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When schools support educators in developing a sense of efficacy, there’s often a chain reaction.

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Abstract

Is Self-Efficacy Enough?

Understanding Crisis Efficacy

An Antidote to Blah

From Languish to Flourish

What has the pandemic taught us about maintaining teacher efficacy in crisis mode?

Social-emotional learning

Credit: NEIL WEBB/IKON IMAGES

Abstract

Is Self-Efficacy Enough?

Understanding Crisis Efficacy

An Antidote to Blah

From Languish to Flourish

As the early days of uncertainty about the pandemic gave way last year to a prolonged period of stasis, many teachers found the joy they used to associate with teaching diminished. One of the authors of this piece (Alexandra), who was a high school English teacher and doctoral student in educational leadership at the time, found she didn't have the same motivation or focus she had only weeks before. She discovered it was increasingly difficult to maintain confidence and a sense of purpose in her work when she was wiping down desks with bleach, delivering lessons through a mask or a screen, and perpetually worried about health and safety.

As the pandemic dragged on, Alexandra and her colleagues mourned the loss of everyday life in school. Giving a student a high-five in the hallway. Connecting with colleagues over lunch. Handing a student a well-loved book from the classroom library. Adam Grant (2021) describes the feeling of quiet despair that Alexandra and many educators experienced as languishing -an emotion vacillating somewhere between well-being and depression-and posits that it was the dominant emotion of 2021. This is where many educators and school leaders have been mentally for over a year.

With the feeling of languishing hovering in the air for many teachers, we wondered how their self-efficacy was affected. Wood and Bandura (1989) define self-efficacy as "beliefs in one's capabilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action needed to meet given situational demands" (p. 408). Self-efficacy has been found to determine how long people will continue working on a given task, how resilient they will be when they face difficulties, and how much effort they will expend on an activity (Bandura, 2006). On the one hand, you would assume an educator or school leader who had always been self-efficacious in the past would participate more readily, work harder, and persevere longer while teaching through the pandemic. But did this assumption account for the real-life effects of languishing?

Is Self-Efficacy Enough?

While different prevention strategies were recommended to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, there were no recommendations for schools to mitigate the potential negative effects the pandemic had on teachers' self-efficacy. Mobilizing one's motivation and cognitive resources during any given day of teaching is hard enough, but it is almost insurmountable during a prolonged crisis.

Most teachers we know found that their pre-pandemic levels of self-efficacy were insufficient for navigating the drawn-out challenges of 2020 and 2021. While self-efficacy serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is more than just a predictor of behaviors. It includes broader effects, as Bandura (2006) argues:

Efficacy beliefs influence whether people think erratically or strategically, optimistically or pessimistically. They also influence the courses of action people choose to pursue, the challenges and goals they set for themselves and their commitment to them, how much effort they put forth in given endeavors, the outcomes they expect their efforts to produce, how long they persevere in the face of obstacles, their resilience to adversity, the quality of their emotional life and how much stress and depression they experience in coping with taxing environmental demands, and the life choices they make and the accomplishments they realize. (p. 309)

The pandemic clearly influenced teachers' instructional practices, capacity to set goals, and stress levels, resulting in challenges both personally and professionally. This extended period of adversity required a particular type of self-efficacy- crisis efficacy -or the belief in one's ability to succeed, not just during everyday life but also during a crisis. One of the lessons the pandemic has taught us is that we should anticipate that uncertainty and challenge are part of the new normal in our classrooms and in life.

Of course, teaching through crises is not new. While Alexandra and her colleagues needed to have high levels of crisis efficacy to teach through a pandemic, coauthor Katie experienced the same need 20 years ago in her first week as a 4th-grade teacher in New York City, which coincided with September 11, 2001. From the "duck and cover" drills of the 1950s to the active shooter drills of today, the need for crisis efficacy has been near constant in education. In their book School Crisis Prevention and Intervention, Brock and colleagues (2016) explain, "Because exposure to a crisis has the potential to negatively affect student behavior, social emotional adjustment, and education, crisis preparedness is essential" (p. 36). Yet we don't remember any teacher education courses that taught us how to be prepared for the physical, psychological, and emotional challenges of teaching through a crisis. Nor do we remember any support as practicing teachers for how to adapt, adjust, prioritize, and create solutions through instability. We were simply expected to learn in the moment.

The feeling of quiet despair that many educators experienced was *languishing*-an emotion vacillating somewhere between well-being and depression.

Understanding Crisis Efficacy

Initially in her doctoral research, Alexandra aimed to study the effect of teacher emotional intelligence on student engagement. However, her dissertation chair recommended a new and urgent topic of study: How were teachers responding to the COVID-19 crisis? And how was it affecting their self-efficacy?

As part of the study, Alexandra began to ask questions to understand what inner resources teachers were drawing upon to be self-efficacious during the pandemic. The participants of the study, who included 140 secondary teachers from three high schools in the northeastern United States, were asked to respond to survey questions that measured their perceived levels of trait emotional intelligence, which encompasses well-being, self-control, emotionality, and sociability. The survey also included questions that would assess the perceived resilience and self-efficacy of teachers. Alexandra was particularly interested in what mattered most for self-efficacy during the pandemic and what that might mean for future crises.

She was also interested in a broader sense of efficacy. Inspired by Bandura's (1986) self-efficacy theory and Petrides's (2009) trait emotional intelligence theory, Alexandra coined the term crisis efficacy, which can be understood more specifically as the combination of self-efficacy, resilience, well-being, emotionality, sociability, and self-control that one draws upon in response to a crisis. Yet, during a crisis, finding strength in all these areas can require superhuman capabilities. While teachers were praised as essential workers at the start of the pandemic, messaging across the country seemed to quickly shift to blaming teachers for being on an extended vacation or unwilling or incapable of returning to in-person teaching.

As the mental health and social-emotional needs of educator colleagues seemed to deteriorate over the course of the pandemic, we began to wonder about the ways in which teacher self-efficacy-and on a greater scale, crisis efficacy-were impacted by the pandemic and what helped teachers to navigate this prolonged crisis.

An Antidote to Blah

In focusing on what influenced perceived self-efficacy during the pandemic, Alexandra discovered that well-being had the highest effect, explaining 23.3 percent of the variance in self-efficacy levels of teachers during the pandemic. This is consistent with Bandura's claim (1977) that teachers with a greater sense of well-being were more likely to be self-efficacious, and that the emotional and psychological well-being of a person may influence how they feel about their personal abilities in particular situations.

Alexandra then further analyzed the data to look more broadly at what variables could affect crisis efficacy in educators. Significantly, Alexandra found that crisis efficacy was even more deeply rooted in well-being. In fact, well-being explained 68.9 percent of the variance in crisis efficacy levels among teachers-having the greatest impact on not only self-efficacy, but also educator resilience, emotionality, sociability, and self-control. In other words, the teachers who valued and nurtured their well-being before the pandemic may have been more confident, more resilient, better able to understand their emotions and the emotions of others, more likely to lead others and be sociable, and have better self-control during the pandemic.

While there is no consensus on a single definition of well-being, it can be understood most simply as the presence of positive emotions, such as the feeling of contentment, and generally judging life positively. As such, crisis efficacy may have supported teachers' ability to cope with the ambiguities surrounding teaching during the pandemic by helping them be more confident and optimistic about educating their students and finding the good in difficult days. We posit that teachers may have been able to better combat their state of languishing if they were habituated to prioritize well-being. To do so, teachers may have taken any number of actions during the pandemic, such as journaling, staying connected to friends and loved ones to maintain positive social relationships, and finding ways to rest and recover each day.

The teachers who prioritized wellbeing seemed to be better able to cope with the ambiguities surrounding teaching during the pandemic.

To prioritize educator well-being, particularly in advance of the next crises, we have three specific suggestions rooted in the data from Alexandra's study:

Emphasize balance in life. Particularly for those of us who have lost loved ones, the pandemic has magnified the fact that life is short and unpredictable. A teacher or school leader with a full life outside of the classroom has the potential to model a life well-lived for students. School leaders are uniquely positioned to notice and nurture well-being for the school community by modeling how they find balance in their own lives. They can start by sharing stories about how they are prioritizing time to play, laugh, rest, and recover. This will encourage work-life balance for everyone in the community and can reduce shame that teachers might self-inflict about leaving work behind at the end of the day.

Create meaningful gatherings. A year of faculty meetings over Zoom has taught us that how and why we gather has changed. For some, a year of virtual meetings made us miss the kinds of connections fostered by meeting in person. For others, virtual meetings magnified the ways in which we may have been gathering in the past without a clear purpose. Moving forward, we need to think strategically about how gatherings can be productive and purposeful rather than routine.

In The Art of Gathering, conflict negotiator Priya Parker (2018) argues that our gatherings have become lackluster and unproductive-the very definition of most faculty meetings. To prioritize well-being, gatherings should enrich and energize, rather than deplete or demotivate. To do so, the future of gatherings, be they faculty meetings or special school events, requires the creation of meaning-driven, memorable rituals that reflect the beliefs and values of the school. Consider whether meetings should begin with expressions of gratitude or opportunities for participants to share both successes and challenges. Encourage outdoor walking meetings for small teams to get outside and get moving. Ask for input from teachers and then make intentional changes.

