By Mike Murphy

Results, February 2001

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2001. All rights reserved.

The standard: Effective staff development uses a variety of staff development approaches to accomplish the goals of improving instruction and student success.

At the conference, the teacher produced a collection of my daughter’s work from the previous few weeks. He commented on her work and explained what he had noticed after reviewing it. In a few minutes, he provided a thorough, intuitive assessment of the kinds of mistakes my daughter was consistently making and speculated on how he might help her overcome these problems.

As he finished, it appeared that we were nearing a plan that had real potential to help my daughter. It also was apparent that the foundation for that plan was built from his assessment of her work and the power of our dialogue. In this short time, an informal analysis of one student’s work had focused on her performance and what could be done to improve that performance. If this teacher and I had been peers working in the same school, our discussion of student work could have evolved into changes in our practice and the determination of the effects of those changes.

This experience left me convinced that examining student work and discussing implications for teaching are among the most powerful kinds of adult learning in which we can engage. I would suggest that there is no better way to focus adults in the schools on student results. Set aside time for the examination of student work and consider these suggestions.

Identify a particular area of student performance that is related to school improvement goals.

Once determined, identify ways teachers can collect acceptable student evidence for study. The collection would include a variety of formal and informal assessments, written observations, performance tasks, and projects as well as quizzes and tests.

When the teachers convene, each lays out a small assortment of work that they have randomly collected from students in their classes.

As each teacher follows this discussion pattern, someone on the team transcribes the informal observations on chart paper, perhaps using one column for observed student strengths and one column for observed weaknesses.

The team then summarizes its understanding of this student performance "snapshot."

At this point, team members should be ready to plan for action. In other words:

• What instructional experiences can best be designed so students master the knowledge and skills more fluently?
• What do we need to research or review in order to teach this content or skills more effectively?
• How can we best and most efficiently learn new content or strategies so our students can learn better?