Formative evaluation ofteaching performance

Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam)

INEE seminar, Mexico City, 5 December 2013

www.dylanwiliam.org

Outline

1. Education matters, for individuals and society2. Teaching quality is the crucial variable3. Teaching quality is not the same as teacher quality4. Predicting who will be good teachers is almost impossible5. Evaluating teacher quality is inherently difficult6. Professional development is the key to teacher quality7. Feedback is more complicated than generally assumed8. Formative evaluation of teaching performance9. Strategies for formative evaluation10. Validity of formative evaluation of teaching11. Implementing formative evaluation of teaching

Education matters:for individuals and society

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What is the purpose of education?4

Four main philosophies of education Personal empowerment Cultural transmission Preparation for citizenship Preparation for work

All are important Any education system is a (sometimes uneasy)

compromise between these four forces

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Raising achievement matters

For individuals: Increased lifetime earnings Improved health Longer life

For society: Lower criminal justice costs Lower healthcare costs Increased economic growth:

Net present value to Mexico of a 25-point increase on PISA: US$5 trillion

Net present value to Mexico of getting all students to 400 on PISA: US$26 trillion (Hanushek & Woessman, 2010)

Teaching quality is the crucial variable

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We need to focus on classrooms, not schools

In most countries, variability at the classroom level is much greater than that at school level. As long as you go to school, it doesn’t matter very

much which school you go to. But it matters very much which classrooms you are in.

Within schools

Between schools

McGaw (2008)

Within-school variation: 64%Between school variation

not explained by social background: 18%

Between school variation explained by social back-ground of students: 5% Between school variation

explained by social back-ground of schools: 16%

Teaching quality is not the same as teacher quality

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Teaching quality/teacher quality

Teaching quality depends on a number of factors The time teachers have to plan teaching The size of classes The resources available The skills of the teacher

All of these are important, but the quality of the teacher seems to be especially important

Teacher quality11

Take a group of 50 teachers all teaching the same subject: In the classroom of the best teacher, students learn in

six months what students taught by the average teacher will take a year to learn.

In the classroom of the least effective teacher, students will take two years to learn the same amount (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2006)

And in the classrooms of the best teachers, students from disadvantaged backgrounds learn as much as others (Hamre & Pianta, 2005)

The “dark matter” of teacher quality12

Teachers make a difference But what makes the difference in teachers?

In particular, can we predict student progress from: Teacher qualifications? Value-added? Teacher observation?

Predicting who will be good teachers is almost impossible

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Teacher qualifications and student progress14

Mathematics Reading

Primary Middle High Primary Middle High

General theory of education coursesTeaching practice coursesPedagogical content coursesAdvanced university coursesAptitude test scores

Harris and Sass (2007)

Mathematics Reading

Primary Middle High Primary Middle High

General theory of education courses —Teaching practice courses — +Pedagogical content courses + +Advanced university courses — +Aptitude test scores —

Evaluating teacher quality is inherently difficult

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Framework for teaching (Danielson 1996)

Four domains of professional practice1. Planning and preparation2. Classroom environment3. Instruction4. Professional responsibilities

Links with student achievement (Sartain, et al. 2011) Domains 1 and 4: no impact on student achievement Domains 2 and 3: some impact on student achievement

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A framework for teaching (Danielson, 1996)

Domain 2: The classroom environment 2a: Creating an environment of respect and rapport 2b: Establishing a culture for learning 2c: Managing classroom procedures 2d: Managing student behavior 2e: Organizing physical space

Domain 3: Instruction 3a: Communicating with students 3b: Using questioning and discussion techniques 3c: Engaging students in learning 3d: Using assessment in instruction 3e: Demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness

Observations and teacher quality18

Unsatisfactory Basic Proficient Distinguished-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

Reading Mathematics

Perc

enta

ge ch

ange

in ra

te o

f lea

rn-

ing

Sartain, Stoelinga, Brown, Luppescu, Matsko, Miller, Durwood, Jiang, and Glazer (2011)

So, the highest-rated teachers are 30% more productive than the lowest rated

But the best teachers are 400% more productive than the least effective

We don’t know much about teaching…19

We cannot predict how good a teacher will be We cannot tell good teaching when we see it

Expert ratings of teaching Student ratings of teaching

We cannot evaluate teaching with test scores

Traditional approaches to improving teaching

Two main approaches Removing ineffective teachers Rewarding good teachers

Problems Consume large amounts of management time Technically difficult to do well Create competition between teachers Differentially effective according to task complexity

The story so far

Improving student achievement is a priority for every country

Improving student achievement requires improving teacher quality

Improving teacher quality requires investment in serving teachers

Professional development is the key to teacher quality

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General conclusions about expertise

Elite performance is the result of at least a decade of maximal efforts to improve performance through an optimal distribution of deliberate practice

