Responding to Professional Evaluation

Attention to teaching and school leadership practices is at a definite high these days, especially if you are racing to the top, or planning to join the race. How we, as a profession, respond to this attention - the questions we allow to drive us, and the contexts that we create for conversations around professional practice - will greatly determine the extent to which this attention moves us forward and supports us as a profession.

A focus on professional practices and their connections to learning appears to be a rational and meaningful process whose time has more than come. Research has shown clear and direct connections between teacher practice and student learning, and has also tied principal practices to student achievement (Miller, K., 2003; Seashore Louis, K., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, S., Anderson, S.E. et al., 2010; Waters, T., Marzano R.J., and McNulty, B., 2003). In the face of this, it is difficult not to be interested in the potential inherent in examining, improving and deepening professional practice.

There is but a breath that separates the generative nature of examining professional practice in the context of promoting continuous learning and improvement from the sense of high anxiety that seems to threaten self-preservation…and in that breath floats one word: “evaluation.” As part of a balanced assessment system that includes diagnostic, formative and summative assessment moments, supported by a curriculum of varied and relevant learning opportunities, “evaluation” is clearly positioned as a significant facet. In the absence of such a system, however, “evaluation” becomes an isolated event, and can quickly conjure up mistrust and anxiety, fueled by perceptions of high stakes and tremendous risk.

Rather than promoting reflective practice and providing an opportunity for educators to develop as a professional community that is focused on improved practice for deeper learning, a limited view of evaluation as an isolated, potentially punitive event can actually serve to position educational practitioners on opposite “sides,” prompting defensiveness, and fostering attitudes and language that lend themselves more to litigation than to education - diverting attention and energy away from the proactive awareness, research, innovations, discovery and work that will move education forward as a profession, to more reactive activities like identifying evidence to prove or defend claims about practice, searching for ways to alleviate the fallout that is sure to come as a result of a public airing of deficits, or becoming focused on strategies that are more attuned to preparing for battle than to improving or innovating.

Without the learning opportunities and the rest of what makes up a balanced assessment system to back it up, evaluation – whether classroom or professional - is both an empty promise and an equally empty threat. In isolation of the system that gives it credibility,evaluation becomes a tense and emotional event, the stress of which becomes apparent in educator discourse, behavior and work, and in shoulders that rise so high as to threaten to completely engulf the heads that they were made to support.

What would happen if we took a collective, educated breath and responded to the challenge of professional evaluation by identifying the potential inherent in a deep examination of professional practice? What if we claimed our right and responsibility as educators to both assess and grow our profession, and ourselves as practitioners? What questions would drive an examination of professional practice that was aimed at innovating, generating and disseminating new knowledge to our field? How might we transform the discomfort of professional “evaluation” into opportunities to examine and deepen professional practice? What would it look like if educators loudly and purposefully declared and pursued a commitment to deepening our own and our profession’s understanding of the challenges inherent in improving student learning and achievement? What would we gain in also committing to developing and sharing expertise within and beyond the walls of our schools and districts?

Imagine what could come from an ongoing and recursive process of examining professional practice that focuses on the collective development of goals and inquiry, and a sharing of expertise. What would that look like in your school or district?

Imagine the criteria for “evaluation” directly connected to the quality of the inquiry and the degree to which it sparks innovations that result in positive growth for both adult and student learners. How would those criteria be worded?

Imagine a definition of “accountability” that is grounded in an acceptance of our shared, collective professional responsibility for learning – including developing and concretizing the language that defines it as a field and as a process; perfecting and building the repertoire of strategies that support it; recognizing and promoting the behaviors that both anchor and transform it; and engaging in the recursive and reflective processes that ensures we are all on the same side and similarly focused on continuous growth. What would that mean in terms of how we approach the relationship between our profession and ourselves?…what we bring to the table?…what we say to one another?...what we focus on or examine together?...what we determine as next steps? Where would this put us in terms of defining the destiny of our profession? How would we engage with the ideas and demands of those from outside our profession?

Where does the responsibility for learning lie, and who really has the ability to enact it? Do we have the collective will to do so? The absence of such will allows, and even invites, those from outside our profession to lay claim to knowing, defining and evaluating education, educators and learning. Is that acceptable?

This is an amazing and exciting period in education, weaving tremendous opportunities into the fabric of change. The time is right for educators to respond by:

assuming responsibility for establishing common language and standards and criteria around which to engage in conversations that focus on what is necessary for us to continue honing our practice
creating and defining the language that allows us to argue, support, inquire and invent our work, in the service of deep and powerful learning
engaging in professional inquiry and discourse designed to promote innovative practices, demand critical thinking, and deepen the capacity of our profession to continue to learn and grow
capturing, annotating and sharing robust examples of practice that inform continued growth within education and anchor the understanding of those outside of education
defining, substantiating and honoring “accountability” as a deeply held professional responsibility and commitment to give back to the field the rightful articulation of what we are doing
embodying professional integrity through reflection, questioning and assessment
developing the professional learning curriculum that supports a balanced, ongoing professional assessment system

The time is right for us to respond by laying claim to our profession.

References

Miller, K. School, Teacher, and Leadership Impacts on Student Achievement, McRel Policy Brief, November 2003. http://www.mcrel.org/pdf/policybriefs/5032pi_pbschoolteacherleaderbrief.pdf
Seashore Louis, K., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K. L., Anderson, S. E., et al., Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning. Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement/University of Minnesota, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, July 2010. http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledgecenter/school-leadership/key-research/Pages/Investigating-the-Links-to-Improved-StudentLearning.aspx
Waters, T., Marzano, R.J., and McNulty, B. Balanced leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. McRel Working Paper, 2003. http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/LeadershipOrganizationDevelopment/5031RR_BalancedLeadership.pdf