmed as the available evidence suggests the subsequent reforms had a mixed record of implementation and efficacy. Even in districts where there was…

The goal of clinical practice is to enrich teacher candidate learning through enhanced field experiences. Evaluation is a key element of coteaching during which coteachers review their teaching and its impact on pupil learning. However, coteachers are challenged in enacting coevaluation, that is, a critique of the teacher candidate's and clinical…

In 2012, New Jersey implemented a broad change to the teacher evaluation system with the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act which identified the Marzano Causal Teacher evaluation system as one of the prescribe models for districts to adopt. This system provides a more differentiated teacher…