What distinguishes experts from others is the commitment to deliberate practice

Deliberate practice is an effortful activity that can be sustained only for a

limited time each day neither motivating nor enjoyable—it is instrumental in

achieving further improvement in performance

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Expertise

According to Berliner (1994), experts: Excel mainly in their own domain Often develop automaticity for the repetitive operations that are

needed to accomplish their goals Are more sensitive to the task demands and social situation when

solving problems Are more opportunistic and flexible in their teaching than novices Represent problems in qualitatively different ways than novices Have faster and more accurate pattern recognition capabilities Perceive meaningful patterns in the domain in which they are

experienced Begin to solve problems slower but bring richer and more personal

sources of information to bear

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Effects of experience in teaching

0 1 2 3 to 5-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

Years of teaching experience

Extr

a m

onth

s per

yea

r o f

lear

ning

25

0 1 2 3 to 5-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

Years of teaching experience

Mathematics Reading

Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain (2005)

Implications for education systems

Pursuing a strategy of getting the “best and brightest” into teaching is unlikely to succeed

Currently all teachers slow, and most actually stop, improving after two or three years in the classroom

Expertise research therefore suggests that they are only beginning to scratch the surface of what they are capable of

What we need is to persuade those with a real passion for working with young people to become teachers, and to continue to improve as long as they stay in the job.

There is no limit to what we can achieve if we support our teachers in the right way

Feedback is generally more complex than generally assumed

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Important caveats about research findings28

Educational research can only tell us what was, not what might be.

Moreover, in education, “What works?” is not the right question, because everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere, which is why in education, the right question is, “Under what

conditions does this work?”

Effects of formative assessment

Source Effect sizeKluger & DeNisi (1996) 0.41Black &Wiliam (1998) 0.4 to 0.7Wiliam et al., (2004) 0.32Hattie & Timperley (2007) 0.96Shute (2008) 0.4 to 0.8

Standardized effect size: differences in means, measured in population standard deviations

Understanding meta-analysis30

A technique for aggregating results from different studies by converting empirical results to a common measure (usually effect size)

Standardized effect size is defined as:

Problems with meta-analysis The “file drawer” problem Variation in population variability Selection of studies Sensitivity of outcome measures

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Effects of feedback

Kluger & DeNisi (1996) review of 3000 research reports Excluding those:

without adequate controls with poor design with fewer than 10 participants where performance was not measured without details of effect sizes

left 131 reports, 607 effect sizes, involving 12652 individuals

On average, feedback increases achievement Effect sizes highly variable 38% (50 out of 131) of effect sizes were negative

Getting feedback right is hard

Response type Feedback indicates performance…

falls short of goal exceeds goal

Change behavior Increase effort Exert less effort

Change goal Reduce aspiration Increase aspiration

Abandon goal Decide goal is too hard Decide goal is too easy

Reject feedback Feedback is ignored Feedback is ignored

Kluger and DeNisi’s conclusions…

These considerations of utility and alternative interventions suggest that even an FI [feedback intervention] with demonstrated positive effects on performance should not be administered whenever possible. Rather, additional development of FIT [feedback intervention theory] is needed to establish the circumstance under which positive FI effects on performance are also lasting and efficient and when these effects are transient and have questionable utility. This research must focus on the processes induced by FIs and not on the general question of whether FIs improve performance—look at how little progress 90 years of attempts to answer the latter question have yielded. (p. 278)

Formative evaluation of teaching performance

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The evidence base for formative assessment

Fuchs & Fuchs (1986) Natriello (1987) Crooks (1988) Bangert-Drowns, et al. (1991) Dempster (1991, 1992) Elshout-Mohr (1994) Kluger & DeNisi (1996) Black & Wiliam (1998)

Nyquist (2003) Brookhart (2004) Allal & Lopez (2005) Köller (2005) Brookhart (2007) Wiliam (2007) Hattie & Timperley (2007) Shute (2008)

Assessment for learning/formative assessment

“Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning. It thus differs from assessment designed primarily to serve the purposes of accountability, or of ranking, or of certifying competence. An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information that teachers and their students can use as feedback in assessing themselves and one another and in modifying the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes “formative assessment” when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs.” (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2004 p. 10)

Theoretical questions37

Need for clear definitions So that research outcomes are commensurable

Theorization and definition Possible variables

Category (instruments, outcomes, functions) Beneficiaries (teachers, learners) Timescale (months, weeks, days, hours, minutes) Consequences (outcomes, instruction, decisions) Theory of action (what gets formed?)

Formative assessment: a new definition

“An evaluation of teacher performance functions formatively to the extent that evidence of teacher performance that is elicited by the assessment is interpreted by leaders, teachers, or their peers to make decisions about the professional development of the teacher that are likely to be better, or better founded, than those that would have been taken in the absence of that evidence.”

