Attributes Of Teachers Research Articles

The SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (SAS® EVAAS®) in the Houston Independent School District (HISD): Intended and Unintended Consequences

The SAS Educational Value-Added Assessment System (SAS® EVAAS®) is the most widely used value-added system in the country. It is also self-proclaimed as “the most robust and reliable” system available, with its greatest benefit to help educators improve their teaching practices. This study critically examined the effects of SAS® EVAAS® as experienced by teachers, in one of the largest, high-needs urban school districts in the nation – the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Using a multiple methods approach, this study critically analyzed retrospective quantitative and qualitative data to better comprehend and understand the evidence collected from four teachers whose contracts were not renewed in the summer of 2011, in part given their low SAS® EVAAS® scores. This study also suggests some intended and unintended effects that seem to be occurring as a result of SAS® EVAAS® implementation in HISD. In addition to issues with reliability, bias, teacher attribution, and validity, high-stakes use of SAS® EVAAS® in this district seems to be exacerbating unintended effects.

Child soldiers in Colombia: Five views

This paper offers explanations of the meanings that push children to illegally armed groups in Colombia from the testimony of 21 demobilized young girls from the region of Antioquia (Colombia). The girls’ answers are placed on a typology of explanations drawn from academic reports, and compared to three samples of attributions of students, teachers and policemen of their same region. The visions “idealizing” and “criminalizing” mobilization are practically marginal in all samples. The dominant vision among the girls is called “self-assertive”. From the rest of the samples, as well as for the experts, the majority of the views are “victimizing”.

Leonardo Da Vinci Award for training excellence

The profession is in the process of defining the Why, What and How of surgical training. In some areas, it is more developed than others. However, there is a common agenda and desire to define surgical training standards. Why? Teaching has to become more efficient and at the same time effective to ensure that the surgeons of tomorrow are well equipped. There are a lot of external pressures. The main one, of course, is compliance with the European Working Time Directive. How do we train in a limited time and when the operating theatre is no longer the surgeons’ class room [1]. What? The knowledge and evidence base expected of the surgical trainee can easily be found on the intranet. A curriculum is being established across Europe and has been defined in the UK by the Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme (ISCP) www.iscp.ac.uk How? How we teach is important. The training assessment of technical skills and competency is essential. ‘The mechanism’ by which to do it has been published in many forms in the journal [1, 2]. That leaves the last question, Who? Who is the surgical trainer? What are their attributes and behaviours? A Google search for best teacher proffers many sites that espouse the attributes of a good teacher. These people bring passion, creativity, flexibility and curiosity to the role. The most effective educators also bring themselves to the job and can celebrate successes. They show compassion and connection with students by telling their own stories of training. The European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery initiated the Leonardo Award for Training Excellence in 2011. The aim was to identify such individuals in the surgical arena. Awards of this nature have been established by other Societies. The SCTS have the Socrates Award. Eleven years ago, the author initiated the Silver Scalpel Award for the Association of Surgeons in Training, UK. The Leonardo Da Vinci Award for Training Excellence was adapted and borrowed from lessons learnt from the Silver Scalpel Award. The 2011 Leonardo Da Vinci Award for Training Excellence involved four stages.

Students’ Evaluation of Frame Factors and Teaching Process: Implications for Educational Leadership

Students are seeking university education that may help them enter in the job markets and they are selecting universities which meet their own standards. The idea of economic self-sufficiency and commodification of higher education have also depicted students as fee paying customers and universities are switching from teacher-centered to student-centered approaches for attracting and retaining students. To explore the situation in local universities, the study investigated perceptions of students about frame factors and teaching process in terms of administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back as sub-scales. How students were viewing these factors; which factors were relatively stronger; which universities were performing better or otherwise; and what implications of these conditions educational leaders may face were the main questions answered in the study. A spectrum of 600 students taken 25 from each of the sample department of three public and two private universities of Lahore selected on 30% stratified random sampling technique constituted the sample. Data were collected through self-constructed survey scale which was found reliable at 0.9150 Cronbach's alpha. Principle Component Factor Analysis extracted five factors namely administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back. Mean scores and correlations were calculated for these sub-scales. One-Sample t-test, Independent samples t-test, and one-way ANOVA were employed for significance and variance analysis. The study concluded that students were not fully satisfied with the administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back available at sample universities. Teacher attributes were relatively stronger whereas quality of feed-back was at the lowest count. The situation in public universities was little better as compared with private sector universities. This situation reflects unsatisfactory performance of local universities in terms of administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back. Rigorous initiatives on the part of educational leaders to improve upon the situation included in the major recommendations.

