Contemporary Issues in Teaching - Essay Example

Contemporary Issues in Teaching: How to choose effective Teachers affiliation Over the years, ities and policy makers have attempted to come up with ways to improve the quality of education that is being offered in various institutions across the country, and the world at large. One of the ways that they have adopted is ensuring that there is a very effective teaching force that is tasked with the role of ensuring that they provide quality education to children and other people that are seeking this education. Research that has been carried out recently has shown that using paper qualification to determine teachers that will be effective does not actually have much positive results that one would anticipate. This means that increasing requirements for one to enter into the teaching fraternity or to determine whether one is an effective teacher does not lead getting effective teachers. In any case, some untrained teachers have gone to become as effective, some even more effective than graduate teachers. This means that the government and other stake holders need to adopt other ways that will ensure that the teachers that are brought into the systems are effective. As noted, looking at their paper qualifications only is not enough. Introduction For a number of years now, the quality of elementary as well as secondary education being offered in the United States is said to be faltering. Due to the worries that the public education that is being offered by most education centers, more so public ones, the authorities are seeking different ways that will ensure that the quality of education being offered is improved. If they fail to do this, poor education standards will definitely affect the productivity of the country. Traditionally, one policy that the stakeholders have been using in their attempt to improve the quality of education that is offered by the teachers in raising the hurdle to become one. The qualifications to enter the profession have been increasing with time. A good example is the No Child Should Be Left Behind act that sort to ensure that the academic qualifications of teachers who teach core subjects is increased. This means that teachers who teach core subjects are highly qualified, judging by the papers that they have (Gordon, Kane, &Staiger, 2006). When these teachers are already employed, there are very few measures that are taken to monitor their productivity. Non performing teachers are not involuntarily discontinued with work while, performing teachers are not motivated. Also, career development programs initiated by the relevant stake holders are very rare. This means that it is very hard to determine a teacher who is effective and one that is not effective since they have all come to equilibrium. For this reason, this research paper seeks to unearth different strategies that stakeholders should take to get teachers that are effective. The main aim of this paper is to look at how principles or other stakeholders that are looking for teachers can be able to determine which teachers are effective, and those that are not. Most principles, when determining the efficiency of a teacher could highlight a performing or non performing teacher. However, they are able to determine the level of productivity of a teacher who is in the middle of the efficiency distribution. This paper will be seeking to bring into light different strategies that these principles and other stake holders to determine the efficiency of a teacher. Factors essential/desirable for desirable teachers The quality of teachers is one main aspect that is important in a school. This is because this is the factor that influences success and performance of the students. The quality of a teacher is determined by a number of characteristics. The characteristics discussed below, are the desirable ones that a teacher needs to have so that they can they can be said to be of adequate quality. It should be noted that these characteristics are measurable, which means that they can be differentiated from teacher to teacher. These will make it very easy for the principles or other stakeholders seeking to employ or audit teachers can qualitatively differentiate two teachers. 1. Teacher experience A number of researches conducted have shown that the experience of a teacher matters very much. A few people have argued that returns to experienced are only noticed over a few years, but according to two researches shown below, you will realize that this is a misconception, and that it matters even for more than 15 years. However, it is true that effectiveness with experience changes a lot during the first 4 years of experience, from where it increases at a slower rate than initially. Also, it should be noted that effectiveness with experience will differ depending on the context. For example, the environment where the teacher works will influence their effectiveness. When a teacher works closely with experienced and high quality peers, they will gain experience faster than a case where a teacher works with less experienced and to some extent low quality peers (Schmidt, 2010). Together with the size of the class, experiences of teachers are the two main factors that are said to facilitate high achievement among students. As realized from the graph below, that is based on research conducted for over five years, as the teacher gained experience, their effectiveness increased. Figure 1Retrieved from http://educationnext.org/photo-finish/ This is contrary to the belief that teaching experience is only relevant when analysing teachers for a few years. The graph below shows the effectiveness of teachers over a period of more than 20 years, where similar results were shown. Here, as the teachers’ experience increased, there was an increase in scores in the tests conducted in the schools. This means that teacher experience influenced the results in the kindergarten. Retrieved from http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/01/teaching-experience-matters.html 2. Teacher preparation programs The institution that a teacher attends to train also affects their efficiency when teaching, more so when it comes secondary schools. This is because different teaching colleges have different training strategies, which means that they will produce different levels of quality. However, the level of quality in the college will be different in the same college depending on the individual being trained. One aspect that stands out is that stands out is that different teacher training colleges have different approaches to training teachers, albeit there being a single curriculum, which means that some institutions will produce better quality teachers. The lecturers and facilities available in these teacher training institutions will also determine the quality of teachers to be produced (Upadhya & Singh, 2010). Also, the level of education that the teacher receives will have an impact on their productivity. For instance, a teacher with a master’s level of education will most likely be more productive than a teacher that gained only college education. Again, this aspect could differ and may not apply to all the cases, there are exceptions to this. 3. Teacher certification As noted in figure 1, uncertified teachers performed similarly to certified teachers in math tests, while the performed poorly in reading tests. This means that the certification of teachers could not have a lot of impact on math teachers, while it has a lot of impact on teachers teaching other subjects. Probably this is because they require skills that are taught in teacher training institutions to teach the other subjects, while teaching math requires skills that can be gotten from other areas. Also, since there are other aspects that are taught on the training institutions other than mastery of the subject, which uncertified teachers lack yet, are more vital in teaching other subjects as compared to math. Generally, we can conclude that certified teachers are more efficient than uncertified teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2006). 