January/February 2008
New research helps define and develop
quality preK and elementary teaching
Study after study shows that quality teaching
is the most powerful factor in student learning. But how do you
define quality teaching in a way that can be measured and taught?
Dr. Robert Pianta, director of the Center
for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning and the National
Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, developed
the Classroom
Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) to measure quality instruction
in the preK–5 classroom. Nearly 1,000 observers from schools
and districts in 23 states are now trained in administering CLASS,
and about 600 teachers in 8 states are beginning to use MyTeachingPartner,
an online professional development program based on CLASS. Pianta,
who also serves as dean of the Curry School of Education at the
University of Virginia, spoke with Harvard Education Letter
contributing writer Sue Miller Wiltz about how his research can
help clarify and improve the quality of teaching in preK and elementary
classrooms.
Why is measuring teacher quality important?
Right now the definition of good teaching is all over the map because
people don’t use the same language and lens. With CLASS, we
have been able to look into 1,000 different classrooms using the
same lens, and we can show that the classrooms we rated highly using
this system were achieving more, whether they’re in Arkansas
or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. I think this is enormously important
for the field. Otherwise, we end up concluding that good teaching
is just an art—or worse, that it’s an accident. That’s
not a very good thing if you’re worried about the quality
of the education system and how to improve it systematically.
What are the critical factors in good
teaching?
We have defined three broad domains of supportive interactions:
emotional support, organizational support, and instructional support.
Within each of these interactions we identified three or four key
dimensions. For each of these dimensions there is a solid body of
research linking their importance to student learning (see “10
Dimensions of Good Teaching”). Using CLASS, teachers are
rated by observers on a scale of 1–7 for each dimension. Teachers
who are rated highly for behavior management, for example, will
put books out on tables so that students don’t have to push
each other to get to them, rather than just putting a pile in the
middle of a rug for 20 children to come grab at once. They always
appear to be one step ahead of problems in the classroom, anticipating
and preventing misbehavior. Teachers who score high on positive
emotional climate consistently demonstrate respect for their students.
They are in proximity when they speak to the children in their classroom,
establish eye contact before speaking to them, and address them
by name. They consistently have a warm and calm tone and use language
that communicates respect, such as saying “Please,”
“Thank you,” and “You’re welcome.”
The absence of harshness and tension is noticeable, and when conflicts
arise they quickly dissipate. This type of environment is conducive
to learning and allows children to feel safe to explore.
This seems different from the way “good
instruction” is usually defined.
Too often when educators talk about quality of instruction, they
think, “Was the teacher prepared to give a lesson?”
with a focus on basic skills—learning certain facts and recalling
these on tests. However, we find that teachers’ instructional
behaviors and the way they provide emotional supports are both independent
contributors to children’s learning. I think one of the challenges
that teachers have is trying to hang on to the emotional support
side of their interactions with students while they have such pressure
on the instructional side of things.
Everybody is feeling pressure to produce greater achievement and
that extends down into preK. What we find over and over again is
that when we show teachers the CLASS system, they say, “Oh,
somebody is finally describing all the different things that I try
to do with kids.” What we are calling attention to are the
behaviors teachers use to stimulate reasoning, problem-solving,
and a depth of thinking about material. Instruction is defined in
a way that makes sense and is appropriate developmentally.
Teachers at all levels find it helpful to see
that the emotional climate of the classroom is an important part
of learning. In preK that’s been pretty well accepted for
a long time, but it’s a harder argument to make as you go
up the grades. I think the research we’re doing is putting
forth evidence that classrooms should be viewed as social and emotional
settings as well as instructional settings.
What have you learned about the overall
quality of student experiences from preK through the elementary
grades?
The typical American preK-to-fifth-grade classroom offers moderate
levels of emotional and organizational support and low levels of
instructional support. It’s a reasonably positive place socially
and organizationally and kids are busy, but these classrooms are
not very stimulating and kids are not really actively engaged. They
are exposed to instruction in a much more passive way. There is
a lot of sitting and listening and not a lot of thinking and doing.
We also see the absence of consistency from year
to year. Kids may get a better or worse experience in any given
year: One year students might be getting something very rich, and
the next year they’re back to something that is really boring.