A profile of the effective teacher: Greek secondary education teachers’ perceptions

This paper examines the perceptions of Greek secondary education teachers on effectiveness in teaching. Through a structured questionnaire, 340 teachers reported their views on the tactics which are considered to contribute to effective teaching and on the behaviour and personal traits attributed to effective teachers. Descriptive and factor analysis showed that teacher flexibility in knowledge dissemination and sociability in communication, the display of friendliness, open-mindedness, tactfulness, supportiveness, respect and humour, are considered, among others, to be outstanding attributes of an effective teacher. However, the inflexibility of Greek curricula and their obsession with academic performance objectives discourage teachers from implementing effective instructional strategies, from establishing real human relationships with their students and from displaying behaviour and developing personal traits attributed to effective teachers.

Postlecture Evaluation of a Positive Youth Development Subject for University Students in Hong Kong

The purpose of this study was to examine the postlecture evaluation by the students taking a course (Tomorrow's Leaders) that attempted to promote their leadership qualities and intrapersonal competencies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong. Except for the last lecture, students were invited to respond to a 12-item postlecture questionnaire after each lecture. Results showed that the students had positive perceptions of the subject, class, and teacher attributes, and they had positive global evaluation of the teacher and the subject. The postlecture evaluation questionnaire was found to possess good psychometric properties. Multiple regression analyses showed that subject, class, and teacher attributes were predictive of global evaluation of the lecture and the teacher. In conjunction with other evaluation findings, the present findings strongly suggest that students had positive perceptions of the attributes and benefits of “Tomorrow's Leaders.”

Beyond Levels and Growth: Estimating Teacher Value-Added and its Persistence

The levels and growth achievement functions make extreme and diametrically opposed assumptions about the rate at which teacher inputs persist. I first show that if these assumptions are incorrect, teacher value-added estimates can be significantly biased. I then develop a tractable, cumulative model of student achievement that allows for the joint estimation of unobserved teacher quality and its persistence. The model can accommodate varying persistence rates, student heterogeneity, and time-varying teacher attributes. I implement the proposed methodology using schooling data from North Carolina, and find that only a third of the contemporaneous teacher effect survives into the next grade.

Supporting student nurse professionalisation: The role of the clinical teacher

This paper reports aspects of the findings from the qualitative component of a mixed methods research study that investigated the role of the Clinical Teacher in student nurse professional socialisation. Graduates and Clinical Teachers were interviewed to identify the domains where the support of a Clinical Teacher was crucial in the students' development of a professional identity. Emergent themes were clustered into seven (7) domains as follows: Professional role concept; Acculturation; Acquisition of Knowledge; Acquisition of Skill; Acquisition of Professional Values; Assimilation into the Organisation; and a seventh domain encompassing the role model attributes of Clinical Teachers. The domains are presented alongside exemplars from the interviews, in order to illustrate the importance of the support of a Clinical Teacher.

