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Summary: This is a brief description of a short action research project where teacher leaders were asked their opinions about the importance of conversations surrounding quality instruction in schools.
This year at Farmington High School, I have asked teachers to focus on quality instruction and student engagement. Recently at a department chair meeting, one of the department leaders lead the group in an activity with quality instruction and student engagement as its central focus. Department chairs were asked to participate in the activity, which included viewing a video of a teacher teaching an English lesson and giving the teacher in the video a grade based on their assessment of quality instruction and student engagement. Following this exercise, department chairs were then asked to discuss their grades with one another and have a professional dialogue about these topics. Finally, these department chairs were asked to take what they had gotten out of this activity and have a similar or related discussion with their respective departments.
The action research conducted for the purposes of this assignment was a brief, three-question survey given by way of Survey Monkey online survey service to all (11) department chairs who were in attendance at the meeting described above. They were asked to rate 1. the extent to which they found the above activity useful to their work as a department leader and 2. how important it was to them that professional conversations about quality instruction and student engagement were taking place in our school. Respondents used a three-point Likert scale to answer the above questions. Finally, department chairs were asked an open-ended question about how they planned to bring this conversation/activity back to their departments during recent professional development time.
Four days after emailing teachers a request to complete this survey, eight out the eleven department leaders responded and participated in the above-described survey. Twenty-five percent of the respondents found the activity from the department chair meeting to be “very useful,” while 50% of the respondents found it to be “somewhat useful.” The remaining 25% of the respondents found it “not useful at all.” When the same people were asked how important it is for professional conversations about quality instruction to take place in our school, 75% of the respondents felt it was “very important,” while the remaining 25% said it was “somewhat important.” Finally, 7 of the 8 respondents indicated in their open-ended responses that they planned to either replicate the activity or provide some level of conversation focused on this topic with their respective departments.
I have concluded from this data several things. First, my department chairs generally feel professional dialogue about quality instruction and student engagement is important for our school. Further, they found that discussing this topic with other department chairs was, for the most part, useful to their role as a leader within our school. In addition, it appears that these department chairs took the task assigned to them seriously and considered how they would bring this information back to the other teachers in their departments. Finally, I have concluded that activities and conversations of this nature can be useful in continuing to focus my teachers’ attention on the importance of professional dialogue, quality instruction, and student engagement.
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This work is licensed by Julie Kaminski under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.
Last edited by Julie Kaminski on Nov 13, 2010 8:41 am -0600.
