Although much research has been done on the effectiveness of teaching for nonhandicapped students, relatively little analysis has been made of teacher effectiveness in special education. Most of the recommendations about what special education teachers should do to be effective are based on the following: inferences from basic research showing exceptional students learn more slowly, with greater difficulty, or in different ways from normal learners; conclusions from applied research showing that specific groups of exceptional students respond more favorably to particular “packages” of instructional methods and materials; and analysis of opinions about what teachers should do to be effective. In this article, the results of teacher effectiveness research in general education are summarized, the best practices in special education are hypothesized, and the discrepancies between prevailing and actual practices are discussed. Areas for further research are suggested based on discrepancies that exist between levels of current practice.
Logically, there appear to be three major strategies contending for a role in the evaluation of teaching skills. The traditional and most widely used strategy to date has been an assessment of the quality of the program within which the teacher was trained (i). The aspects of that strategy have led to the movement for competency-based teacher education (CBTE). As a part of traditional evaluation in teacher preparation, measurement of the teacher's knowledge continues to be relevant.Two other strategies appear to be viable ones within the broad context of evaluation of teacher competence: measuring the growth of pupils taught by the teacher and measuring the teaching behavior of the teacher.
Measurement of Pupil GrowthThis is an assessment strategy which is immediately appealing to many. Probably there are a number of reasons for this. Since the business of schools is to produce change in pupils, it seems reasonable to assess the success of the school by measuring the growth of pupils. In some instances, businesses pay workers in terms of production; why not pay teachers on the same basis? Such a solution is immediate and compelling, but examination of this possibility raises questions.The influence of the Classroom A major difficulty in evaluating the teacher is the amount of influence the classroom can have in relation to other influences on the pupil. A series of papers published by the Office of Education (2) concluded that the relative influence of the teacher or the school is not great. A documented example of a specific nonschool affect, the relations between attitudes and expectations of parents to intelligence and achievement of their children have been found to be strong. The relations hold even within a single socioeconomic group and have been demonstrated in a number of ethnic groups (3; 4; 5). Similarly, the peer group influence has been demonstrated.Presumably these are only a few effective non-school influences. If the teacher is only one of a number of influences on pupil growth, the correlation of growth for one pupil group with another the following year should not be high. This turns out to be the case. One study (6) showed a correlation of .08 for successive years of pupil growth in pooled achievement measures for a group of 55 teachers. Rosenshine (7) has summarized a series of studies indicating relations typically in the .30's for growth for successive years. Brophy (8) has reported successive year data which are highly variable, with correlations ranging from low negative to high positive, but with a median in the .3o's. As test-retest reliabilities, correlations like these would not be acceptable.To lay the pupil's growth, or lack of it, at the teacher's door, seems a major oversimplification considering the many other factors involved.
Measurement-Statistical ProblemsThe solution of measuring pupil growth looks so simple-yet involves a series of problems. Specialists in educational and psychological measurement have labored with the difficulties for a generation or more, without final res...
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