Formative evaluation involves the creation of, and capitalization upon, moments of contingency in the regulation of teachers’ learning processes

Kinds of regulation (Perrenoud, 1998) Proactive Interactive Retroactive

Agents Leaders (external regulation) Peers (co-regulation) Teachers (self-regulation)

Strategies of formative evaluation

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Unpacking formative assessment of teaching

Where the teacher is now

Where the teacheris going

How to get there

Leader

Peer

Teacher

Clarifying, sharing and

understanding learning

intentions

Engineering effective situations, tasks and activities that elicit

evidence of development

Providing feed-back that moves learners forward

Activating teachers as learningresources for one another

Activating teachers as ownersof their own learning

Validity of formative evaluation

Validity: an evolving concept43

Evolution of the idea A property of a test A property of students’ results on a test A property of the inferences drawn on the basis of test results

For any test: some inferences are warranted some are not

“One validates not a test but an interpretation of data arising from a specified procedure” (Cronbach, 1971; emphasis in original)

No such thing as a valid assessment!

Validating formative evaluation

An assessment is a procedure for making inferences: about what the learner knows (summative) about what to do next (formative)

Summative inferences are validated by consistency of meanings across different readers

Formative inferences are validated by the consequences for learners

Implementing formative evaluation of teaching performance

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A model for teacher learning

Content, then process Content (what we want teachers to change):

Evidence Ideas (strategies and techniques)

Process (how to go about change): Choice Flexibility Small steps Accountability Support

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Choice

A strengths-based approach to change48

Talent development requires attending to both strengths and weaknesses

The question is how to distribute attention between the two: For novices, attention to weaknesses is likely to have

the greatest payoff For more experienced teachers, attention to strengths

is likely to be more advantageous

Flexibility

Tight, but loose

Two opposing factors in any school reform Need for flexibility to adapt to local circumstances Need to maintain fidelity to the theory of action of the reform, to

minimise “lethal mutations” The “tight but loose” formulation:

… combines an obsessive adherence to central design principles (the “tight” part) with accommodations to the needs, resources, constraints, and affordances that occur in any school or district(the “loose” part), but only where these do not conflict with the theory of action of the intervention.

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Small steps

Expertise

According to Berliner (1994), experts: Excel mainly in their own domain Often develop automaticity for the repetitive operations that are

needed to accomplish their goals Are more sensitive to the task demands and social situation when

solving problems Are more opportunistic and flexible in their teaching than novices Represent problems in qualitatively different ways than novices Have faster and more accurate pattern recognition capabilities Perceive meaningful patterns in the domain in which they are

experienced Begin to solve problems slower but bring richer and more personal

sources of information to bear

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Looking at the wrong knowledge

The most powerful teacher knowledge is not explicit: That’s why telling teachers what to do doesn’t work. What we know is more than we can say. And that is why most professional development has been relatively

ineffective. Improving practice involves changing habits, not adding

knowledge: That’s why it’s hard:

And the hardest bit is not getting new ideas into people’s heads. It’s getting the old ones out.

That’s why it takes time. But it doesn’t happen naturally:

If it did, the most experienced teachers would be the most productive, and that’s not true (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2006).

Hand hygiene in hospitalsStudy Focus Compliance rate

Preston, Larson, & Stamm (1981) Open ward 16%

ICU 30%

Albert & Condie (1981) ICU 28% to 41%

Larson (1983) All wards 45%

Donowitz (1987) Pediatric ICU 30%

Graham (1990) ICU 32%

Dubbert (1990) ICU 81%

Pettinger & Nettleman (1991) Surgical ICU 51%

Larson, et al. (1992) Neonatal ICU 29%

Doebbeling, et al. (1992) ICU 40%

Zimakoff, et al. (1992) ICU 40%

Meengs, et al. (1994) ER (Casualty) 32%

Pittet, Mourouga, & Perneger (1999) All wards 48%

ICU 36%

Pittet (2001)

Accountability

Making a commitment56

Action planning: Forces teachers to make their ideas concrete and creates a record Makes the teachers accountable for doing what they promised Requires each teacher to focus on a small number of changes Requires the teachers to identify what they will give up or reduce

A good action plan: Does not try to change everything at once Spells out specific changes in teaching practice Relates to the five “key strategies” of AFL Is achievable within a reasonable period of time Identifies something that the teacher will no longer do or will do

less of

Support

Supportive accountability

What is needed from teachers: A commitment to:

The continual improvement of practice Focus on those things that make a difference to students

What is needed from leaders: A commitment to engineer effective learning

environments for teachers by: Creating expectations for continually improving practice Keeping the focus on the things that make a difference to

students Providing the time, space, dispensation, and support for

innovation Supporting risk-taking

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