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Deron Durflinger

What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - 0 views

  • The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school
  • If  a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
  • Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
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  • It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
  • But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
  • First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools
  • the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair.
  • In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results
  • Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
  • I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning.
  • onversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
Deron Durflinger

Educational Insights From Shanghai - Top Performers - Education Week - 0 views

  • he schools were joyous places.  This, he said, seemed to be the foundation for everything else he observed
  • ecause the lessons were beautifully crafted, clearly designed to be as engaging as possible. 
  • were lined with other teachers who were collaborating in the design of these lessons.
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  • worked together over months to build the most effective lessons they could, critiquing each version, adding new ideas, testing them out, until the whole group was satisfied that the lesson was as good as it could be.
  • ratio between prep time and teaching time in the Shanghai schools we visited.  In the U.S., she said, teachers typically have one hour to prepare for five classes.  In the Shanghai schools, they have four hours to prepare for two hours of teaching. This, she said, makes all the difference.  Teachers can use this time to collaborate with other teachers to craft great lessons, to talk with other teachers about particular students' learning needs and how they might work together to address them, or to do the research needed to get ready to do another improvement project. 
  • All teachers are expected to do it, and getting good at is it one of the criteria for moving up the career ladder
  • hat fascinated our team was the way teachers were expected to write short papers about the research they had done and to publish these research papers in a range of juried journals, some published by universities.
  • Of course they did not do well this way.  How could they do well in language and mathematics without a balanced curriculum, without a faculty that showed that they loved them, without music, art and PE?
  • his whole enormous system was on pretty much the same page for the same reasons, not because they had been told to do something in particular, but because the discussions they had been involved in had led them to the same conclusions about the goals and the most effective ways to achieve the
  • One was the clarity of the system's curriculum expectations.  There is a core curriculum that accounts for about 70 percent of the available time that is required for all students. The courses are spelled out and the system approves the textbooks that will be used. 
  • hat it had clearly been honed and then honed again to remove everything that was not essential and to give the connections in the logic of the instruction an air of inevitability that seemed, as he put it, simply elegant.
  • he common thread, he said, was the way teachers were treated, in every way, as professionals.
  • The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission clearly views its teachers, not university researchers, as the main drivers of improvements in student performance. 
  • teachers talked about the importance of constantly getting better, which meant improving their own skills and improving the curriculum and instruction and therefore improving student performance.  Like doctors, engineers and attorneys in the United States, they saw keeping up with the latest developments in their field and changing their practice in the light of those advancements as a core part of their responsibility.  That is why professional development and school improvement are thought of as synonymous by Shanghai officials. 
  • hey accepted the idea that they were not functioning autonomously in their classrooms, but accountable to their peers and colleagues for the quality of their own work and for their contribution to the common enterprise.   These are all hallmarks of a true profession. 
Deron Durflinger

Educational Leadership:The Effective Educator:The Flexible Teacher - 1 views

  • Effective teaching is variable
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Teachers must adapt and be flexible.
  • They do not teach the same way and use the same instructional repertoire year after year
  • Effective teaching is contextual
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  • Effective teachers alter, adjust, and change their instruction depending on who is in the classroom and the extent to which those students are achieving
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Effective Teachers know their students.
  • Effective teaching is premised on students' intellectual curiosity.
  • Effective teaching must be somewhat autonomous.
  • Such teachers are close to their students in intellectual as well as psychological ways, and they must be empowered to use their judgment to make classroom decisions.
  • Ultimately, effective teaching is fearless.
  • effective teachers must adjust curriculum, methods, and pacing to meet the needs of the students.
  • priority on student needs
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: Building the Digital District - 0 views

  • I think a lot of his decisions are based on leadership,” Smith says of Edwards and his management. “You’ve got to have the right people on the bus, but not only that, they’ve got to be on the right seats on the bus.
  • instead, it tells teachers to seek their own content and align it to the subject curriculum
  • Teachers are expected to share lessons with colleagues electronically via ANGEL, the district’s content-management software, created by Washington-based Blackboard Inc., and all four schools in the district’s 1-to-1 program each employs a technology facilitator to aid that process. The district’s three elementary schools only began distributing laptops to its third graders this year.
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  • I would say the biggest challenge teachers have is the lack of time
  • It’s a constant challenge for teachers to go out and to find new innovative resources and what actually matches the new curriculum they need
  • going back is not really an option.”
  • acknowledge that the district’s modest size was a key factor in helping it change its culture and improve its achievement so quickly
  • saying the digital-conversion model “may be the one last great hope for our nation.”
  • Colleagues insist any such effort in other districts must be led by a superintendent in the same mold. “He just doesn’t allow anybody around him to make excuses or build obstacles,” Principal Wirt of Mooresville High says of Edwards. “That’s not his ride at all.”
  • e did so bent on changing what he recalls as a “complacent” attitude among teachers and other staff members in a school where achievement data were average. As he walks the halls nearly four years later, he takes perhaps his greatest pride in seeing most of the same faces standing in classroom doorways
  • by all accounts Mooresville’s teachers were given little choice but to join a new culture where 6,000 district-issued laptops to students and staff served as the centerpiece of Superintendent Edwards’ educational improvement strategy
  • Similar compliance was also expected in accompanying changes to curriculum, teacher collaboration expectations, and even staff conduct, all of which began to be implemented in the fall of 2008
  • I think ‘expectation’ is the right word,
  • ‘Here is your laptop, and you will learn how to use it. You will make it an integral part of your classroom, and you will incorporate it into 21st-century teaching.’ ”
Deron Durflinger

Study: Teacher hiring should be more scientific | Local & Regional | Seattle News, Weat... - 0 views

