An Overview
NUA’s approach to professional development includes attention to
- The psychology of learning;
- The Interplay of culture, language and cognition as they influence learning;
- The impact of belief systems on learning and teaching, including the beliefs of teachers about themselves and their students and the beliefs of students about themselves and their teachers.
These areas of emphases reflect the thinking of scholars and researchers dedicated to developing student potential.
NUA’s Instructional Assessment Process is a key component of a district’s or school’s improvement plan. It establishes a foundation on which participating districts and schools, working with their NUA mentors, can design an effective program of professional development that builds on the strengths of teachers and administrators and that focuses on accelerating the achievement of all students. The Instructional Assessment Process is outcomes-based. It focuses primarily on the characteristics of the instructional program as seen in classrooms and as perceived by teachers, principals and, in secondary schools, by students.
Components of NUA’s Instructional Assessment Process
NUA’s Instructional Assessment Process involves collection and analysis of data from six sources that, when combined, present a comprehensive view of the current state of the school as it compares to the underlying beliefs and principals that make up the Pedagogy of Confidence and lead to school transformation. The six components are:
- School Background Pre-Interview Questionnaire
- Principal Interview
- Achievement Data
- Teacher Survey
- Student Survey
- Classroom Visits
School Background Pre-Interview Questionnaire
NUA gathers background information using a pre-interview questionnaire submitted by the principal, the school’s School Improvement Plan (or similar document), and interviewing the principal in person. The pre-interview questionnaire collects basic demographic data about the school, the students and the faculty, as well as a brief history of current initiatives, school organization and scheduling practices, special services, community partnerships and the like.
Principal Interview
A representative of NUA meets with the principal to review the questionnaire, to obtain more information about the school and to learn the principal’s perspectives on the instructional program, students and staff. Care is taken to ensure that the principal speaks first about the strengths of the school, unique situations that exist within the school, recent changes that may be affecting the school, his or her goals for the school and what he or she believes is needed to achieve those goals.
Achievement Data
NUA gathers and analyzes existing achievement data to uncover patterns over time and to correlate with what constituents say about the school, how achievement data compares to state and district achievement, and any other relevant comparisons.
Teacher Survey
An NUA representative conducts the teacher survey during a schoolwide faculty meeting to ensure consistency of administration and to explain to the faculty other data collection activities that may be taking place at the school. The survey probes teachers’ perspectives on the school’s climate and instructional program and seeks suggestions about how they, as a faculty, could best serve their students, especially underachievers. Surveys are anonymous and make use of multiple choice and open-ended questions that allow teachers leeway to express their inside perspective on the instructional life of the school; their assessments of and attitudes toward students, families and administration; recent and needed professional development initiatives; and their preferred pedagogical approaches.
Student Survey
The student survey contains 20 items and is administered to all students following a prescribed method of administration. Its purpose is to assess the school’s instructional program from the students’ perspectives. The items invite response in five areas:
- Perspectives on myself as a learner
- School climate
- My teachers
- Classroom activities
- My preferred learning activities
Students are asked to strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with some statements and to select their choices among others. NUA provides a summary of student survey responses for ease of analysis.
Classroom Visits
A team of specially trained NUA representatives conducts classroom visitations that follow a schedule intended to cover a broad spectrum of classes. Visitors note the activities in which students are engaged, study the interactions between teacher and students, and attend to other visible characteristics of the instructional program, including the physical environment of the rooms. Approximately half the classes in a school are visited to help form a composite picture of the current state of instruction. Teachers voluntarily participate in the visits and all data is recorded without identifying individual teachers. Visitors concentrate on elements of effective instruction that NUA knows to have positive effects on all students’ learning and that NUA finds particularly important in raising the performance of underachieving students. A sample of these elements includes:
- The learning engages students. Students comprehend and retain what they are taught most effectively when they are engaged in classroom activities. Engagement is marked by willing participation, expressions of interest and displays of enthusiasm, and results when students find classroom activities and assignments highly meaningful and interesting. Instruction that engages students has a positive effect on their achievement and increases the likelihood they will develop into lifelong learners.
- Learning activities guide students to relate lesson content to their lives. Students benefit from deliberately connecting what they are learning to what they know from their experience as individuals and as members of the cultural groups with which they most closely identify. Making such connections between the curriculum and what is personally relevant and meaningful has a positive influence on students’ motivation to learn, on their confidence as learners, and on their comprehension and retention of the material. Although the teacher can suggest such connections, students benefit most by generating and expressing their own connections.
- The learning includes students interacting with each other as learners.Working collaboratively in pairs or small groups enables students to pool their knowledge as they develop their understanding of curriculum material. Interacting productively with peers also helps students stay attentive in class. In addition, collaborative work can increase students’ motivation to learn because of the support they get from their peers and the enjoyment that results from peer interaction. Pair or small-group interactions may be used for solving problems, discussing possible answers to a teacher’s question, generating new questions on a topic being discussed before sharing ideas with the whole class, representing information that has been learned in a creative way, and other such purposes.
- The learning promotes high-level thinking about lesson content. High-level thinking about curriculum content helps students generate deeper and broader understandings while developing their thinking capacities. Students’ learning is enhanced when they have frequent opportunities to respond at length to thought-provoking questions, to engage in high-level conversations with peers, and to ask their own questions about what they are learning to clarify, refine and extend meanings. High-level thinking includes such mental processes as hypothesizing, inferring, generalizing, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating. Opportunities to engage in such thinking are ideally part of daily instruction as well as integral to long-term, complex projects.