Celebrating Birthdays: An Update on the Status of Undergraduate Medical Education

The Council on Medical Education in Pediatrics (COMSEP) interrupts our “attributes of great clinical teachers” series to celebrate a birthday and 3 births! Although primarily medical educators have celebrated these events, COMSEP feels that all pediatricians should commemorate these milestones. One hundred years ago, in 1910, Abraham Flexner published a Carnegie Foundation–sponsored report about the status of medical education in Canada and the United States.1 His findings and recommendations led, in large part, to the transformation of medical education in North America. In 2010, on the anniversary of Flexner's seminal report, 2 new reports on the state of medical education in North America were released.2,3 In addition, a landmark conference was held to discuss ways to reform medical education in the 21st century.4 The purpose of this article is to provide the reports and conference background and highlight the main recommendations. In a subsequent article, we will evaluate pediatric education systems in relation to the 2010 recommendations. When the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published Flexner's Medical Education in the United States and Canada ,1 medical education in the United States and Canada was chaotic, unregulated, and of poor quality. Few standards for admission or promotion existed, basic science instruction was mostly nonexistent, and few students were carefully supervised in hospital-based clinical practice. Within a decade of the Flexner report (Table 1), the number of medical schools had decreased by one-third, entrance requirements to medical school had been standardized and enforced, curricula had been standardized (2 years of basic science followed by 2 years of clinical science), medical schools had forged links to universities, … Address correspondence to William V. Raszka Jr, MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Given Courtyard, Burlington, VT 05405. E-mail: william.raszka{at}uvm.edu

Redefining the teacher as leader: Problems and prospects in Eritrea

As leadership in business, technology, various professions, and public institutions has become more participatory and representative over the past 30 years. Education has also taken to boasting of the inclusion of teachers, its lowest-ranking professionals, in its policy-creation and management processes. Teacher leadership is not about “teacherpower.” Rather, it is about mobilizing the still largely untapped attributes of teachers to strengthen student performance at ground level and working toward real collaboration, a locally tailored kind of shared leadership, in the daily life of the school. Teachers must be an essential part of that leadership, never more so than when issues of instructional leadership are at stake. There is no exaggeration if we say that teacher as a leader canbring a sustainable development in any country. Establishment of National Board for Higher Education (NBHE) is one of the progressive and a qualitative sign in the history of Eritrean education which undoubtedly will not only bring the qualitative and quantitative changes in higher education but also at each level of education by preparing, orienting and involving teachers as key elements in decision taking process. Leadership in public education is a matter of guiding a community to realize its potentialto do the best job it can for its children. There are many priorities but only limited resources with which to succeed. And no action can really succeed without consensus for a focused, shared vision of what must be done. To provide a starting point for discussion in a community in respect to recruit teachers and to determine their roles in new perspective of education, the present article provides a number of questions that you might want to examine.

Employers Perception Of Attributes Of Teachers And Training Practices In Pakistan: Difference Between Demand And Supply

The purpose of this paper is to identify the qualities employers look for in a teacher candidate. The objectives of the study were to compare the employers perception of personal qualities, personal habits, personal skills/abilities and teaching skills of teachers, desired by the market and the actual attributes of teachers trained by training institutions. All private schools of the Province Punjab were the population of the study. Three districts of the Punjab province were selected as target population to collect data. Thirty schools from each district were selected as a sample. It was concluded that the difference between desired and possessed qualities is quite significant. It was felt that a strong coordination between training institutions and schools is badly needed to transform training programs to make them compatible with the market demands.

ICMAP: An interactive tool for concept map generation to facilitate learning process

Abstract Human-computer interaction could play an essential role in learning. In distance learning, interactive tools can facilitate the learning process for teachers and students. In this article, the design and implementation of software will be introduced which helps users to learn more with the help of interactive instructions and concept map (Cmap) generation. Cmaps are graphical visualisations of knowledge about a topic, in which the concepts of a subject are meaningfully related to each other. Cmaps are widely used in E-learning and proved to be helpful to learners and informative to teachers. The step-by-step process of making a Cmap by means of specific tools with specific interfaces will result in a better learning process. Therefore, with this tool, a learner can make Cmaps stage by stage with necessary textual or graphical instructions. Other interactive features such as colours and message boxes are utilised to instruct, assure or warn the user when making a Cmap. Some other attributes of the tool help teachers receive a report about studentsˆˆe2ˆˆ80ˆˆ99 frequent mistakes in order to understand which part of the course should be developed.