We know from other researchers’ work that for students who
struggle in school, having an effective teacher several years in
a row is very important for stabilizing achievement gains for the
longer term. Unfortunately, this kind of experience is not the norm
for most children, whether they struggle or not. High-quality classroom
experiences—which have been shown to help close achievement
gaps—are rare. If we really want to see the kind of gains
we need to see in AYP [Adequate Yearly Progress], then we need to
put children in high-quality classrooms year in and year out so
that those gains are present year after year after year. CLASS provides
teachers and principals with a tool for describing and discussing
what teachers do in classrooms that can be applied year to year
so a student’s experience can be consistent.
But doesn’t effective teaching look
different from grade to grade?
The three domains of teacher-child interaction in classrooms—emotional,
organizational, and instructional support—stay the same. What
changes are the behavioral indicators of their dimensions. For example,
a fifth-grade teacher might show sensitivity toward students a little
differently than a preK teacher might. When a preK teacher notices
a child who is reticent to join an activity, she may walk over to
that child and sit in very close proximity and talk in a very low
and quiet voice, and then take the child’s hand and lead him
to the activity. A fifth-grade teacher noticing a child who is reticent
to join an activity may identify the child’s friend in the
classroom and assign the friend to go work with the child for a
moment, and then may come over and provide encouragement and positive
feedback. So behaviors may change to correspond to developmental
shifts while dimensions that include those behaviors do not.
How can teachers use what you’ve
learned to improve their teaching?
Every day teachers have to make dozens of real-time decisions. They
need to have guides in their heads about how they’re going
to facilitate children’s learning in the next moments. Through
our MyTeachingPartner
(MTP) website and consulting program, we give teachers access to
a lot of videotaped examples of successful interactions from either
their own or others’ classrooms. A teacher can go to the site
and see very clearly what a teacher is doing that makes her interactions
with a student score highly on one of our dimensions, such as sensitivity.
The second layer of support we offer is an online coaching system.
The teachers watch video clips of themselves and they work with
a consultant to apply signal reading and detection techniques to
their own behavior. Teachers start to be able to look at children’s
signals and cues, to identify when their responses are effective
and ways they might be improved.
What changes in teaching have you seen
as a result of these online supports?
Teachers who got consultative support showed greater gains in the
quality of their interactions than those who just used the Web,
but teachers in the group that only went to the Web also improved.
Consulting is especially important for teachers who teach in very
high-poverty classrooms. Children in these classrooms tend to have
more behavioral and emotional problems, and there are more demands
on the teachers’ moment-to-moment decisionmaking. Recently,
we’ve been very interested in further tying CLASS and MTP
to professional development and credentialing frameworks. We’ve
drawn lessons from our work in Virginia with MyTeachingPartner to
develop a college course. The course will focus on using CLASS to
effectively stimulate language and literacy development.
But it’s not only teachers who are getting
trained on CLASS. State officials are using it in quality rating
systems and as an indication of what defines a high-quality classroom
(see “Preschool Rating
Systems”). School districts are using it in a similar
manner. CLASS is fundamentally a standardized lens for looking at
the interactions that teachers have with students in the classroom.
The next step is to improve upon those interactions.
For Further Information
CLASS website: www.classobservation.com
C. Howes, M. Burchinal, R. Pianta, D. Bryant,
D. Early, R. Clifford, et al. “Ready to Learn? Children’s
Pre-academic Achievement in Pre-kindergarten Programs.” Early
Childhood Research Quarterly, in press.
A. Mashburn, R. Pianta, B. Hamre, J. Downer, O.
Barbarin, D. Bryant, et al. “Pre-K Quality and Children’s
Development of Academic, Language and Social Skills.” Child
Development, in press.
MyTeachingPartner website: www.myteachingpartner.net/index.php
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
“Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.” Available
online at secc.rti.org
R. Pianta, K. La Paro, and B. Hamre. Classroom
Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) Manual, K–3. Baltimore:
Brookes Publishing, 2008.
R. Pianta, K. La Paro, and B. Hamre. Classroom
Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) Manual, PreK. Baltimore:
Brookes Publishing, 2008.
R. Pianta et al. “Opportunities
to Learn in America’s Elementary Classrooms.” Science
(March 30, 2007), pp. 1795-1796.
R. Pianta et al. School
Readiness and the Transition to Kindergarten in the Era of Accountability.
Baltimore: Brookes Publishing, 2007.
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