Model vulnerability. For all its disadvantages, life on camera has had the benefit of reminding us of the imperfections and daily challenges of being human. Many of us had young children and pets appear at awkward moments. All of us had to be reminded, "You're on mute." During the pandemic, Katie lost her younger brother and found herself suddenly in tears on several occasions with colleagues, while teaching her graduate students, and during staff development presentations she led. Rather than deny her feelings, Katie leaned into vulnerability and found others to be generous in their response. Her openness also allowed others to share their own losses, challenges, and fears. Vulnerability is a part of teaching, learning, and living, whether we want it to be or not. Educators cannot be well if we expect positivity at all times, particularly during an extended crisis where the full range of human emotion is naturally on display.

From Languish to Flourish

As we continue to navigate through this current crisis, we hope that schools become places where self-sacrifice is no longer the measure of an effective educator. Rather, one clarion call from the hardship and loss of the pandemic is that if we want teachers and school leaders to be effective, they must be well. Thus, as we embark on forging a new path forward in education, it's time to recognize the promise of prioritizing well-being, which may be the greatest insurance for cultivating crisis efficacy. We cannot ask teachers to simply adapt to the next crisis and then expect them to stay in the classroom. Rather, teachers and school leaders deserve to work in schools that see them as whole people, whether they are seeking purpose during a pandemic or connection during some future crisis. They deserve to be given the most important tool in reaching crisis efficacy: well-being.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (2006). Guide to the construction of self-efficacy scales. In F. Pajares & T. Urdan (Eds.), Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents (pp. 307-337). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Brock, S., Nickerson, A., Reeves, M., Conolly, C., Jimerson, S., Pesce, R., et al. (2016). School crisis prevention and intervention: The PREPaRE model. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

Grant, A. (2021, April 19). There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing. The New York Times.

Parker, P. (2018). The art of gathering: How we meet and why it matters. New York: Riverhead Books.

Petrides, K. V. (2009). Psychometric properties of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue). In C. Stough, D. H. Saklofske, & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The Springer series on human exceptionality. Assessing emotional intelligence: Theory, research, and applications (p. 85-101). Berlin, Germany: Springer Science + Business Media.

Wood, R., & Bandura, A. (1989). Impact of conceptions of ability on self-regulatory mechanisms and complex decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 407-415.

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Efficacy in the Face of Adversity - ASCD

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As the early days of uncertainty about the pandemic gave way last year to a prolonged period of stasis, many teachers found the joy they used to associate with teaching diminished.

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Coaching with Compassion Can 'Light Up' Human Thoughts

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Vol. 79 No. 3 Abstract The Myths of Efficacy Myth #1: Teacher DEI training makes schools more equitable. Myth #2: Teachers must change their minds before changing their actions. Myth #3: Teachers grow the most when they arrive at the answers themselves. Myth #4: Teacher growth is a long and slow process.

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Coaching happens just about everywhere, and every day, with learning as the goal.

Effective coaching can lead to smoothly functioning organizations, better productivity and potentially more profit. In classrooms, better student performance can occur. Doctors or nurses can connect more with patients. So, doing coaching right would seem to be a natural goal, and it has been a major topic of research at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management since 1990.

For all the energy and money spent on coaching, there is little understanding about what kind of interactions can contribute to or detract from effectiveness. Ways of coaching can and do vary widely, due to a lack of understanding of the psycho-physiological mechanisms which react to positive or negative stimulus.

Internally funded research at Case Western Reserve has documented reactions in the human brain to compassionate and critical coaching methods. The results start to reveal the mechanisms by which learning can be enhanced through coaching with compassion (a method that emphasizes the coached individual's own goals).

"We're trying to activate the parts of the brain that would lead a person to consider possibilities," said Richard Boyatzis, distinguished university professor, and professor of organizational behavior, cognitive science and psychology. "We believe that would lead to more learning. By considering these possibilities we facilitate learning."

Boyatzis and Anthony Jack, assistant professor of cognitive science, philosophy and psychology, have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show neural reactions based on different coaching styles. Their research builds on previous knowledge of Intentional Change Theory, which holds that positive and negative emotional attractors create psycho-physiological states that drive a person to think about change.

Boyatzis, a faculty member at Weatherhead School of Management, and Jack, director of the university's Brain, Mind and Consciousness Lab, say coaches should seek to arouse a Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA), which causes positive emotion and arouses neuroendocrine systems that stimulate better cognitive functioning and increased perceptual accuracy and openness in the person being coached, taught or advised. Emphasizing weaknesses, flaws, or other shortcomings, or even trying to "fix" the problem for the coached person, has an opposite effect.

"You would activate the Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA), which causes people to defend themselves, and as a result they close down," Boyatzis says. "One of the major reasons people work is for the chance to learn and grow. So at every managerial relationship, and every boss-subordinate relationship, people are more willing to use their talents if they feel they have an opportunity to learn and grow."

What Boyatzis and Jack set out to do was to observe brain images which reflect coaching tone. Undergraduate volunteers met with two academic coaches, who intentionally used different interviewing methods. One encouraged envisaging a positive future, and the other set a more standard tone by focusing on a person's failings and what he or she ought to do.

About a week after each coaching session, Boyatzis and Jack brought the students to the brain scanner. The students were shown video clips, which were designed to approximate a video conference. The same coaches who met the students previously appeared on video and sought responses. The students in a scanner answered using a keypad. That design meant there was an ongoing interaction between the students and the academic coaches they had met briefly before.

Half the questions offered during the fMRI session had a similar emotional tone to those in the first coaching session, either positively focused on the future, or more negatively focused on the difficulties the student might be experiencing. The other half were neutral in tone -- issues about which the students most likely have ambivalent feelings. The neutral questions allowed Boyatzis and Jack to better see how the interpersonal relationship was affecting the neural response.

"We know that people respond much better to a coach they find inspiring and who shows compassion for them, rather than one who they perceive to be judging them. Sure enough, we found a trend in the same direction even for the neutral questions. Students tended to activate the areas associated with visioning more with the compassionate coach, even when the topics they were thinking about weren't so positive," Jack said.

"We were really struck by one particular finding in the visual cortex, where we saw a lot more activity in the more positive condition than in the more negative condition," Jack explained. The brain areas observed are associated with imagination and operate at the intersection of basic visual processing and emotion. Jack says the fMRI images show the neural signatures of visioning, a critical process for motivating learning and behavioral change.

"By spending 30 minutes talking about a person's desired, personal vision, we could light up (activate) the parts of the brain 5-7 days later that are associated with cognitive, perceptual and emotional openness and better functioning," Boyatzis said. "The major implication is that people typically coach others in higher education, medicine and management with a bias toward the NEA and correcting what the person is doing that is wrong. Our study suggests that this closes down future, sustainable change, as we expected."

Coaching with Compassion: An fMRI Study of Coaching to the Positive or Negative Emotional Attractor was presented at a recent Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Montreal and awarded as a Best Paper.

"Everyone's got to look at weaknesses and take them on," Jack says. "But often the focus is so much on the bottom line that we worry ourselves into the ground. It is more important to focus on what gets you going in the morning and gets you wanting to work hard and stay late."

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medical education and training; psychology research; healthy aging; educational psychology; intelligence; psychology; educational policy; poverty and learning; stem education

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Coaching with compassion can 'light up' human thoughts

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Researchers have used an fMRI to document reactions in the human brain to compassionate and critical coaching methods. Students tended to activate areas of the brain associated with openness to learning when working with coaches who inspired them. Students tended to shut down when coaches were perceived as judgmental.

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In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations - specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal, who in 1964 did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco.

The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, so Rosenthal took a normal IQ test and dressed it up as a different test.

"It was a standardized IQ test, Flanagan's Test of General Ability," he says. "But the cover we put on it, we had printed on every test booklet, said 'Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.' "

Rosenthal told the teachers that this very special test from Harvard had the very special ability to predict which kids were about to be very special - that is, which kids were about to experience a dramatic growth in their IQ.

After the kids took the test, he then chose from every class several children totally at random. There was nothing at all to distinguish these kids from the other kids, but he told their teachers that the test predicted the kids were on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom.

As he followed the children over the next two years, Rosenthal discovered that the teachers' expectations of these kids really did affect the students. "If teachers had been led to expect greater gains in IQ, then increasingly, those kids gained more IQ," he says.

But just how do expectations influence IQ?

As Rosenthal did more research, he found that expectations affect teachers' moment-to-moment interactions with the children they teach in a thousand almost invisible ways. Teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval: They consistently touch, nod and smile at those kids more.

Researcher Robert Pianta offered these suggestions for teachers who want to change their behavior toward problem students:

"It's not magic, it's not mental telepathy," Rosenthal says. "It's very likely these thousands of different ways of treating people in small ways every day."

So since expectations can change the performance of kids, how do we get teachers to have the right expectations? Is it possible to change bad expectations? That was the question that brought me to the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where I met Robert Pianta.

Pianta, dean of the Curry School, has studied teachers for years, and one of the first things he told me when we sat down together was that it is truly hard for teachers to control their expectations.

"It's really tough for anybody to police their own beliefs," he said. "But think about being in a classroom with 25 kids. The demands on their thinking are so great."

Still, people have tried. The traditional way, Pianta says, has been to sit teachers down and try to change their expectations through talking to them.

