Having highly qualified and experienced educators in your school setting can contribute positively towards your students educational outcomes. Usually an educator’s job include a three part process: planning lessons, carrying them out, and following them through to ensure students are able to understand and retain the information conveyed. Each educator has a unique and different approach towards teaching – some find that a hands on approach more appealing, while others may prefer the more traditional route, or even a child-led learning setting.
While uniques styles are a huge factor in a student-educator relationship, this alone doesn’t ensure an optimal education experience. The school needs to oversee that important milestone and teaching fundamentals are met and followed. But how does one do this, and why do we do it?
Every school needs to set a parameter to determine how to evaluate an educator’s performance to make sure student’s educational needs are being met. This is why a performance assessment is absolutely necessary. A strong teacher evaluation system is central to improving teacher quality. It provides the means to recognise and reward great educators so others can learn and replicate their success. A performance assessment also helps to identify educators who need extra help so they can be effective and excel at what they do.
Evaluations are also extremely important to enhance educator’s pedagogical skills and ultimately improve student achievement. Factors such as education/experience, mastery of instructional techniques, collaboration with students and colleagues, and professional development are all considered in the modern understanding of teacher quality.
Educator evaluations also serve the purpose of accountability aside from strict educator quality. These reviews contribute to building trust among fellow colleagues and school administrators and prepare programs for quality enhancement and professional development. Through teacher evaluation and reviews, it sets a tangible goal to reach towards and clearly defined steps to take for performance enhancement.
It’s important to look at a wide range of factors while assessing an educator. Some of these may include:
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Formal education and experience
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Experience in handling the classroom
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The ability to foster positive and genuine interactions with students
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The ability to create a positive classroom experience
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Using a variety of tools to determine student proficiency
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Integration and usage of various teaching techniques to accommodate students unique learning styles.
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Accommodation of students with disabilities or learning/ behavioural challenges (if applicable)
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Ensuring cultural diversity in the classroom curriculum
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Overall communication and relationship with students and their parents, colleagues, and the school administrators or management.
While it isn’t easy to develop a system for educator appraisal, it’s important to note that a teacher’s performance isn’t just about looking at the nuances of what’s happening in the classroom. To make a teacher evaluation system as effective as possible, admins and management need to provide meaningful feedback and coaching.
Many industry experts believe that the traditional approach of teacher evaluation isn’t working - mostly because they’re overly complicated or too one-sided, not looking at the picture as a whole. Because these evaluations are crazy important in ensuring everyone performs their top best for a wholesome education, school admins and upper management need to be proactive about implementing new evaluation systems.
Traditional evaluations involve only classroom observation, and at most times, a one to one session with the educator. Integrating a self-reporting element could be highly useful, breaking away from norms. Having teachers evaluate themselves can help with self actualisation and empowerment. Also, remember that students also play a very critical role in an educator’s review. Tracking the students achievement metrics, such as standardised exam scores, can also be a point of reference.
Educator evaluations are a critical element in building a successful educational experience for students. It’s important to use research-based models and implement them consistently to positively impact teachers – and the students they teach.
