Welcome everybody.
Today, we are talking about
reviewing professional practice.
It's a real program that we taught last term.
It was a HSC program,
so that we can all
in turn get our own programs
and evaluate our own programs.
My name is [indecipherable].
We're at St. Philip's Christian College.
I am the coordinator of the humanity subjects in the senior school.
First of all how do we evaluate a practice?
What are we looking for?
Year assessment.
Would that be
a criteria or would that be a
tool by which we use to
measure our criteria?
If you set your assessment
and then set your program
which will then meet or
guide the students to meet the assessment,
that it would then …
it would be a part of
your professional practice
to have that assessment that fits.
Okay. What about along the way?
When we were a smaller school
a number of years ago,
this used to happen much more frequently.
Now that we're bigger,
I'd notice that this evaluation
wasn't happening casually
and informally anymore,
and that it needed to be formalised.
What about appropriate?
I know you got outcomes - Yeah.
but appropriate teaching and learning
strategies for a specific group?
So in particular,
professional practice
given that group of students. - Yes.
Once we've got our criteria together,
I'll give our staff members a bunch of documentation
that they can use to gain data
to evaluate that unit of work.
Then together against our criteria
that we've discussed,
that meets the teaching standards,
we'll talk about what worked well
and get evidence for that
and then what needs modification.
Then finally to finish up,
we'll talk about what needs to happen
in the future in terms of programming
and what needs to happen in
terms of classroom practice
to make things better.
So let’s start off
where I feel safer,
with what worked well.
What evidence is in there
that there is
good professional knowledge and practice
of the teacher?
The use of tables and tabulating information
to compartmentalise the information
for the kids to learn
and a few times of mind mapping
as well so they could
explore ideas.
What about productive learning environment?
I was surprised by how well it went.
I was a bit concerned
that people wouldn't feel confident in
evaluating a unit of work
and really giving it a strong critique.
What needs modification in terms of
professional knowledge and practice
of the teacher, do you think?
One of the things that concerns me a little bit
with this program, with my own programs
is the number of outcomes
we put for every
topic that we're teaching.
So I wonder if in our programs
we need to be a little bit more
precise
in what we anticipate
this particular unit
will assess.
Yeah, so a stronger focus on
fewer outcomes in each topic?
Yes.
I write down student feedback and appraisal.
Of course, yeah. - We haven't got any evidence of that.
I haven't got any evidence of that.
Where should we put that, engagement?
Isn't there a sheet for student evaluation? - There is now.
Yeah, there is.
It's not attached to this letter.
I'm also hoping to see that
student engagement will improve
slowly over the years
and I'm hoping that teachers' programs
will become more dynamic
and innovative
and more geared to their students in their classrooms
that year than they were a year before.
I think we can say that there's been nothing
negative about an evaluative review.
I'd like us over the next 12 months,
for all of us to bring something to
the group and just using this criteria for evaluation
and talking about what worked well
and talking about what we can do better next year.
All right, thanks everybody.
Thank you.
How can you support colleagues
to evaluate teaching programs
directed at improving
professional knowledge and practice?
How can you support colleagues
to develop learning programs to reflect
an understanding of the needs of their students?