"For the most part, we've tried to convince them that the beliefs they have are wrong," he says. "And we've done most of that convincing using information."

But Pianta has a different idea of how to go about changing teachers' expectations. He says it's not effective to try to change their thoughts; the key is to train teachers in an entirely new set of behaviors.

For years, Pianta and his colleagues at the Curry School have been collecting videotapes of teachers teaching. By analyzing these videos in minute ways, they've developed a good idea of which teaching behaviors are most effective. They can also see, Pianta tells me, how teacher expectations affect both their behaviors and classroom dynamics.

Pianta gives one very specific example: the belief that boys are disruptive and need to be managed.

"Say I'm a teacher and I ask a question in class, and a boy jumps up, sort of vociferously ... 'I know the answer! I know the answer! I know the answer!' " Pianta says.

"If I believe boys are disruptive and my job is control the classroom, then I'm going to respond with, 'Johnny! You're out of line here! We need you to sit down right now.' "

This, Pianta says, will likely make the boy frustrated and emotionally disengaged. He will then be likely to escalate his behavior, which will simply confirm the teacher's beliefs about him, and the teacher and kid are stuck in an unproductive loop.

But if the teacher doesn't carry those beliefs into the classroom, then the teacher is unlikely to see that behavior as threatening.

Instead it's: " 'Johnny, tell me more about what you think is going on ... But also, I want you to sit down quietly now as you tell that to me,' " Pianta says.

"Those two responses," he says, "are dictated almost entirely by two different interpretations of the same behavior that are driven by two different sets of beliefs."

To see if teachers' beliefs would be changed by giving them a new set of teaching behaviors, Pianta and his colleagues recently did a study.

They took a group of teachers, assessed their beliefs about children, then gave a portion of them a standard pedagogy course, which included information about appropriate beliefs and expectations. Another portion got intense behavioral training, which taught them a whole new set of skills based on those appropriate beliefs and expectations.

For this training, the teachers videotaped their classes over a period of months and worked with personal coaches who watched those videos, then gave them recommendations about different behaviors to try.

After that intensive training, Pianta and his colleagues analyzed the beliefs of the teachers again. What he found was that the beliefs of the trained teachers had shifted way more than the beliefs of teachers given a standard informational course.

This is why Pianta thinks that to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors.

"It's far more powerful to work from the outside in than the inside out if you want to change expectations," he says.

In other words, if you want to change a mind, simply talking to it might not be enough.

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Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform

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Teachers' expectations about their students' abilities affect classroom interactions in myriad ways that can impact student performance. Students expected to succeed, for example, get more time to answer questions and more specific feedback. But training aimed at changing teaching behavior can also help change expectations.

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"Let them eat cake," said Marie Antoinette. Should teachers, parents, and managers say of the learners in their charge, "Let them struggle"?

Allowing learners to struggle will actually help them learn better, according to research on "productive failure" conducted by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore. Kapur's investigations find that while the model adopted by many teachers and employers when introducing others to new knowledge-providing lots of structure and guidance early on, until the students or workers show that they can do it on their own-makes intuitive sense, it's not the best way to promote learning. Rather, it's better to let neophytes wrestle with the material on their own for a while, refraining from giving them any assistance at the start.

In a recent study published in the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Kapur and a co-author, Katerine Bielaczyc, applied the principle of productive failure to mathematical problem solving in three schools in Singapore. With one group of students, the teacher provided intensive "scaffolding"-instructional support-and feedback. With the teacher's help, these pupils were able to find the answers to their set of problems.

Meanwhile, a second group was directed to solve the same problems by collaborating with one another, absent any prompts from their instructor. These students weren't able to complete the problems correctly. But in the course of trying to do so, they generated a lot of ideas about the nature of the problems and about what potential solutions would look like. And when the two groups were tested on what they'd learned, the second group "significantly outperformed" the first.

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Bigger Gains for Students Who Don't Get Help Solving Problems

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"Let them eat cake," said Marie Antoinette. Should teachers, parents, and managers say of the learners in their charge, "Let them struggle"? Allowing learners to struggle will actually help them learn better, according to research on "productive failure" conducted by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore.

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from research organizations

The human brain learns two ways -- either through avoidance learning, which trains the brain to avoid committing a mistake, or through reward-based learning, a reinforcing process that occurs when someone gets the right answer. Scientists have found that making a mistake can feel rewarding, though, if the brain is given the opportunity to learn from its mistakes and assess its options.

Many political leaders, scientists, educators and parents believe that failure is the best teacher.

Scientists have long understood that the brain has two ways of learning. One is avoidance learning, which is a punishing, negative experience that trains the brain to avoid repeating mistakes. The other is reward-based learning, a positive, reinforcing experience in which the brain feels rewarded for reaching the right answer.

A new MRI study by USC and a group of international researchers has found that having the opportunity to learn from failure can turn it into a positive experience -- if the brain has a chance to learn from its mistakes.

"We show that, in certain circumstances, when we get enough information to contextualize the choices, then our brain essentially reaches towards the reinforcement mechanism, instead of turning toward avoidance," said Giorgio Coricelli, a USC Dornsife associate professor of economics and psychology.

For the study, researchers engaged 28 subjects, each around 26 years old, in a series of questions that challenged them to maximize their gains by providing the right answers. If they chose a wrong answer, they lost money, while right answers helped them earn money.

One trial prompted their brains to respond to getting the wrong answer with avoidance learning. A second trial prompted a reward-based learning reaction, and a third but separate trial tested whether participants had learned from their mistakes, allowing them to review and understand what they got wrong.

In that third round, the participants responded positively, activating areas in their brains that some scientists call the "reward circuit" -- or the "ventral striatum." This experience mimicked the brain's reward-based learning response -- as opposed to an avoidance-learning response, an experience that involves different parts of the brain that together comprise the "anterior insula."

Coricelli said this process is similar to what the brain experiences when feeling regret: "With regret, for instance, if you have done something wrong, then you might change your behavior in the future," he said.

Coricelli conducted the study with scientists from the University College London, the French Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, and the French National Center for Scientific Research. The findings were published on Aug. 25 in the journal Nature Communications.

Journal Reference:

Stefano Palminteri, Mehdi Khamassi, Mateus Joffily, Giorgio Coricelli. Contextual modulation of value signals in reward and punishment learning. Nature Communications, 2015; 6: 8096 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9096

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Making a mistake can be rewarding, study finds: MRI study shows failure is a rewarding experience when the brain has a chance to learn from its mistakes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The human brain learns two ways - either through avoidance learning, which trains the brain to avoid committing a mistake, or through reward-based learning, a reinforcing process that occurs when someone gets the right answer. Scientists have found that making a mistake can feel rewarding, though, if the brain is given the opportunity to learn from its mistakes and assess its options.

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The world is full of people with opinions. Television, radio, and other media are brimming over with commentators making suggestions and offering seemingly authoritative advice to government officials and corporate executives about what they ought to do. At dinners and cocktail parties - and around the water cooler at work - we talk about what others should do or should have done, or the flaws of our bosses.

In our jobs, we may give our opinion on an issue from a functional or departmental point of view - in other words, a limited perspective. Or we may give an opinion without fully thinking about the issues and weighing the interests of various constituencies that our boss has to consider in order to make an important decision. We may do this because we don't have access to additional information or, alternatively, because we believe that broadening our perspective simply isn't part of our job description.

This kind of opinion giving may be quite appropriate and adequate in any number of situations, but it doesn't constitute leadership. Leadership requires much more. It starts with taking on a broader perspective in figuring out what you truly believe should be done - that is, as if you were an owner.

I Thought I Did a Good Job

Jim, a vice president of a consumer goods company, called me to discuss a problem he was facing. He was a former student of mine and was calling to seek advice. He had just had a jarring experience, and he was trying to make sense of what had gone wrong.

Jim had been working on the launch of an important new product for his company. He was a key member of a multifunctional launch team that was headed by the senior vice president in charge of one of the company's key divisions. The team was charged with conceiving of all aspects of the new product's design, packaging, marketing, and distribution strategy. This product was vital to Jim's company, because the market share of several of its core products was eroding, and senior executives urgently needed to find new avenues for growth. They thought that this new product would address an important consumer need and reestablish the company's position in the minds of its customers.

Each member of the project team was assigned one aspect of the new product and its launch. Jim's responsibility was to focus on the point-of-sale promotion for the product. He felt this wasn't the most critical assignment, but - given the importance of this project and the high quality of the other team members - it was still a good opportunity.

After several weeks of work, he came up with a detailed plan regarding display and placement for the product within each retail context: grocery stores, drugstores, and other consumer outlets. In addition, he developed alternative point-of-sale materials to be used in some of the regional product tests that were about to be conducted.

During this period, the project team met once a week, with each member of the team reporting on his or her area of responsibility. The senior vice president wanted every team member to be aware of the plans for all aspects of the launch. He hoped that team members would question each other and learn about each other's assignments, and thereby produce a more effective launch strategy.

Initially, Jim was very pleased with his work on this project. "I thought I did a very good job," he told me. To come up with the detailed plan, Jim had assembled a subgroup comprising several of his subordinates. He felt great about how things were going, which was why what happened next was so disconcerting.

