Today we look to determine teaching quality through a combination of observation, surveys, and test scores. These measures fail to answer the most important question about quality teaching: How is it accomplished? How has this teacher used questioning today, and what drove their decision to do so? How has this teacher structured independent reading assignments and what drove their decision to do so? How has this teacher decided to assess students’ understanding of a text and what drove their decision to do so? The quality lies in a lesson’s active ingredients, not just in its final products.
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References
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ChronbachL. (1976). Research on classrooms and schools: Formulation of questions, design, and analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford Evaluation Consortium.
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GabrielR.WolfinS. (2015). Evaluating the structure and content of observation instruments. In GabrielR.AllingtonR. (Eds.), Evaluating literacy instruction: Principles and promising practices (pp. 15–30). New York, NY: Routledge.
