Decision Making Centered on Data

EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION

Data-Based Decision Making

New teachers’ professional development is a significant area where needs should be met for better student outcomes. If teachers can improve their skills, its positive influences would be seen in students and their academic performances. This paper aims at identifying three areas where professional development is needed for the new teachers of our school. A learner-centered professional development session would be designed for the teachers whose scores for their specific needs are lowest.

Needs Assessment Results Chart

The following table is formulated after analyzing the mock data for teachers’ needs assessment given for five teachers. Their respective tables were filled, and their rankings for particular professional development needs were mentioned in those five tables. The ranking of 1 indicated the area with the greatest need, and 10 was for the area with the least need of development. These rankings taken from five teachers have been consolidated in the table below in the “response” section. The lowest total for professional development needs would be the one that needs a learner-centered session, as explained later in the paper.

Professional Development Need

Responses

Total

(Lowest total will indicate the greatest area of need)

Content knowledge and skills

Classroom management

Relations with parents

Student motivation

Student engagement

Needs of diverse learners

Student assessment

Organizational skills

Communication with colleagues

Other:

Identification of Three Professional Development Areas

Classroom management, student assessment, and other professional development need are the three areas that need improvement. It is critical to specify that the “other” area is different for all five teachers since the new teachers’ geared levels are different. For example, one teacher is a grade K level teacher for all subjects, another is Math’s teacher for grade 5, next is a language arts teacher for grade 3, one more is a science teacher for grade 4, and the last one is the music teacher for grade 4. Each one of them has identified “other” professional development needs with their own opinion.

· The Kindergarten teacher has stated that her “other” need is teaching reading to kindergarten students, for which she has given a ranking of 3.

· Grade 5 Math teacher has mentioned his “other” need as too many test preparations for the state test and ranked it as 4.

· Grade 3 language arts teacher has indicated that her “other” need is coaching them to write and ranked it as 5.

· Grade 4 science teacher has stated that his “other” need is balancing hands-on science and test preparations for the students, and ranked it as 5 too.

· Grade 4 music teacher has indicated that his “other” need is integrating music and other content skills into the curriculum, of which he has given a ranking of 2.

It appears that learner-centered sessions would have to be designed individually for this special area of professional development. The rest of the two areas, classroom management, and student assessment, have to be designed collectively for all the teachers.

Classroom management

Classroom management can be difficult for new teachers since they are a novice in this field and they are unaware how to go about things and what to expect from the students (Simmons, 2019). Even if they are aware of the school’s policies related to managing students, the students are of different mindsets that have to be handled in their specialized way. For example, in a study, it was mentioned that the author herself was a teacher who used the sticker method to reward those students who acted nicely and behaved well. However, this method did not work in the class when she joined another school where she was new. The students thought this was a joke since it portrayed her as a soft person who did not know how to be stern in her poise. She also stated that it did not mean to be rude and harsh if you are new to the students; it only means that you have to have confidence in yourself that you can speak with authority and hold the students accountable for their actions. She also added that the new teacher must show herself as courageous and ferocious by standing still and making eye contact, just like a lion, but it does not mean punitive and severe. The students need to perceive the new teacher as a strong person where she can change from being soft to controlling (Karen, 2000) so that students know that the teacher can be nice but can be rigid when needed. This would give them a message to stay disciplined in class, and classroom management would become easier.

Once the new teacher can establish her stance with authority, the students would naturally start meeting her expectations the class decorum would be maintained without much effort. The teacher can then put off her fierceness and appear more relaxed so that students mingle with the new teacher and be more participative in class. Classroom management would be sustained when the teacher realizes where to change her attitude from being authoritative to being tranquil. When the teacher learns this continuum and maintains her balance on it, the switching from one mode to another would help in regular classroom management.

Student assessment

Student assessment is an integral part of the children’s development and progress since the new teacher would understand at what point the students’ knowledge is and what improvements are required. This rating is low for the new teachers in the given data because they are new to the environment, and each student’s academic, social and emotional skills are yet to be discovered by them. They might be looking for ways to conduct assessments appropriately so that teaching and learning plans could be crafted according to their needs.

Research has specified that teaching has made a separate area to focus on, especially in higher education. International studies’ standards have to be met, and teachers’ and students’ pressure has increased (Stefani, 2004). The new academic staff is directed to focus more on research rather than teaching, and the contradictory moves for polarized teaching have created burdens in the performance-based funding institutes. Different disciplinary contexts require different criteria for which the assessments should be conducted to attain greater recognition of teaching and learning.

The assessment itself presents a learning way since day-to-day practice measures should be devised to observe each day’s progress. There are various forms of assessments, including direct and indirect, and formative and summative assessments. Thus, the learning outcomes and goals should be devised to assess the student learning at each step. The new teachers should be familiar with the school’s goals for each grade and subject for creating reasonable and sustainable assessments. Grading, assessment methods, and response time should be used to design the assessments so that their results could be later used for emphasizing the areas in which the students are weak. For instance, if assessment results show that a Math student needs to work hard in decimals topic, course content could be planned in-depth and breadth. The repositioning of aims and instruction methods should be developed to integrate learning technologies effectively.

“Other” area of professional development needs

The difficulty that the kindergarten teacher mentioned about teaching how to reach correctly to this grade students could be eradicated with the instructional strategy of discussing the read-aloud story with the children. Early childhood education is based on active engagement in conversations and discussion so that new ideas could be exposed to them and more child language development could be attained (Mascareno et al., 2017). Phonological awareness would be improved, and active reading enhances mechanisms involved in child language.

Grade 5 Math teacher mentioned that he found preparing children for state tests challenging, for which he can make use of a variety of methods. He could incorporate technology in different ways for test preparation, such as online tests. Teaching them to do simple tasks, which they otherwise would not be able to learn since they do not have adequate time for small tasks in online tests, could help them become speedy in completing the tests. The tools can include highlighting the phrases for importance and personal reminding in comprehension passages, moving areas of the document and selecting terms, etc. (Wolpert-Gawron, 2017). Instructing them to use the commonly used terms in the tests would be valuable since the test questions’ language might be difficult to comprehend for some of them.