close window | tools for reporting on teaching home

Article

Getting to Great: How Teachers Become Excellent

“… an effective teacher is one who learns from teaching rather than one who has finished learning how to teach.”   - Linda Darling-Hammond, 1999

Introduction

The definition of a “highly qualified teacher” many states use in response to the federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation is a person who has a Bachelor’s Degree, a credential, and has passed tests in the subjects he or she teaches. But, initial preparation is just that – a baseline from which to begin one’s career and a start down the path toward lifelong learning. Yes, some teachers are “naturals” and demonstrate their talents early on. Nonetheless, getting to great teaching does not come automatically or easily, even for the naturals. It takes time, intelligence, dedication, and opportunities to learn from others throughout one’s career. For teachers, like great artists and exceptional athletes, performing at the highest levels requires discipline, hard work, staying up-to-date in the field, learning by doing, and reflecting upon the lessons learned. It is a process of perfecting one’s craft that never ends.

That perfecting one’s craft is an ongoing process is not surprising when one stops to consider what excellent teachers are capable of doing. Most importantly, the best teachers achieve enormous success with students who come to them from a wide range of starting points. They challenge the gifted child who knows what you will say before you say it. They teach academic language to the student who speaks no English and may not be literate in his or her native language. They jumpstart the one who has not been to school yet and has no idea what to expect. Excellent teachers bring up to grade level the child with neurological or physical challenges that make high academic performance a struggle. They establish classrooms where children help each other, benefiting everyone and especially the child whose inappropriate social behavior makes learning difficult. These are tremendous challenges.

To meet these challenges, excellent teachers must know deeply the subjects they teach, present key ideas in compelling ways, organize lessons into coherent wholes that build upon previous learning, and adapt instruction to fit the learning style and current understanding of each child. Excellent teachers know their children very well, think of themselves as responsible for the learning of “their children,” and strive to reach every student so that they excel. The best educators adapt their approaches in light of the responses of the students, sometimes in the moment of teaching, but certainly in the long-term plan for how to help their children access knowledge and skills with confidence. On top of that, they establish an expectation that the children will respect and help each other to enhance the learning possibilities at school. In short, the best teachers build communities of learners while they teach each child how to learn on his or her own.

How can we assist teachers striving to attain the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind necessary to become such highly effective educators? Start by giving new teachers an expert colleague as a “coach” to demonstrate how to do this complex job with kids day-to-day. Many districts and states now provide this source of guidance, but that is just the beginning of the never-ending journey to excellence. Helping teachers achieve higher levels of expertise throughout their careers should be a central goal of all professional development.

Effective Professional Development

Professional development approaches that work tend to be grounded in experiences, designed to respond to questions the teachers pose, collaborative, and connected to the lessons being taught in class. They also involve the exploration of content as well as methods of teaching that content. Researchers also have found that modeling, coaching, and helping teachers solve specific teaching problems makes professional development more effective (Darling-Hammond, 1999; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon & Birman, 2002; Joyce & Showers, 2002). Recent research on professional development for teachers tells us more about these essential qualities:

• Encourage teachers to reflect upon student learning and effects of teaching
  Opportunities for self-reflection, sharing “what works” with colleagues, and renewal of knowledge about new research in teaching and learning should be offered to teachers by the school, district, and state. Parents usually expect all of a teacher’s time to be spent with their children. U.S. teachers actually teach more hours every day than teachers in any other industrialized nation. The public is hesitant to pay for time for teacher training or planning. But to get great teaching and student success, schools must organize time during the work day for teachers to reflect upon how their teaching has affected student learning and to plan next steps. As Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University notes, “research suggests that this type of professional development is often more meaningful for teachers and has greater impact on teaching practice” (1999) than approaches that focus primarily on presenting information to teachers.
• Provide professional development that focuses on content
  Often teacher training is generic and assumes that the content of the training will apply across all subjects. Examples are training in cooperative learning approaches or classroom management strategies. Those techniques can be applied in lessons involving all sorts of content. However, research suggests that teachers change their practices and improve student learning when professional development centers on particular content and how to teach it. (Cohen & Hill, 2001; Kennedy, 1998; Reitzug, 2002). In fact, Mary Kennedy, from Michigan State University, found that “programs that focus on subject matter knowledge and on student learning of particular subject matter are likely to have larger positive effects on student learning than are programs that focus mainly on teaching behaviors” (1998). In addition, Kennedy (1998) argues that the content of staff development is likely the most critical ingredient in achieving growth in student learning as compared with the method of delivery of the professional development (e.g. amount of time spent in training). In addition to a focus on subject matter content, Joyce and Showers (2002) make the case that the content of professional development needs to be aligned with school goals and robust enough to bring about the hoped-for changes in teaching. Weak content can sabotage the sincerest attempts to improve teaching.
• Expand the repertoire of strategies teachers use through modeling, practice, and coaching
  The goal of professional development should be to increase student learning. For that to happen, teachers have to actually use what they’ve learned in the classroom. When teachers seek to refine existing knowledge and skill, professional development may successfully rely upon presentations, discussions, and occasional demonstrations as the method of delivery. But when the content is new and complex, and transfer of what is learned to daily practice is the goal, then staff development should include the theory behind the concepts, modeling of the skill, opportunities to practice, and coaching (Joyce & Showers, 2002).
• Create opportunities for collaboration with colleagues
  Teachers learn together while planning, developing materials, observing each other teach, and assessing student learning. In fact, collaborative professional development, “involving a sharing of knowledge among educators,” is likely to lead to improved teaching (Darling-Hammond, 1999). The effects of teachers coaching each other go beyond mastery of new knowledge and skills, however. Collaborative activities like coaching appear to facilitate professional and collegial relationships such as developing a shared language about teaching (Joyce & Showers, 2002).
• Treat teaching as a learning profession
  Linda Darling-Hammond (1999) argues that we need “to develop the perception and reality of the teaching profession as a lifelong journey of learning rather than a final destination of ‘knowing’ how to teach.” To get there we need to have a commitment to professional development for teachers of a different kind and we need to restructure schools to support continuous learning. In a review of research on effective teaching, Darling-Hammond found that teachers who were engaged in continually updating their education seemed to be more effective. She notes, “these findings may indicate that it is not only the knowledge acquired with ongoing professional development … but also the teacher’s enthusiasm for learning that relates to increased student achievement” (2000).

The importance of an ongoing emphasis on a teacher’s own learning can be seen in other ways as well. For example, when examining the effects of teacher experience on student achievement, many researchers have found that after the first five years of experience, the effects of increased experience on teacher effectiveness tend to level off (see the literature review “Why Excellent Teaching Matters and What it Looks Like”). However, this trend can be countered by a commitment to ongoing learning. Darling-Hammond reports that “veteran teachers in settings that emphasize continual learning and collaboration continue to improve their performance” (2000). If teachers continuously improve their practice, then student learning should continue to improve as well.

Lessons from the Field

The kind of continuous learning through self-reflection, collaboration, and practice described above is hard work; certainly it demands more of teachers than simply attending a lecture or workshop. In Cotsen Family Foundation’s experience providing professional development opportunities to hundreds of teachers in Southern California, there are supports that can facilitate a teacher’s learning and improve the likelihood they will achieve excellence. Two important supports for effective professional development include:

• Expand teachers’ vision of what is possible by seeing the best practices
  Seeing great teaching in action, especially if it is repeated in classroom after classroom across a school, is a great motivator for change. School and district cultures tend to be insular and the range of ideas about pedagogy is limited. Getting out of one’s own environment and observing effective colleagues in other school systems can change a teacher’s vision of what students can achieve and how other teachers make that happen.
• Provide the dollars and time necessary to keep learning
  Teachers need to have substitute time and guidance about where to see examples of great teaching outside of their own districts, money and time to attend conferences about new teaching approaches and new research about how students learn, time to plan and reflect with colleagues at their schools and districts, and opportunities for peer coaching. The effective professional development practices described above require both time and money, but good professional development that gets results is more cost-effective than bad professional development that does not.

Conclusion

We know how important quality teaching can be for students (for more information on the effect of teaching quality on student achievement, see “Why Excellent Teaching Matters and What it Looks Like”). Children with great teachers go further faster than is possible with mediocre or weak teachers. In the best cases, excellent teaching changes students’ lives forever. Excellent teaching comes from ongoing learning—by visiting other teachers, having the time to reflect on one’s own performance, and getting the opportunity to learn from others. When teachers have these resources and supports, children, as well as the teachers, will learn.

Bibliographic information for the research studies cited in this document can be found in the Research on Teaching section of this website.