At the university level, developmental teaching programs are a consistent part of continuing education, guiding teachers as they grow and learn new, improved teaching strategies. This method of continuing growth for teachers has a significant academic impact on the students and the university overall.

Research shows that teacher development programs have far-reaching effects beyond the immediate learning of the audience. Instructors take what they have learned into the classroom, students use the knowledge in their application in and out of the course, and teachers share their new ideas with other professionals as they network.

With the potential for such a significant impact, it quickly became apparent that there was a need for a tool to measure teacher development itself.

Taking the Strategies Into the Classroom

Teachers need to be able to map their students’ development appropriately to know when which teaching program they have learned should be applied. By applying all of the curriculum’s standards for achievement, instructors are able to assess their students’ current knowledge base, determine what they are capable of learning and what skills they already have, and then discern the potential skills with the current level of motivation and attitude of each student.

Without the right attitude towards learning, even the student with the most potential won’t grow. This overall holistic analysis aids the instructor in determining which teaching strategies to turn to for instructional purposes.

However, it’s time-consuming and difficult for teachers to create their own evaluative frameworks to regularly monitor student progress. When teachers are caught up in micro organizing their work, they have less time to utilize their teaching strategies and differentiate instruction.

Using an Evaluative Framework to Determine Effectiveness

Each state, and even within counties, has an evaluative framework for teachers to use that helps determine if a teaching strategy has been effective. With so many changes in the standards of education as well as innovative technology, these frameworks are malleable in nature.  

Each framework is designed with the teacher’s self-assessment abilities in mind, as well as the requirement for accountability. Frameworks can be individualized so that a teacher can use them to determine the effectiveness of a particular teaching strategy learned from a developmental teaching program.

But those programs are often done through professional development and continuing education with no way to evaluate their effectiveness. Because of lack of funding and resources, this category of research and review has fallen by the wayside, leaving it up to teachers to use an evaluative framework of their own to determine whether a strategy works or not. 

To guide teachers in understanding whether a method of professional development had impact, some factors are used in the evaluative frameworks:

●      The overall reaction of the students when the strategy is implemented. Students should be approaching the lesson and instructions with an open, interested mind in order for them to absorb the information as much as possible.

●      The learning results after the strategy has been used to impart knowledge. Did the students’ knowledge, skill, or way of thinking change?

●      The change in the behavior of the students and how they approach the skill or lesson being learned. Students should be more comfortable with a subject once they have been exposed to it correctly. 

●      The final quantitative grades after the unit is completed. A breakdown by standard should show the teacher which strategies imparted long-term knowledge and which ones were learned for the lesson only. 

Evaluation frameworks are intended to help the instructor measure the outcomes of a teaching strategy, but they are not the only method that can be used. As long as the measurement tool can answer what specific teaching stages were, how the instruction impacted the students’ reaction, learning results, behavior, and quantitative grades, it can be used for the determination of effectiveness.

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