At one of the late-stage project team meetings, Jim was asked to present his final recommendations. To his surprise, several members of the project team roundly criticized his proposal. They felt it was out of step with the nature of the product, price point, and likely consumer buying behavior. In particular, the members of the larger team felt his point-of-sale positioning was more consistent with an impulse purchase, whereas they believed strongly that this product should be positioned and priced as much more of a premeditated buy on the part of the consumer.

Jim was shaken. After the meeting, the team leader took him aside and asked him how much he really understood about the product being launched. "I've been in every meeting," Jim replied, "and I've listened carefully." If that was true, the team leader asked, how could he be so out of step with the team members regarding the product's positioning? Jim countered that he thought he had responded well to what he had heard in the meetings, and that he had also drawn effectively upon his past experience working on other successful launches.

The team leader proceeded to ask Jim a series of specific questions: "Who do you think should buy this product? How should it be priced? How should it be packaged?" Jim admitted that he hadn't really thought about these issues because they weren't explicitly part of his specific assignment on this project. Other team members, he argued, were supposed to be worrying about those questions.

The team leader was exasperated by Jim's comments. Before ending the meeting, he gave Jim some pointed advice. He urged him to think about how he would answer these questions if he were the team leader, rather than simply a member of the team with a narrow set of specific responsibilities.

Jim thought this was an odd recommendation. He called me to get my reaction to what had happened and to ask for suggestions regarding how he should respond to the project manager's challenge. My reaction was straightforward: "Jim, your team leader has given you some great advice. I agree with him. Pretend that you're responsible for this situation. Really try to think as if you were the boss, or even owned the company. Imagine that your life depended on getting every aspect of this launch right. How would you do it? You're a talented guy. Think like an owner and use your talents to answer his questions."

Jim acknowledged he hadn't thought about this approach, in part because his current and previous bosses had never encouraged him to think or act this way. "That's going to take a lot of thought and analysis on my part," he said, "and maybe even some serious soul-searching. Are you sure this is really my role? Do I really have to do all that?"

"Yes," I responded. "If you want to be a leader, you absolutely do."

He decided to take this challenge seriously. He interviewed other team members and applied his broad skills and talents to think through every aspect of the product positioning. He even conducted some of his own research at selected retail outlets, looking to see how competitive products were being positioned. After doing all this work, he began to realize that his initial recommendations were at best superficial, and at worst radically misaligned with what he now thought would work for this product launch.

He came to a disturbing insight: he had done a lousy job. He had not applied a leadership mind-set in his work on this project assignment. As a result, he had done inferior work and made himself look bad to others in the company. He decided to summon his courage and apologize to the team leader and the entire project team.

The project team members were gracious about his apology. They were impressed that he had had the guts to admit he was wrong, go back, and redo his work and rethink his recommendations. He proceeded to explain the new positioning recommendations, which his teammates quickly approved. He felt as if he had been welcomed back as a valued member of the team.

He realized that he had learned something valuable from this experience. This was reinforced when the senior vice president, who was widely recognized as a rising star in the company, told him, "From here on in, Jim, I hope you'll act like a leader in this company. You have great potential here, but only if you start thinking like an owner. Define your job broadly, rather than narrowly."

Jim promised himself that in the future, he wouldn't think like a narrow functionary, but instead approach his work as if he was an owner of the company. This new mind-set helped make his thinking much clearer and his work much more effective. He had a new prism for judging his thinking and his actions.

Developing Conviction

It sounds simple: "Think like an owner." In fact, it is hard to do. It requires you to put yourself in the shoes of the decision-maker. You may realize that you prefer not to be in those shoes. There's too much pressure; there are too many considerations; there are too many constituencies. With all the complexity, constant change, and myriad of issues in the modern world, it may be easier to rationalize more narrow thinking: Dammit, it's not my job!

Yes, it is your job, if you want to be a leader. If it frustrates you, or makes you agonize, or even creates a heightened level of stress for you, then you need to get used to experiencing those feelings. The more you practice this, the better you'll get at doing it. I would urge you to begin to believe and internalize the view that thinking like an owner is central to your effectiveness in your job. Thinking like an owner means getting to conviction. "Conviction" is meant to describe a threshold level beyond which you feel a high level of confidence about what you truly believe should be done.

Many leaders spend their lives striving to get to conviction about what they would do in a particular situation. The reality is that, much of the time, they may not have a strong point of view. They keep gathering information, agonizing, and assessing until they reach a threshold level of confidence.

On the other hand, some leaders need to be wary of getting to conviction too quickly, or having such a strong initial point of view that they fail to take into account key considerations that are crucial to making a good decision. Each of us has blind spots, may be prone to ideological points of view, or may be unaware of our own subtle biases. As a result, we each need to also take sufficient time to gather information, consider alternative arguments, agonize, and make sure we are arriving at a balanced judgment.

The point is that the process of searching for conviction can be very challenging. The contextual factors and considerations are changing all the time; competitors take significant actions; products get commoditized, and so on. In addition, different people looking at the same situation may come to different points of view about what should be done. To cope with all these factors, leaders need to perform analysis, seek advice and input from others, debate alternatives, and generally ruminate. Much of the time, this process may feel like a grind.

While you're going through this grind, you don't always need to know exactly what to do; you don't always need to have the answers. However, as a leader, you do need to be constantly striving to get to a level of conviction on key issues. How do you do this? You and your team need to focus your efforts on taking the necessary steps that will help get you to a sound judgment.

With practice, you will learn to understand yourself better and increasingly learn what conviction feels like. As you search for it, you will get better at gearing your efforts to work in a way that will help you get to that feeling. Leaders don't look for excuses for why they can't act like an owner. Instead, they embrace the challenge of ownership and encourage their teams to do the same.
This post is adapted from the book What You Really Need to Lead: The Power of Thinking and Acting Like an Owner.

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To Become a Leader, Think Beyond Your Role

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The world is full of people with opinions. Television, radio, and other media are brimming over with commentators making suggestions and offering seemingly authoritative advice to government officials and corporate executives about what they ought to do.

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10 Smart Questions that Challenge the Drift Toward Irrelevance

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Organizations, apart from intervention, always drift toward irrelevance. Leaders look like fools when they challenge comfortable patterns. Use courage and tact when challenging drift. Don't unnecessarily offend those you're working to influence. 10 smart questions that challenge the drift toward irrelevance: #1. What are we afraid to say out loud?

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When Coaching Teachers Has Curiosity as its Goal

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When Coaching Teachers Has Curiosity as its Goal

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"The key to this isn't just the sense of community that coaches have, it's the moment of intervention during practice," said Victoria Solway, director of teaching and learning at the school. That's what makes this type of coaching different from the standard lesson observation leaders used to do. In a typical observation, the teacher doesn't get any feedback until after the lesson is over, and then it usually feels evaluative. At the British International School of Shanghai, Hopkin and Solway are trying to create an experience among the staff that helps teachers notice their own teaching moves as they happen in the classroom.

"We're trying to get to a space where someone coming into your space isn't the expert," Hopkin said. "You as the teacher are still the expert with responsibility and control for your professional experience." They didn't want to follow a checklist of teaching practices or try to emulate the teaching approach of one star teacher. Instead, their goal was to help each teacher become a star in their own unique way.

"When we tried to boil down what we were looking for -- it was helping our colleagues rediscover their curiosity," Hopkin said. He wanted teachers asking themselves questions like: Why does my lesson go this way? Why don't I like this kind of student? Why did this go so well? "We wanted them to see the world with awe and wonder," he said.

Ironically, this focus on curiosity, learning mindsets, hands-on experiences, and reflection are exactly what teachers at this school offer to students. But they weren't as comfortable engaging in the same process around their own professional learning. Hopkin hopes the coaching model he's developing -- one based around partnership and shared responsibility between coach and teacher for the fate of the lesson -- will help teachers shift their mindsets about change.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE

Hopkin and Solway quickly found that they needed to be flexible with their colleagues, many of whom were uncomfortable with this new approach to teacher professional development. The two leaders wanted coaching sessions to be positive and supportive, personalized and teacher-centered, challenging and reflective, non-evaluative and retrievable. But they also knew many teachers had not experienced that type of coaching before and were wary of anything that seemed like an evaluation.

"What they're getting is something that's right for them not only in terms of what they should be working on, but also in how they like to learn and how they like to feel," Hopkin said. He wants the experience to support teachers as they become even more independent and autonomous in their practice. To do that, he needed them to feel completely safe, so he made it very clear to the staff that nothing from coaching sessions would ever come up in annual reviews.

"No one will take a risk if they feel like they will be kicked in the teeth for landing on their face when trying something new," Hopkin said.

All coaching sessions start with a pre-lesson meeting when the coach and teacher talk about goals for the lesson and try to anticipate questions or obstacles that might arise. Together they practice how the teacher might address those scenarios. The coach videotapes the lesson with a camera mounted on a Swivel to track the teacher as he or she moves about the classroom. Depending on the teacher's comfort with in-class coaching, the coach may also be in the room quietly offering observations or questions at the point of practice. For teachers who hate that idea, Hopkin and Solway offer asynchronous coaching based on the video footage. No matter which style of coaching happens, the coach and teacher meet again to reflect on what happened during the lesson.

