Pages

Monday, March 21

Meaningful and Manageable Teacher Appraisal

I have to admit that I found it challenging to work out how a school appraisal system could harness the spirit of teaching as inquiry as well as encompass the twelve registered teacher criteria in a manageable and meaningful way.
Sharing this dilemma at Learning @School with Nick Rate (over a rotisserie chicken and a wine) was the break-through.
Nick discussed how a rich inquiry could and should encompass many of the twelve criteria.
So I had a go with my own inquiry question and have since used this approach with a whole staff.

NB. The writing in brown is reference to specific registered teacher criteria.

While it is still early days we are all excited about this approach and its focus on our learning.
This quote sums up the mood of this approach:
“Appraisal should be about improving competence not proving competence”.
What we did:
Staff meeting 1
Purpose:
To develop understanding of the ‘teaching as inquiry’ framework and explore possibilities for meaningful individual inquiries.
Staff meeting 2
To further develop our individual inquiries
To explore how the registered teacher criteria could enrich our inquiries.



What’s next?

1:1 Coaching and Mentoring session focused on each teachers’ inquiry
Setting up a portfolio – hard copy or electronic. Workshops for staff on both.
1:2 Professional development facilitators are aware of and support the development of teacher’s inquiries throughout the year
1:3 Senior Leaders receive professional development around coaching and mentoring to support on-going high quality professional learning conversations
1:4 Teachers will be grouped together according to inquiry questions to meet as inquiry teams and given time to meet together to reflect on and support each other with their inquiries
1:4 Documentation will be developed from this work that captures the appraisal requirements and process, and that allows for consistent practice across the school

3 comments:

Belinda said...

Thanks so much for sharing your ideas around teaching as inquiry and appraisal. It is something I am struggling with at the moment myself - lots of thoughts frantically running around inside my brain! Your approach outlined really sits well with me and I'd love to implement something similar at our school.

Mark Herring said...

Great to see a school using Teacher inquiry. We have our cluster involved in the process at the mo. I'll share the presentation with the cluster, if that's okay.

I think this is the way to go - away from proving to improving which all adds to developing the schools culture of a 'learning community'.

Will be following your blog!

Gael Donaghy said...

very interesting way to integrate the inquiry with the requirements. This seems to me to be a way that teachers can really take control of the process for their own learning. It reminds me of Chris Watkins' ideas of focusing on learning rather than on performance.