Choice and Effect

As teachers, we make many important choices everyday ranging from the learning material we choose to the teaching approaches we favor. The type of learning environment our classroom reflects, allowing students to bring their own technology or not, our own use of technology, what we read or watch for our professional development, asking peers for feedback on what we do and how we do it, the type of evaluation in support of learning we offer our students, and many other decisions are often taken without ever truly measuring their impact. Grades are often, some would say always, insufficient measures of the efficacy of our teaching practices. If we want to better understand the impact of our choices, we often need to find ways of measuring what the system often neglects to take into account. Here are some examples of indicators you might find interesting if you’re in the habit of measuring pedagogical cause and effect:

How relevant the material feels to the learners? How much your students feel your classroom environment reflects the “real-world”? Do your students feel that you are a reference in your domain? What is their perception of you professionaly? How does your students’ critical thinking evolve over the time they’re with you? How does your students’ ability to cooperate evolve? How does your students’ ability to be creative evolve? How do your techniques for supporting the development of such competencies compare to what other techniques are used by other colleagues? How do your professional development choices affect the quality and enjoyment of your work?

We could of course see how a plethora of other indicators evolve. The idea in this PD Tile is to take in the habit of keeping track of how your teaching practices and learning outcomes are affected, positively or negatively, by some of your more significant choices as an educator. It is very important to have discussions with other like-minded educators regarding this, whether they work in the same school you do or not (think social media here).

You’ve understood why grades are an insufficient measure of educational success, so you’ve developed more refined ways of measuring what matters? Then it’s time to click Got It!.