When Solway coaches, she likes to flag moments in the video with voiceover, pointing out strong moments or areas where she noticed something. Sometimes she'll offer resources to the teacher to help further their thinking on the goal they've identified. Solway says it's important that if the lesson goes poorly the coach shares the blame, but if the lesson goes wonderfully, it's best to give the teacher all the credit.

The pre-lesson materials, video and reflection make the experience a retrievable one. Teachers can revisit the video or the notes on their own time. Hopkin admitted it took teachers time to get used to this coaching model and many were skeptical at first. Teachers were also at very different points in their professional learning. Some were already experimental, pushing beyond what felt comfortable regularly and wondering "what if" as a matter of practice. Others, needed more coaching on the nuts and bolts, with the coach continually referring back to a schoolwide "Teaching and Learning Principles" document.

In those cases, Hopkin said "it's an interplay between are we working on the basics or are we working on something more bespoke to you?" But because the coach is working to help teachers notice and correct course autonomously, he or she is often only asking questions and leaving space for the teacher to develop her own thought or next action.

"It's painfully slow because you're just going to ask questions that you want the teacher to ask themselves," Hopkin said. This type of professional learning is akin to what many schools want teachers to provide students. Leaders at British International School of Shanghai learned that using the same teaching pedagogy with professional learners can be an effective way to shift instruction.

After one year of coaching in this way, Hopkin surveyed staff to see if they could substantiate how the coaching had improved their teaching. Teachers reported a 30 percent increase in their confidence, and they felt they were saving 40 percent of their time because they had to do less re-teaching. School leaders also looked at an array of measures like student grades and test scores, student interaction rates, questioning skill surveys, student attention rates, collaborative learning conversations, etc. to try and determine if the quality of learning had increased. Using information from teachers, students, and leaders they compiled those results and determined that the quality of learning increased by 70 percent.
A WHOLE SCHOOL INNOVATION EFFECT
In the process of helping individual teachers embrace small innovations to their teaching, the school as a whole has become more able to embrace change. Before the coaching program began, the International School of Shanghai already had positive things happening, and Hopkin wanted to retain those experiences. But he also wanted to inspire innovation and he's aware that "efficiency suffocates new thinking. The better you are at something the less likely you are to be open to something different."

So he framed the coaching sessions as little experiments, each in service of the broader school strategy. A teacher would make a hypothesis, experiment with it in the classroom, reflect on the insights garnered and how it connected to the larger community goals. The results of those experiments then became data points for broader decisions school leaders were considering.

"We wanted to have a pioneering spirit from people who are well seated in the more traditional paradigm," Solway said. They tried to allow teachers to move up and back along the innovation spectrum, with each person offering important insights to the learning community. They did not only celebrate the pioneering teachers, but also the pioneering spirit of very traditional ones.

"TeachMeets" are one way school leaders celebrate individual learning as a community. Any person who wants to share what they are working on and how it's going can do so. The rest of the "audience" -- other colleagues -- move around to different speakers depending on what interests them. Multiple mini-presentations are going on at once, with the audience moving between them fluidly. This practice helped spread insights beyond grade-level or subject-specific teams. It creates a positive buzz in a staff meeting and individuals can follow up with questions afterwards.

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When Coaching Teachers Has Curiosity As Its Primary Goal - MindShift

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"The key to this isn't just the sense of community that coaches have, it's the moment of intervention during practice," said Victoria Solway, director of teaching and learning at the school. That's what makes this type of coaching different from the standard lesson observation leaders used to do.

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Education Week - Peter DeWitt's Finding Common Ground

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Today's guest post is written by frequent Finding Common Ground contributer Lisa Westman. Lisa is an instructional coach specializing in differentiation for Skokie School District 73.5 in suburban Chicago. She taught middle school gifted humanities, ELA, and SS for twelve years before becoming a coach.
A few years ago, I read The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz. I was fascinated by the effect choice has on the human psyche. My learning from this book has changed my approach to simple tasks like grocery shopping and more complex manners like child-rearing and teaching. Schwartz writes:

"When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates."

In other words, having choice is vital, but, too many options to choose from is destructive.

In the field of education, choice is a commodity frequently cited as one most valued by teachers. The 2014 study Teachers Know Best: Teachers' Views on Professional Development conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , found:
"those [teachers] who choose all or most of their professional learning opportunities are more than twice as satisfied with professional development as those with fewer options."
Additionally, there has been quite a bit written, both formally and informally, on educators' desire to discontinue "one-size-fits-all/sit and get" professional development as this method is met with resistance and is ineffective at producing change. Instead, self-directed professional development options are being promoted for teachers.

Choice in professional development allows educators to learn more about areas of interest and tap into perceived strengths. Both of these factors build teacher self-efficacy and in turn positively impact student growth. Fortunately, in today's educational landscape there is not a shortage of choice (for professional development and otherwise). Let's take a look at some numbers:

2174 - number of EdTech Products available for educators (most with PD/training options)

4,050,0000 - number of Google Search results for "Instructional Strategies"

Too many to count - number of EdCamps, Voxer Chats, Pinterest boards, books, blogs, podcasts, YouTube tutorials, etc.

The mere quantity of choices available to teachers could overwhelm even the most resolute of educators. Schwartz suggests that being faced with too many options causes many people to choose nothing which, ultimately, leads to disappointment:

" When asked about what they regret most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn't meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act."

Here we see a paradox. How can we accommodate teachers' desire for choice and minimize the insurmountable task of evaluating all the available options?

The answer to this question is yet another reason why instructional coaching programs are crucial components to successful professional learning and growth of students. (You can read about other reasons for instructional coaching programs .)

Instructional coaching's foremost thought leader, of the Kansas Coaching Project says,

" Effective coaching makes it easier for teachers to learn and implement new ideas. Indeed, without follow-up such as coaching, most professional learning will have little effect."

Knight's research is corroborated by the meta-analysis done by John Hattie author of Visible Learning For Teachers . Hattie found that when instructional coaching is conducted over-time in conjunction with data team analysis of how students learn to inform instruction student growth is impacted with an effect size of .51 (anything with an effect size above .4 is considered effective).

Instructional coaches form long-term, non-evaluative, mutually beneficial partnerships with teachers and administrators to support the implementation of research-based best practices through coaching cycles. Choice is an essential part of coaching cycles and is one of the seven instructional coaching partnership principles outlined by Knight.

When teachers (individually or in teams) partner with a coach, the coach supports the teacher to identify a goal. The teacher may have already come to the coach with an idea they want to explore. Or, sometimes the coach will engage in some preliminary learning on behalf of the coachee(s) to determine options. Instructional coaches are not experts on all things content and instruction, but, they do have significant training on how to determine if resources are aligned to research-based effective strategies and can decipher suitability of strategies. Either way, the coach and the teacher will discuss the possible courses of action and the coachee will choose how and what they will do to achieve their goal.

The learning phase continues with the coach modeling and/or co-teaching the chosen strategy followed by the teacher putting the strategy into action. The learning portion of the coaching cycle culminates when quantifiable improvement on the stated goal is noted. Typically, growth is confirmed by comparing evidence collected before the cycle, during the cycle, and at the end of the cycle. Sustainability of the goal can also be ascertained by continued check-ins and partnership on subsequent goals.

With the paradox of choice teachers face on a daily basis, instructional coaching as the primary vehicle for professional development makes perfect sense. Whether a teacher is well-versed in the available options and readily participating in self-directed professional development or conversely if a teacher does not know where to begin, an instructional coach will accommodate the needs of the teacher and ensure that teachers reach and sustain their goals.

In the words of my favorite coach, Mike Ditka, "I think it's a wise choice."

Questions about this post? Connect with Lisa on Twitter.

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Instructional Coaching: Finally, an Easy Choice

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Today's guest post is written by frequent Finding Common Ground contributer Lisa Westman. Lisa is an instructional coach specializing in differentiation for Skokie School District 73.5 in suburban Chicago. She taught middle school gifted humanities, ELA, and SS for twelve years before becoming a coach.

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Introduction

A central value of public education in the 21st century holds that all children can learn. Yet this perspective has not necessarily carried over to social attitudes about teachers. While the research and policy communities agree that teachers improve quickly early in their careers, there is debate about whether teachers continue to learn after they gain significant experience in the classroom. That is, do teachers, on average, continue to improve in their effectiveness as they gain experience in the teaching profession?

The answer to this question has significant policy implications. For example, is it an equity problem that low-income students and students of color are more likely to be taught by the least experienced teachers and to attend schools with high rates of teacher turnover? Should we invest in professional development and learning opportunities for more experienced teachers, or focus these resources on novice teachers only? Should experience be rewarded through salary schedules that tie pay to experience in an effort to retain veteran teachers? Should policy be focused on building teaching as a long-term profession, or on recruiting and training a short-term teaching workforce?

This brief documents a review of research finding that, indeed, teachers do continue to improve in their effectiveness as they gain experience in the teaching profession. We find that teaching experience is, on average, positively associated with student achievement gains throughout a teacher's career. Of course, variation in teacher effectiveness exists at every stage of the teaching career: not every inexperienced teacher is, on average, less effective, and not every experienced teacher is more effective.

