Langford International, Inc.

Well done Rick and thanks for sharing this situation with the group. This is my response, but it would be great to hear from others. Dr. Myron Tribus was correct, “Leadership belongs to those that seize the initiative.”

Great job taking initiative. You are beginning to understand your system.

First, you might consider involving the students in quantifying the Plus/Delta data. They don’t need to know the names of the teachers, just the feedback. You can swear them into secrecy. (They all know who the poor teachers are anyway.) I would probably take your Plus/Delta feedback and turn it into a Pareto Chart. I will upload an Excel Template for you to modify.

You need to think about the aim for this data. I am assuming it is to improve learning school wide. When you clearly state the aim, the teachers won’t think you are on a witch hunt for the bad ones. The more you use data to improve the system, the less teachers will be threatened by it. If you use it as a form of evaluation, they will rebel. The same is true for students.

If improving learning is the aim, then sorting the data by teacher would have only one purpose; to find a special cause. A special cause, statistically speaking, is outside three standard deviations. Or, the person or persons that are in the 2% range. Remember the phrase, ’98% of the result of any system comes from the system itself.’ Even if you identify a teacher outside the normal range, and if they are tenured, and given state laws on removing a teacher, you have little chance, if any, of getting rid of a teacher based on poor performance. So, the question comes back to where to spend the time. Do we spend time getting rid of the bad or spend time expanding the good?

A quick way to determine if you have a special cause teacher is to take all the data on the classes they are ‘learning the least in’. Each time a class is identified as ‘least learning’ put a tally mark by that class. Then count all the tally marks by teacher. When you put all the teachers into the Pareto Chart Template you will immediately see which teachers are causing 80% of the poor performance problem and if any are completely outside the rest(in a bad way). You can do the same with the ‘learning the most’ classes to see if you have a teacher or group of teachers who are consistently outperforming all the rest(again special causes). If you have special causes you will work with them separately, instead of inflicting training on the masses of people who do not need it. Of course to be more valid you would need the same number of random students from each teacher to give feedback.

After checking for special causes, spend the rest of the time expanding what is good.

Take the Plus feedback on classes where students are ‘learning the most’ and simply do the same process as above. Start a list of what is going well. Each time an observation is made place a tally mark. You may have to make a judgement on some comments, but you will eventually start to see common categories emerge. Now you will start to see what makes great learning at your school for your students. You can do the same for the Deltas. You will end up with two charts to share with teachers. Do more of these things ‘Pluses in order of most to least’ and do less of these things ‘Deltas in order’. You can now take the positive feedback and start to turn it into a more formal student survey. I can help you with that also when you get to that point.

Thanks again for sharing your opportunity. Let’s see if there is other advice.

Best regards,

David

G’Day people, The plus/Delta is one of the handiest tools for group feedback, especially when combined with the structured brainstorm approach. I used it often in my classes to quickly get a list of strengths and opportunities for improvement. You don’t get the data of who ‘agrees’ with whom, this would have to be done privately and tallied as Rick and David have discussed above, but to get the feelings of a group, it is great. Everyone hears other people’s input and response, opinions expressed generate other ideas and comments and at the end you can have a great discussion of the points raised. You can use a prioritisation tool, hot dots or NGT to identify the most important improvements to work on or you can just use the lists gained to provide feedback to groups.
I was coordinator of student teachers at my school and I always used this set of tools in a debrief meeting at the end of the teaching practice block with our student teachers. I then typed up the feedback, modified any negative comments that would identify an individual (but maintained the spirit of the comment – I would approach the individual privately with the personal feedback) and emailed it to all teachers, posted it on the noticeboard for all to see then made improvements to the system of student teacher management for the next group.
Continuous improvements included such things as developing an induction process and providing a map of the school, developing an package of documents for student teachers including staff and class lists, Code of cooperation and discipline procedures, brief overview of school curriculum, key phone numbers, and other practical things, as well as including two sessions for them half way through, one for general questions about their placement and key information they needed for their University assignments and one with the Assistant Principal on classroom management.
Through this method I developed a check list for ‘hosting’ student teachers so that anyone could manage the program and the student teachers and our staff and students would still have a good experience. We had an induction for student teachers, monitoring and debriefing sessions to ensure that all parties were cared for and issues addressed in a timely way. Over the years, our school developed the reputation of being one of the best placements for student teachers. We were also one of the few schools who had an induction and debrief process.
Our teachers appreciated the feedback and the Plus feedback helped to build a climate of acceptance and professional responsibility for the improvement of teacher education. Our teachers were very willing to have student teachers and knew that their efforts were appreciated. They also valued the Delta feedback and the insights gained from the “naive’ observer. Many teachers chose to make improvements within their classes as a result of the window they saw into other teachers’ practices via the public feedback too.
You can never underestimate the power of feedback for building motivation.