A mandatory, high-stakes National Teacher Evaluation System: Perceptions and attributions of teachers who actively refuse to participate

This study examines why some public elementary school teachers openly refuse participation in a mandatory national, standards-based teacher evaluation program. We describe the perceptions these “rebel” teachers have of the evaluation system, studying their open resistance based on the meanings they construct, and elaborated an explanatory model for their behaviour. In-depth interviews with nine teachers were analyzed using Grounded Theory. Findings indicate that there are several factors related to teachers’ refusal, among them teachers’ perceived lack of legitimacy of the evaluation system, their negative emotions, including fear of results, and characteristics of the culture of the teaching profession in Chile.

The Complex Role of Veterinary Clinical Teachers: How Is Their Role Perceived and What Is Expected of Them?

The purpose of this study was to identify personal attributes in veterinary clinical teachers that are valued most by members of their work environment (fellow faculty, clinical training scholars [CTS; residents], undergraduate students, and referring veterinary surgeons) and to determine whether the opinions of these subgroups differed. Faculty (n=50), CTS (n=35), students (n=200), and referring veterinary surgeons (n=25) were presented with a list of 15 potentially desirable attributes. Respondents were asked to rank the three most important and the three least important attributes of effective clinical teachers. Respondents were also asked to select in which of the three main activities (clinical service, teaching, or research) in which clinical teachers currently invest the most and the least effort and in which they should invest the most and the least effort. All respondent groups agreed that "competence-knowledge" was among the most desirable attributes. Faculty, undergraduate students, and referring veterinary surgeons additionally included "enthusiasm" in the top three, whereas CTS regarded "respects independence" as more important. All respondent groups consistently chose "scholarly activity" as one of the three least important characteristics. A similar number of faculty members (38%) expressed that the greatest effort should be invested in clinical service or teaching, and the greatest proportions of CTS (44%) and students (56%) felt that most emphasis should be put on teaching alone. The differences in opinion between respondent groups regarding importance of attributes and emphasis of activity indicate that what is perceived as effective performance of clinical teachers differs depending on the role of those who engage with them.

Anytime, anywhere, anyplace: Articulating the meaning of flexible delivery in built environment education

This paper describes a process for negotiating aspects of flexible learning through the consideration of flexibility from student, teacher and institutional perspectives. The process aimed to reconcile, in an Australian school of architecture, the competing demands of learner's increasing flexibility demands, teacher's attributes and pedagogical objectives and the structural limitations that militate against the delivery, resourcing and maintenance of flexibility. Results indicated that the only categories of flexibility (out of time, content, access/entry requirements, pedagogy and delivery) that were demanded by students were pedagogy (but only in the choice of working in groups) and delivery; whereas teachers were merely willing to offer flexibility in delivery. Thus, what students desired of teaching, and what teachers were able to provide, were multiple mediums of knowledge delivery that allowed students flexibility in when and where they could learn. These findings, it is suggested, have relevance for course redesign throughout the creative/visual arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teacher, the learner and the method

Key content The modern teacher of obstetrics and gynaecology provides knowledge, acts as a role model, facilitates learning and plans assessments. Doctors training in obstetrics and gynaecology in the UK are adult learners who work in the National Health Service and undergo training in the core curriculum of the RCOG. There are various teaching methods that can be applied in different scenarios for the maximum benefit of learners. Learning objectives To be aware of the attributes of good teachers and learners. To understand different methods of teaching and how they can be applied in the specialty. Ethical issues What methods of teaching can be employed in the clinical learning environment which would be of maximum benefit to learners while protecting the safety of patients? What are the hallmarks of the model teacher and the model learner? Please cite this article as: Duthie SJ, Garden AS. The teacher, the learner and the method. The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist 2010;12:273–280.