Some previous studies concluded that teachers plateau in their effectiveness early in their careers. Our findings are different for two major reasons. First, advances in data systems that can track teachers over time and match individual teachers to their students' outcomes have allowed researchers to use a better research method, called "teacher fixed effects." This method allows researchers to compare a teacher to herself over time as she gains more experience. In contrast, older studies often used less precise methods, such as cross-sectional analyses that use a "snapshot" approach to compare distinct cohorts of teachers with different experience levels during a single school year (see Figure 1).

Second, some studies limit the ranges of experience that they analyze. For example, some studies examine the benefits of teaching experience for only the first few years of a teacher's career (e.g., years 0-5). Other studies group teachers into ranges of experience (e.g., years 0-4, 5-12, 13-20, 21-27). This can be problematic because it assumes that teacher productivity does not change within each of the ranges of experience.

The policy importance of this finding is heightened given the current context in which the teaching workforce has become less experienced. The most recent national data suggest that compared to prior decades, a greater proportion of the teaching workforce has less than five years of experience. In addition, this finding raises significant equity concerns because inexperienced teachers tend to be highly concentrated in underserved schools, where students need quality teachers most. For example, Black, Latino, American Indian, and Native-Alaskan students are three to four times more likely to attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers than White students. English language learners also attend such schools at higher rates than native English speakers. In addition, students in the highest poverty schools are 50% more likely to have a teacher with less than four years of experience when compared to students in the lowest poverty schools.

Our research does not indicate that the passage of time will make all teachers better or incompetent teachers effective. The benefits of teaching experience will be best realized when teachers are carefully selected and well prepared at their point of entry into the teaching workforce, as well as intensively mentored and rigorously evaluated prior to receiving tenure. This will ensure that those who enter the professional tier of teaching have met a competency standard from which they can continue to expand their expertise throughout their careers.

Findings

We examined 30 studies that analyzed the effect of teaching experience on student outcomes in K-12 public schools in the United States, as measured by student standardized test scores and non-test metrics when available. We reviewed studies that examined teaching experience published in peer-reviewed journals and by organizations with established peer-review processes since 2003, when the use of teacher fixed effects methods became more prevalent. The studies represent diverse populations from different parts of the country, including California, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, and North Carolina and include studies of both math and reading at the elementary-, middle-, and high-school levels. Our review led us to four findings.
1. Teaching experience is positively associated with student achievement gains throughout a teacher's career. The gains from experience are highest in teachers' initial years, but continue for teachers in the second and often third decades of their careers.
Studies generally have found that although teachers improve at greater rates during the first few years of their careers, teachers continue to improve, albeit at lesser rates, throughout their careers. In Table 1, we summarize the findings of the 30 studies we reviewed. Of these studies, 28 found that teaching experience is positively and significantly associated with teacher effectiveness. Nearly two-thirds of the studies analyze longitudinal datasets with teacher fixed effects, which is our preferred research method because it allows for the examination of whether a given teacher becomes more effective over time (see Figure 1). Among this body of research, all 18 studies found a positive and statistically significant relationship between teaching experience and student performance on standardized tests.
2. As teachers gain experience, their students are also more likely to do better on other measures of success beyond test scores, such as school attendance.
Researchers have recently begun to study whether more experienced teachers produce academic benefits for students that go beyond test scores. One study of 1.2 million middle school students in North Carolina analyzed student data on test scores as well as other noncognitive outcomes: absences, disciplinary offenses, amount of time students spent reading for pleasure, and amount of time students spent completing homework. The study controlled for a variety of characteristics, including race, eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch, and prior year achievement. Experienced teachers positively influenced several noncognitive outcomes. For example, being taught by English Language Arts (ELA) teachers with greater experience was associated with students spending more time reading for pleasure, and math teachers' experience was associated with fewer disciplinary offenses.

One of the most striking findings was that as teachers gain experience, their students are less likely to miss school. This finding is important because of the strong evidence linking high rates of absenteeism with negative long-term educational outcomes. Specifically, the North Carolina study found that one year of experience allowed an ELA teacher to reduce the proportion of students with high absenteeism by 2 percentage points, and that a teacher "who obtains over 21 years of experience on average reduces the incidence of high student absenteeism by 14.5 percentage points." The study found similar effects for math teachers.

Importantly, more experienced teachers provided the greatest benefit to higher risk, chronically absent students. For example, ELA and math teachers with more than 21 years of experience reduced the number of students with over three absences by 6 and 4 percent, respectively, but reduced the number of students with over 17 absences by three times as much.
3. Teachers make greater gains in their effectiveness when they teach in a supportive and collegial working environment, or accumulate experience in the same grade level, subject, or district.
Recently, research has begun to show that teachers' rate of improvement over time also depends on the supportiveness of their professional working environment. In addition, a few studies have found that teachers with prior experience in the same grade level, subject area, or district show greater returns to experience than those with less relevant prior experience.

A recent large-scale study of math students over 10 years in North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District examined how teachers' improvement over time was related to their school environment. The study showed that teachers who work in schools with strong professional environments improve at faster rates than their peers working in schools with weaker professional environments. The study found that 10th-year teachers working in more supportive schools-characterized by a trusting, respectful, safe, and orderly environment, with collaboration among teachers, school leaders who support teachers, time and resources for teachers to improve their instructional abilities, and teacher evaluation that provides meaningful feedback-become substantially more effective than teachers working in schools that have few of the above characteristics (see Figure 2).
4. More experienced teachers confer benefits to their colleagues and to the school as a whole, as well as to their own students.
Research indicates that teachers whose colleagues are more experienced are more effective than those whose colleagues are less experienced. This suggests that more experienced teachers provide important additional benefits to their school community beyond increased learning for the students they teach. A study using data from third- through fifth-grade students and their teachers in North Carolina over an 11-year period found that teachers whose peer teachers had more experience tended to have improved student outcomes. The study also found that novice teachers benefit most from having more experienced colleagues. In addition, the study found that the quality of a teacher's peers the year before, and even two years before, affected his or her current students' achievement.

Policy Recommendations

These research findings show the benefits of more experienced teachers, on average, for both students and schools and suggest a number of implications for policymakers and educators at the federal, state, district, and school levels. Most importantly, policymakers should focus on program and investment strategies that build an experienced teaching workforce of high-quality individuals who are continually learning. Accomplishing this goal will require the implementation of policies and practices to increase teacher retention and reduce turnover in schools. We offer the following three recommendations:
1. Increase stability in teacher job assignments.
Teachers who have repeated experience teaching the same grade level or subject area improve more rapidly than those whose experience is in varied grade levels or subjects. Of course, many factors influence job assignment decisions, including teachers' desires for professional growth and new challenges, as well as principals' needs for flexibility in management. School leaders, however, should be educated about the increased benefits of specific teaching experience and consider this in their decisions about teaching assignments.

2. Create conditions for strong collegial relationships among school staff and a positive and professional working environment.

Increasing opportunities for collaboration and for a more productive working environment is smart policy because of the promise this holds for increased teacher retention and because the benefits of experience are greater for teachers in strong professional working environments. Collegiality is hard to legislate, but there are nonetheless concrete steps that policymakers can take. District and school leaders can facilitate scheduling changes to allow for regular blocks of time for teachers who teach the same subject or who share groups of students to collaborate and plan curriculum together. Federal and state policymakers can promote quality school leadership through the development of principal career pathways in which talented teachers are proactively recruited and intensively trained and coached by an expert principal.
3. Strengthen policies to encourage the equitable distribution of more experienced teachers, and discourage the concentration of novice teachers in high-need schools.
The new Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to develop plans describing how low-income students and students of color "are not served at disproportionate rates by ineffective, out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers" and to evaluate and publicly report on their progress in this area. Districts are required to "identify and address" teacher equity gaps. As the U.S. Department of Education works to implement these provisions, much will depend on how the term "inexperienced teacher" is defined. The Department of Education should strengthen its enforcement of these provisions and define the term "inexperienced" teacher to include teachers who, at a minimum, are in their first or second year of teaching. Such a definition would be consistent with the definition used by the Department in its Civil Rights Data Collection, which provides important data on the concentration of first-year and second-year teachers in every school in the nation.

Other strategies for developing an experienced teaching workforce that is continually learning have been well documented elsewhere, such as providing clinically based preparation and high-quality mentoring for beginners, as well as career advancement opportunities for expert, experienced teachers. As documented here, our review of the latest research underscores that these investments can pay big dividends for our nation's students.

External Reviewers

The full report upon which this research brief is based benefited from the insights and expertise of two external reviewers: Gene Glass, Regents' Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University and Senior Researcher at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder; and Helen Ladd, Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. We thank them for the care and attention they gave the report. Any remaining shortcomings are our own.

Research Brief: Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of the Research by Tara Kini and Anne Podolsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of the Research

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A central value of public education in the 21st century holds that all children can learn. Yet this perspective has not necessarily carried over to social attitudes about teachers. While the research and policy communities agree that teachers improve quickly early in their careers, there is debate about whether teachers continue to learn after they gain significant experience in the classroom.

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Instructional coaches are the unsung heroes of the education profession. They nimbly navigate the line between administrator and teacher as they strive to make an impact across multiple grade levels and school sites. Instructional coaches have a unique vantage point - they see things happening at the ground level and are able to offer a perspective that few educators have.