  • The ability to work well with others - flexibility and interpersonal skills - seemed to be a bigger factor in teacher retention than where the teacher went to college. Other things like experience and instructional skills also were big factors.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      #1 thing we look for in people
  • Our research suggests that teacher workforce improvements can be derived from more careful hiring decisions,
  • such as whether a teacher would be good at teaching students to be good citizens, Goldhaber said.
Deron Durflinger

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National -... - 0 views

  • Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher.
  • There's no word for accountability in Finnish,"
  • "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
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  • what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility.
  • If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
  • And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable
  • There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.
  • school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all.
  • In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."
  • It was equity
  • the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
  • schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
  • Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.
  • When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy. 
  • is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind
  • Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."
  • Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
  • The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
Deron Durflinger

Don't Prevent Students' Mistakes, Prepare for Them - Coach G's Teaching Tips - Educatio... - 0 views

  • Here's why: such frustration is a precursor to deep, lasting learning. That's right, students' grasp of new concepts and skills is often better when they struggle through the process of learning those concepts and skills than when teachers error-proof that process.
  • elping students troubleshoot their errors like this should be a primary role of every teacher. There's nothing to troubleshoot, though, if kids never run into troubl
  • Lesson planning should thus be more about anticipating students' errors and preparing to help them learn from those errors than trying to develop presentations that prevent all errors. Provide students activities that involve applying information, and be ready to help them when they get tripped up
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  • The classroom must therefore be a place where students have regular opportunities to learn by using--and yes, misusing--that information. In other words, a place where they can learn from one of life's greatest teachers: mistaiks.
Deron Durflinger

Survey: Supportive leadership helps retain top teachers - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • To retain good teachers, 68 percent called supportive leadership "absolutely essential," 45 percent said the same of higher salaries and 8 percent listed performance pay. Many of those surveyed also described "relevant" professional development as essential, along with "clean and safe" working conditions, time for teachers to collaborate and access to high-quality curriculum. In addition, 71 percent said monetary rewards for teacher performance would have moderate or no impact on student achievement.
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: Lectures Are Homework in Schools Following Khan Academy Lead - 0 views

  • It’s not just about the kids watching the same lecture the night before. For us, the big piece is having teachers use data to make instructional decisions about their students,
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      The most important part of the article. It is about using the data to make quality instructional decisions.
  • Students worked through those initial units quickly, but she could see when they hit their “pain points”—sometimes on material covered several grades earlier. The Los Altos Pilot Administrators, teachers, and students in Los Altos School District share their experiences with Khan Academy. Source: The Khan Academy Administrators Teachers Students “In order for me to get that kind of understanding of a student, I would have had to sit down one-on-one and work through problems and see a pattern, which I’m happy to do, but it takes a lot of time,” Ms. Caldwell said. “This confirmed my suspicions and allowed me to remediate much more quickly.”
  • “I was able to identify those learning gaps in real time, whether it was from 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, and I was able to remediate and saw those learning gaps begin to disappear
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  • For example, in one small-scale experiment at Alhambra High School in Martinez, Calif., Mr. Smith found that students in a computer-aided-design class whose teacher incorporated digital lessons for use at home performed better on a post-test than did students using the standard textbook and lecture.
  • Dr. Kramer’s colleague John Willis, who teaches freshman physics at Gwinnett, a 705-student district-run charter school, had just started to experiment with requiring students, two or three times a week, to view his recorded lectures and other materials online before class. He used short automatic-response quizzes at the start of each class to make sure students had seen the material; he then used the class time to dig into demonstrations and experiments
  • Mr. Willis said that what used to be a two-class-period process to set the groundwork for a laboratory assignment has been moved online—mostly with student-made videos explaining the setup procedures and hypothesis planning.
  • “It allows me to improve the connections I’m making with students, because now I can get into the material in a deeper way,” Mr. Willis said.
  • For a recent experiment using microscopes, Dr. Kramer and another biology teacher posted YouTube videos of scientists discussing the equipment, photos of the school’s microscopes for the students to label, and their own videos explaining common problems in setting up the experiment.
  • It basically led us to a set of conclusions without him telling us the conclusions,” Ms. Doksansky said. “We had to test it out on this little applet and figure it out. It was a much better explanation than the really boring one in the book.
  • because the flipped-classroom format requires students to commit to doing a lot more work on their own
  • For Gwinnett’s Mr. Burmester, the proof will be in classroom practice. “The critical thing about all this [technology] is, what are you going to do differently, based on it?” he said. “Without a change, it’s just more stuff.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Well said!
Deron Durflinger

L.A. teacher ratings: L.A. Times analysis rates teachers' effectiveness - latimes.com - 0 views

  • No one suggests using value-added analysis as the sole measure of a teacher. Many experts recommend that it count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      I think it has to be part of the discussion though. We all agree that the most important factor to student learning is the quality of instruction the student receives.
Deron Durflinger

U.S., Iowa need new education culture | desmoinesregister.com | The Des Moines Register - 0 views

  • Higher teacher salaries that attract and keep the brightest professionals are also needed. Here's what a PISA report had to say about that: "The findings from PISA suggest that systems prioritizing higher teachers' salaries over smaller classes tend to perform better, which corresponds with research showing that raising teacher quality is a more effective route to improved student outcomes than creating smaller classes."
Deron Durflinger

35 Years of Video in Education: What Has Changed? - Leading From the Classroom - Educat... - 1 views

  • Technology will never replace the teacher, but technology necessitates that educators redefine our concept of teaching and learning in an era where anyone with Internet can teach and learn. Many will benefit from these readily accessible videos, but videos can only go so far.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Love this. Teachers often think of how this impacts them, but not what it will do for their students.
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