Great teachers= Great results??? I have a problem with the Queensland Government’s slogan “Great teachers= Great Results”. Anyone who knows or has had experience in teaching will understand how shallow and uninformed this oversimplified statement is. On the surface it would seem to make sense... if teachers were cooks producing cookies or factory workers turning out machines: things that have no other variables. If a cook is having trouble with the dough they are using then they need to get better dough. That would seem to be their responsibility and so we can expect that a better cook will produce better results. In using this slogan, this government is treating the students of Queensland like inanimate pieces of dough or some other raw material. The obvious simplification is that our students are not inanimate and neither are the families as well as other people and events that have shaped students between their birth and when teachers come into contact with them. These students are individuals- a statement which is reflected in the curriculum documents used in across Australia. This means that the “results” whatever that means will be/ must be individual and not predicted only by teachers but by their environments both in and outside of the classroom /schoolyard as well. The percentage of time etc that a teacher has in the student’s life is quite small by comparison with many other environments they experiences all of which impact on their performance (whatever that is – undefined as it is in the slogan). This is not to say that a single teacher cannot have a truly significant effect in a student’s life- far from it, but to by implication blame a teacher for the lack of performance in a student’s life is not only simplistic it is dangerous. It is dangerous in that it spectacularly fails to recognise the important root causes of social, cultural and philosophical disadvantage inherent in our society. The gap between indigenous and other statistics in terms of health and education is only the most obvious example. A good teacher can make a massive difference in a student’s life, but just because they have a good teacher is not going to ensure that students achieve “great results”. There are too many other variables. The act of providing better education, professional development and support for teachers deserves applause, but to assume that a student failed the system as result of their own or their teachers’ failures does not allow a wide enough range of responses to be effective in providing better outcomes. This is also not to say that teachers should not be held accountable. We should expect accountability from the teacher, but how we truly judge that accountability is not as simple as collecting exam results and posting them on a website. Because of the individual nature of each school, comparisons made on the basis of the simplified information on websites such as Myschool may be akin comparing apples and space shuttles. If we are interested in making sure that teachers do the best they can then we can examine their practice against what is known of best practice according to experience and research. One example of this is the work done by Marzano which has been adopted by Sunshine Coast schools. This provides a framework for judging what can be considered best practice and can be applied in a flexible way so as to be relevant to all levels and situations. This would then find us judging the worth of a school or a teacher not by the results of the students but by whether they are acting in the best interests of those for whom they have responsibility. A great student may thrive and amaze because of, or in spite of the teachers they have. Others may struggle, fail or succeed because of or in spite of the teachers they have. Blaming teachers for success or failure of students denies the responsibility that students have for their actions and the consequences of those actions. All a teacher can do is to provide the best possible opportunities for students to take advantage of. It would be wise to hold teachers accountable for those and measure them according to frameworks like Marzano’s and others. Then we can examine other influences to determine what else will improve the outcomes for students. There is a massive range of variables to deal with from dysfunctional relationships to economic disadvantage, cultural issues and physical and mental health to name just a few. Another relevant variable is our own expectations and how realistic they are in terms of the amount of curriculum material that teachers, schools and students are expected to cover in depth. To ignore these and blame teachers only is to be spectacularly irresponsible and short sighted, but in the media and politics of course it is far easier to keep things simple. However it is ignorant to portray student outcomes as a simple story or slogan and ignorant of the reader /viewer if they accept it. Rather than hiding behind a simplistic slogan like “Great Teachers= Great Results” I’d prefer to see something like “Great teachers= great opportunities for students, so now what else can we do for them?”
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 10:43:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015