One of the biggest issues confronting schools today is how to provide continuous, high-quality professional development to teachers and staff. District budgets are not what they used to be and education leaders must come up with creative and cost-effective ways to continue to provide this level of training in their schools. One innovative way of doing this is to create the role of an instructional coach in their district by hiring a teacher leader from within. Many districts call these specialists TOSAs (Teachers On Special Assignment). Other districts call them coordinators, but they serve the same purpose: providing perpetual PD in a non-evaluative, non-judgemental environment. These "thought partners" work collaboratively with teachers by asking them what they need and showing them how it can be deployed.

Instructional Coaches/TOSAs do many awesome things. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Provide job-embedded professional development.

2. Model and demonstrate highly-effective best practices.

3. Offer non-evaluative, objective feedback on a regular basis.

4. Create an environment where student needs drive professional development.

5. Offer guidance and feedback at the exact time teachers need it most - in the classroom.

6. Inspire teachers to try new learning strategies and tools.

7. Facilitate the transition from teacher-centered to learner-driven classrooms.

8. Are site-based teacher leaders who support both students and their teachers.

9. Collaborate with teachers in order to engage students in innovative ways.

10. Help to close the digital use divide by ensuring that all students understand how to use technology to create content.

Click the image below to view my Instructional Coaches Smore digital flyer which includes links to a collection of resources I've curated.

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Instructional Coaches Make a Huge Impact

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Instructional coaches are the unsung heroes of the education profession. They nimbly navigate the line between administrator and teacher as they strive to make an impact across multiple grade levels and school sites. Instructional coaches have a unique vantage point - they see things happening at the ground level and are able to offer a...

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Education Week - Peter DeWitt's Finding Common Ground

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It's time for the Olympics. It's always very exciting to watch athletes hit the biggest milestone of their lives. Going to the Olympics is a goal so many athletes have dreamed about but were never able to achieve. The Olympians we will watch with excitement, whether they get a medal or not, have all worked extremely hard to make it to the event.

One of the things that each and every Olympian has in common, regardless of what country they are from, is that they all have a coach. Some of these athletes have worked for years for a race that may only last a matter of seconds, and their coach has been with them every step, shot, swing or stroke of the way.

If coaches are so important....why is it that many teachers and leaders don't want to work with a coach?

Bringing Their A-Game
Last week I had the great fortune of working with coaches in the Lewisville, Texas Independent School District. Right when I walked into the packed room of 80 coaches and facilitators, I could tell it was going to be a great 3 days. They were laughing, leaning in, and pushing back on things that I suggested.

At one point on the last day of the Jim Knight Instructional Coaching Institute, I thought about all of the great coaches I have been able to learn from in my personal experience as a former runner (and now jog walker!), and my professional life over two years as someone who runs coaching institutes from time to time.
And I wondered why so many have a hard time getting into classes.
Over the years I have had the luxury of working with colleagues and mentors who have helped me grow. The teachers I worked with as a principal helped me grow as a leader, so I wonder why it's hard for teachers to let coaches into their classrooms? I wonder why it's so hard for leaders to let coaches into their buildings?

As I flew away on my very delayed flight, I reflected on the 3 awesome days in Lewisville and thought about the reasons coaches get the held up palm of the hand...rather than an open door welcoming them in.

I'm sure you can add to the list (feel free to in the comment section), but...

Teachers don't need coaches - Perhaps many teachers believe their advanced degrees are enough so they don't need a coach. After all, if teachers paid for their degree and worked hard to achieve it, maybe they think they don't need a coach. With that philosophy, Olympians like Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin must believe that just because they have been to an Olympics or two already, they no longer need coaches.

Critical friends all already in place - Perhaps a teacher already has a " critical colleague" who comes into observe and provides feedback, and then they do the same for them. Sometimes critical friends work well when that critical friend provides great feedback, but others times that critical friend may just stay in the " land of nice" and only provide praise. This dilemma of praise over feedback can happen with coaches as well, but is it possible they can invite the coach into the partnership to see if their critical friendship is already working?

Coaches only work with teachers in need of growth - This is a strong misperception in coaching programs. Most teachers believe coaches only work with " weak" teachers, when the reality is that coaches can work with anyone. What doesn't help this situation is when coaches are not prepared to work with strong classroom teachers and offer little effective feedback to them when they get the chance. If coaches are going to go into rooms to help all teachers grow, they need to make sure they're prepared. Additionally, this misperception of only working with weak teachers is supported by principals who only allow a coach to work with someone they believe is weak. Great coaches work with everyone.

Lack of an understanding of what coaches do - Sometimes building leaders and teachers don't understand the role of the coach (Read 5 reasons schools should have instructional coaches). It is really important that coaches have a clearly defined role (Knight) and that everyone in the district understands that role. Perhaps that clarification can help move a coaching program forward in a positive direction.

Coaches being used as compliance officers - This is a huge issue that coaches and teachers have to grapple with. I have heard from coaches and teachers across the country who say they are put in this position. They are asked to make sure everyone is pacing at the same time, and it puts the coach in a bad position, and it makes teachers less likely to want to work with them.

The coach - A bad...compliance-based...top-down coach, or one that lacks expertise, will not make it very far with teachers. Teachers are very protective of their classrooms and students. Additionally, they are very busy, so they don't want to spend time with a coach that can't help them grow.

The teacher - Sometimes teachers don't want adults to see them in action because they're insecure. Other times they don't want to work with another adult because they believe they know it all, or can handle it all, already. Additionally, there are teachers who are un-coachable, which is the administrator's job and not the job of the coach.

The culture of the building - Last but not least, a coaching program will not happen without a positive school climate. The school climate is how students and teachers feel when they enter into the building. School climate is about how much they are engaged and valued through dialogue and curriculum. The culture of the building is what dictates whether that will happen. At some point a positive school climate should overcome a negative school culture that has been created over years of top-down issues. If the culture of the building is more about rule following than risk-taking, an authentic coaching program will be hard to develop.

In the End
If leaders supported coaching programs because they understand the value, teachers will support coaching because they understand the growth that could come out of the relationship. Coaches can help teachers grow, and their coaches can grow in the process.

In less than a week we start watching the Olympians, and see glimpses of their coaches on the sidelines. We will feel a sense of excitement watching so much hard work coming to fruition, and think about how proud the coach must be to work in partnership with the athlete. And then the next morning we will get up, walk into our classrooms and close the door behind us leaving the coach on the outside.

Coaches, like those in Lewisville, are helping me to see that closing the door with them on the outside would be a very big missed opportunity.

Peter DeWitt, Ed.D. is the author of several books including the forthcoming Collaborative Leadership: 6 Influences That Matter Most (2016. Corwin Press). Connect with Peter on Twitter.

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In less than a week we will all be leaning in watching the Olympics. Thousands of athletes who have worked for years with their coach to improve in their sport. Why don't more teachers take advantage of the coaches they have in their buildings?

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In science classrooms, we want to provide strategic opportunities for students to learn from text and support them as they obtain, evaluate, and communicate information. Scientific interactive read aloud lessons create a space in the day for educators to integrate the Next Generation Science Standards and English Language Arts Common Core standards, using picture books in support of the practice of scientific modeling.

Science picture books can tap into your own and your students' storytelling and personal narrative styles, while introducing ideas and evidence from beyond the classroom to consider.

There are numerous strategies you can integrate in combination with scientific read aloud books, many of which are present in the video Building Scientific Ideas With Interactive Read Alouds:

Intentionally select specific pages in the book that are most relevant. Through intentional selection, you can highlight particular ideas and ways of representing ideas for students to consider, and see how students use them in their ongoing modeling work.

Enlarge certain pages with key visuals. Doing so can facilitate students' abilities to engage in productive and focused discussions and pick out details they see as important. You may also want to consider incorporating tangible examples of what appears in the text, such as bringing in real leaves for students to examine as they think about what's going on inside. Furthermore, the ideas and visual representations in books are themselves models, and can be assessed in similar ways as students' models - for what ideas are shown and how, and what may be absent or unclear. You can engage students in thinking about why the author may have made certain choices - what is the author trying to do?

Engage students in talk. These opportunities may include, but are not limited to, providing extended time for students to talk with partners and make sense of a book section, or asking students if what they're reading is sparking any questions or wonderings.

Make student thinking visible. As you read together, pause and ask students to share what they see as key ideas. Record these ideas publicly. You may want to invite students to draw how they would represent these ideas, or give them opportunities to record ideas for themselves on post-it notes. Then place the post-its where they relate to ideas present on their models.

Well-planned interactive science read aloud lessons can support students in using text-based evidence as a resource in their modeling, as the coupling of text with images engages all students in thinking about complex science processes.
Michelle Salgado is a National Board Certified Teacher and taught elementary school for close to a decade. Currently she is working as a science curriculum developer, professional development provider, and job-embedded instructional coach. In addition, Michelle is pursuing a PhD in science education, focusing her research around bilingual student engagement with evidence-based talk and scientific modeling found within the Next Generation Science Standards.

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Using Interactive Read Alouds To Support Scientific Modeling

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In science classrooms, we want to provide strategic opportunities for students to learn from text and support them as they obtain, evaluate, and communicate information. Scientific interactive read aloud lessons create a space in the day for educators to integrate the Next Generation Science Standards and English Language Arts Common Core standards, using picture books in support of the practice of scientific modeling.