4. Mastery of coursework Mastery of coursework is different from teacher to teacher. However, teachers who have mastered their coursework will be more effective than teachers who have little mastery of the coursework. This is because, despite teachers having to allocate time to go through the work they will teach before the actual class, it becomes more effective to teach when you have mastery of the coursework. That way, teachers know how best to approach different topics, such that students will grasp points better (Brown, & Fallon, 2010). 5. Test scores The efficiency of teachers is measured by the scores that students that they teach get. Efficient teachers lead their students to score highly in the tests that are given. There are exceptions to this, such that the brightness of students could also matter. For example, a student who is not very bright might fail a test despite being taught by a teacher who is effective. Also, a bright student might pass a test despite having an effective teacher. However, given similar conditions, an effective teacher will be seen by the results of the students. Tests can also be conducted on teachers themselves, to determine their qualification. For example, to determine the mastery of coursework, teachers could be tested on coursework and things concerning this coursework. Also, they could be tested on teaching techniques to determine how well they are aware of these techniques (Rice, 2003). Why choosing the right teacher is important The main aim of a school should be giving quality education to the students. Getting the right teachers ensures this since it is these teachers who give education to the students, with the help of other members of staff and infrastructure available. Being a major factor in provision of education, the right teachers ensure provision of quality education, something that means there are increased chances of attaining the goal of providing quality education. Choosing the right teacher helps in improving the level of education that a school offers, and subsequently the education system in a country. This is because teachers are among the major contributors to effective learning by the students. When teachers are incompetent, it means that the students will not be able to learn, rendering the education given to them useless. The right teachers are also effective in their work. This means that getting the right teachers into the education system means that the chances that the education system is effective will be increased. This is because holding other factors constant, teacher efficiency is the biggest contributor to effective learning by the students. Where there is effective learning by the students, we can conclude that the education system is also effective. In a single school, getting the right teachers will encourage parents to enrol their children to the school since the results will be encouraging. If one goal of the school is to make money, then they will succeed since increased enrolment into the school means increased demand for their services, which often leads to higher returns to the owners of the institution. Most performing schools also charge higher prices for their services. This is guided by the laws of demand and supply which state that where there is increased demand for services, there will be subsequent increase in prices of the same products. This means that the returns on investment will be high. Teacher selection Predicting the work behaviour of a teacher is not easy per say. This is because, as realized, judging the performance of teachers by their papers does not give the real picture. For this reason, when employing teachers will become tough since the people employing them have to rely on on-task activities or pervious performances to determine whether they fit their target. They should also apply the necessary steps of selection and employment for employment. For instance, principals seeking to recruit new teachers could set their targets, and probably set benchmarks that aspiring teachers should meet before they apply for employment. The principal or employment board could state that they are seeking only teachers with a master’s level of education, with 5 years teaching experience, and positive review from some relevant authorities. After doing so, they could then conduct interviews on these teachers, where they could give them tests to get some knowledge of the skills that these teachers have, that could not be captured in their curriculum vitae (Blase &Blase, 2001). Another way of getting quality teachers is poaching them from other institutions. They could highlight the most effective teacher in their localities, mostly by looking at the performance of the students that they teach. Then they could offer them better employment deals to entice them to leave their employers and join them. This is an almost sure way of ensuring that they get to employ teachers who have been tested and they have seen to be effective. References Brown, S. C., & Fallon, M. A. (2010). Teaching inclusively in higher education.Charlotte, N.C: Information Age Pub. Inc. Blase, J., & Blase, J. R. (2001). Empowering teachers: What successful principals do. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from excellent teacher education programs. New York: Wiley. Gordon, R., Kane, T. J., & Staiger, F. O. (2006).Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job. Hamilton Project: Discussion Papers, (1), 1-35. Bibliography: Haimson, L. (2011). NYC Public School Parents: Teaching experience matters!. Nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com. Retrieved 24 April 2014, from http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/01/teaching-experience-matters.html Kane, T. (2007). Photo Finish - Education Next. Education Next. Retrieved 24 April 2014, from http://educationnext.org/photo-finish/ Rice, J. K. (2003). Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.epi.org/publication/books_teacher_quality_execsum_intro/ [Accessed: 15 Apr 2014]. Schmidt, M. (2010). Learning From Teaching Experience: Dewey’s Theory and Preservice Teachers’ Learning. Journal Of Research In Music Education, 58(2), 131-146. doi:10.1177/0022429410368723 Upadhya, B., & Singh, Y. K. (2010). Educational psychology. New Delhi: APH Publishing. Read More