Teachers matter: Measures of teacher effectiveness in low-income minority schools

Teachers make a difference in student academic growth. Students from low-income, minority communities attend schools with less resources and less qualified teachers than students in wealthier communities. The Race to the Top (RTTT) policy by the U.S. Department of Education has attempted to address the achievement gap based on SES and the disparity in the quality of teachers between communities. The policy stipulates that teacher effectiveness be determined, in significant part, by student growth measures and supplemented with multiple observation-based assessments. The emphasis placed on student outcomes to indicate teacher effects has served to link teacher evaluations with teacher effectiveness. This review article examines the reported benefits and critical responses to the use of a prominent student growth measure, the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), in terms of its implementation as an evaluation tool of teacher effectiveness in low-income, minority schools. Models of observational teacher evaluations, taking into consideration common attributes of effective teachers in low-income schools, are presented as supplemental measures to provide more in-depth information to interpret value-added analyses and to minimize possible misinterpretation of student growth data or the misclassification of teachers’ effectiveness for teachers in low-income schools. Information obtained from a combination of evaluation measures can be used to identify both effective and ineffective teachers, to target areas in need of improvement to increase teacher effectiveness, and to make decisions concerning the equitable distribution of effective teachers, especially for students who are most in need.

Practicum Experience In Teacher Education

Teacher education programs are designed to develop professionals who are prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century classrooms and workplace. To this end, the teacher education program must aim to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes of pre-service teachers to prepare them to teach effectively in the schools systems. It is, therefore, argued that the academic program of the teacher education should be coupled with an important and integral component called school -based experiences i.e. practicum which provides students with supervised experiences and help the student teachers to understand the full scope of teachers role. Many have also suggested that these experiences are very powerful in shaping pre-service teachers as they are real in contrast to the artificial environment of the tertiary education courses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to address the need of and justification for school based practicum experience. Attempt was also made to show the current debates and future direction of practicum in teacher education.

Developing a scale for teacher integration of information and communication technology in grades 1–9

AbstractThere is no unified view about how teachers' integration of information and communication technology (ICT) should be measured. While many instruments have focused on the technological aspects, recent studies have suggested teachers' pedagogical considerations, professional development, and emerging ethical and safety issues should be included when assessing teachers' ICT literacy. Using the performance standards created by the International Society for Technology in Education, a group of Taiwanese teachers developed equivalent items. After consulting expert panels and interviewing teachers, a scale was constructed. Using this instrument, 3729 teachers from grades 1 through 9 in Taiwan were sampled. Half of the data was analysed by exploratory factor analysis to find the underpinning structure, and the second half was analysed by confirmatory factor analysis to verify the subscales. The results confirmed six subscales for teachers' ICT integration: (1) information collection and preparation; (2) material production and troubleshooting; (3) communication and sharing; (4) planning, teaching and evaluation; (5) professional development and self‐study; and (6) ethical, health and safety issues. Using two teacher attributes, school levels and course or degree obtained, the scale was further verified for its feasibility. The established scale examines the existing concerns for technology, pedagogy and professional development at once with a new addition of ethical and safety issues, which demand growing attention in teachers of future generation.

Caring Behaviors of Highly Motivating and Less Motivating Korean Teachers of English

This study examined the differences in the caring behaviors of three highly motivating and three less motivating Korean middle school EFL teachers, as perceived by 7th and 8th graders. A Korean sentence-completion item, “I believe my English teacher cares about me because…,” generated 214 student responses in Korean. The caring attributes of teachers that emerged from students’ qualitative reports of their perceptions of teacher caring fell along the dimensions of Dornyei’s (2001) model of a motivational practice. While caring behaviors of both types of teachers showed similarities, some behaviors that were reported for highly motivating teachers were clearly more helpful for learners than other behaviors that were cited for less motivating teachers. Student perceptions of caring in the highly motivating teachers’ classes were found to be substantially associated with the students’ positive evaluation of learning tasks as being varied, fun, interesting, and relevant. The results also underscored the importance of teachers’ caring for students as learners before caring for them as persons. Finally, students of highly motivating teachers made as many reports of teachers being uncaring as students of less motivating teachers.