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The Learning Zone / Hey Instructional Coach, What Do You Do?

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Gaining a deeper understanding of coaches’ roles and impact.

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When you think about how to help teachers become even better at the art of educating young minds, the task can seem daunting. How do you individually work with what is usually a large number of teachers so that each one improves in at least one area that directly impacts student learning? And how do you do that when there is limited time for their professional learning? For some districts, they've made the decision to not even try and are eliminating the instructional coach and the instructional technology coach positions. But is that a good move? What does the research say about the impact that instructional coaching can have on teacher performance in the classroom? How should instructional coaches be used to get the most results? Let's explore all of these questions in today's blog.

What Is an Instructional Coach?

An instructional coach, whether for content-specific areas like ELA and math or for digital learning with the use of integrated technology, is a trained expert that works regularly "with teachers individually, to help them learn and adopt new teaching practices, and to provide feedback on performance. This is done with the intent to both support accurate and continued implementation of new teaching approaches and reduce the sense of isolation teachers can feel when implementing new ideas and practices ()." It's important to understand that, while coaches work with teachers, their ultimate goal is to improve student learning. That must always be the focus.

What Does the Research Say about Instructional Coaching?

There has been a lot of research done recently on the value that coaches can bring to student learning.

Dr. John Hattie found that when instructional coaching is conducted over time in conjunction with data team analysis of how students learn, student growth is positively impacted. Both the coaching and the analysis must be done, however, to specifically inform instruction.

The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence found that instructional coaching had a greater impact on instruction than almost all other school-based interventions including student incentives, teacher pre-service training, merit-based pay, general professional development, data-driven instruction, and extended learning time. In fact, they determined the quality of teachers' instruction improves by as much or even more than the difference in effectiveness between a new teacher and one with five to 10 years of experience. Similarly, student performance improved with instructional coaching regardless of whether a teacher was a novice or veteran.

"Across instructional coaching studies by Jim Knight and Galey, there is consensus that instructional coaches need to combine teaching and content expertise with strong interpersonal and organizational abilities as coaches attempt to improve teachers' practice while navigating complex relationships between policy mandates, school administrators, and wary teachers (source)."

The New Teacher Center found that effective instructional coaches are those who are able to build relationships with teachers, understand good teaching practices, have experience with adult learners, and know how to use data.

"Kraft, Blazar and Hogan found that there is significant evidence to show that a high-quality coaching experience can improve a teacher's skillset. In fact, gains seen from high-quality instructional coaching were equivalent to the gains seen in teacher experience learned over five to 10 years (as compared to a first year teacher). The impact did not end with teacher skill development. There was also evidence of a value-added effect on student achievement from teachers who had a high-quality instructional coach ()."

How Can Instructional Coaching Be Maximized for the Greatest Learning?

The research indicates that there are some things districts can do to maximize results with coaching.

A serious consideration is how many teachers one instructional coach can effectively support at one time. Districts may want to limit the ratio of teachers to instructional coaches, as well as leverage technology to take advantage of virtual coaching. Research found there was little difference in the effectiveness of coaching programs online versus face-to-face.

"The national coaching survey shows that coaches throughout the country serve in multiple roles both within and outside the classroom. Moreover, they support large caseloads of teachers, which results in spending less time with each teacher. This situation may diminish the effectiveness of coaching programs (source)."

In addition to coaching resources and training, coaches benefit from access to ongoing mentorship.

In larger school districts, large-scale coaching programs are less effective than smaller ones. This is consistent with the theory of diminishing effects as programs are taken to scale. "Districts may benefit with starting small, involving teachers who have a desire and motivation to participate, and tailoring coaching to individual needs. Larger programs requiring mandatory participation that are not individualized may be less effective especially if the teachers are not invested in the coaching process. However, it's important to note that even larger coaching programs had meaningful and statistically significant impacts on student achievement (source)."

One study focused on the factors that influence responsiveness to coaching, especially with teachers who appeared the least receptive to collaborating with a coach to support the implementation of a new practice. Results highlight the patterns and complexities of the coaching process for 20% of the teachers in the study who were categorized as resistant to coaching, suggesting that the one-on-one model of coaching offered in this study may not be the best fit for all teachers.

Kane and Rosenquist (Making the Most of Instructional Coaches, Kappan, April, 2018) share that while the promise of coaching is high, the evidence of effectiveness has been inconsistent. Coaches' job descriptions may be one of the problems. They often contain a wide array of duties that can erode time to work directly with teachers. Studies have identified some coaches working only a fourth or a third of their time with teachers to improve instruction.

Are You Coaching Heavy or Light?

The first article in this newsletter discusses the difference between coaching that actually changes practices in the classroom ( coaching heavy) and what often happens with instructional coaching ( coaching light). Coaching light duties may include "testing students, gathering leveled books for teachers to use, doing repeated demonstration lessons, finding web sites for students to use, or sharing professional publications or information about workshops or conferences." The author says that while these are all worthwhile endeavors and do result in teachers forming a closer relationship with the coach, they do not usually result in improved student learning.

"Coaching heavy, on the other hand, includes curriculum analysis, data analysis, instructional changes, and conversations about beliefs and how they influence practice." It is a much harder job and may not result in forming a closer relationship with a teacher. Coaching heavy may cause both the teachers and the coach to question their actions and decisions and may leave them feeling on edge. It includes asking thought-provoking questions and engaging in dialogue with teachers "about their beliefs and goals rather than focusing only on teacher knowledge and skills."

The table below shows the beliefs that a coach may have that may negatively impact his/her ability to coach heavy and the resulting side effects.

After further thought and research, the author found that effective coaches use a mixture of both light and heavy coaching. Coaching light is done primarily at the beginning of the new coaching period, like the start of school, and lasts for several weeks. Coaching heavy takes up after that and continues throughout the rest of the school year.

Key Takeaways

So what should our takeaways about instructional coaching be? Does it make a difference in improving teaching and learning? How can we structure it so that it is most effective?

Instructional coaching for content areas and digital learning can make a significant difference in student achievement.

Coaches need to be experts in both their content area and in best practices in pedagogy. They must also stay current with the latest brain research on learning.

Coaches need to focus on holding dialogues with teachers on their beliefs and practices.

District should make sure that coaches have time for the heavy duties by eliminating many of the other duties often assigned to them such as testing, textbook inventory, and subbing when teachers are out.

What does your instructional coaching program look like? How might you improve it? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments!

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When you think about how to help teachers become even better at the art of educating young minds, the task can seem daunting. How do you individually work with what is usually a large number of teachers so that each one improves in at least one area that directly impacts student learning?

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February 19, 2014

"Coaching is becoming popular, in part, because many educational leaders recognize the old form of professional development, built around traditional in-service sessions for teachers, simply doesn't affect student achievement" (Knight 2006).

Instructional coaching alone doesn't necessarily support teachers to be more successful with their most struggling students. Just as great teaching requires more than content knowledge, instructional coaching for equity requires more than pedagogical expertise. To support a teacher to learn and grow, we need to really know and understand them.
What is this teacher excited about? What do they care about? What motivates them? How are they thinking about their work? What are their beliefs and assumptions about their role as teacher?
As their coach, we have to take the time to build a trusting relationship where we know the real answers to these questions. Many teachers are assigned an instructional coach and view it as a punitive measure. By taking the time to observe, assess, and validate their experience and expertise, we show that we are authentically invested in their success.

Engaging a teacher in this reflection does more than set the stage for a positive coaching relationship - it demonstrates a new kind of relationship that is possible between teacher and student - which can translate into powerful new relationships in the teacher's classroom. Building trusting relationships with the teachers we coach also helps us to productively challenge our teachers to examine their own biases and mental models.

Uncover Mental Models

To effectively shift a teacher's practice, the instructional coach must assess the teacher's mental models - the underlying beliefs and values she holds about her students. Without addressing these beliefs and values, the teacher will always default to teaching practices that align with that belief.

"Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior." - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

Shifting a teacher's practice usually won't happen without productively challenging their thinking, assumptions, and interpretations of their current classroom reality.
Why do you think this particular student/these students are not responding? How are you feeling about it, and how is that shaping your decisions? What other possibilities are you open to considering? What more might you learn?
Good Decisions Beat Best Practices

Many teachers do need support in implementing instructional "best practices." But best practices are just one part of their toolkit, and pushing popular teaching strategies doesn't result in achieving equity in the classroom. Instead of focusing on best practices, begin with supporting teachers to learn about and from their students. How can we help teachers implement formative assessment practices (from assessing how the student is experiencing the teacher or class to assessing the student's thinking about a particular task) to make better instructional decisions?

The most critical practice for raising student achievement is instructional decision-making - accurately determining the next skill that the student must master in order to progress and how to teach it in a way that helps the student learn it. It is this insight that helps create more equitable outcomes for struggling students.
What is working? With all of your students or just some? Why? How do you know?

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Instructional Coaching: Beyond Best Practices - National Equity Project

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February 19, 2014 "Coaching is becoming popular, in part, because many educational leaders recognize the old form of professional development, built around traditional in-service sessions for teachers, simply doesn't affect student achievement" (Knight 2006) . Instructional coaching alone doesn't necessarily support teachers to be more successful with their most struggling students.