A study published by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) shows that even small amounts of the right kind of feedback to teachers and principals can have an effect on pupil achievement in maths.
A total of 127 schools from eight districts across five US states participated in the study. Schools were assigned to either a treatment or control group. In both the treatment and control group schools, teachers and principals continued to receive the performance feedback they had received in the past. For those in the treatment group schools, additional feedback was also given for classroom practice, pupil achievement and principal leadership. The study focused on principals and teachers of reading/ English and maths in grades 4–8 (Years 5–9).
In the first year of the study, the pupils in the treatment schools outperformed pupils in control schools in maths by the equivalent of four weeks of learning. In the second year, while there was a difference of the same size, it was not statistically significant. There was no difference in either year on pupil achievement in reading/ English.
Source: The Impact of Providing Performance Feedback to Teachers and Principals: Final Report (December 2017), American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
An evaluation published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has found that introducing more frequent and structured lesson observations – where teachers observe their colleagues and give them feedback – made no difference to pupils’ GCSE maths and English results.
A randomised controlled trial of the whole-school intervention Teacher Observation was conducted in 82 secondary schools in England, which had high proportions of pupils who had ever been eligible for free school meals. In total, the study involved 14,163 pupils – 7,507 pupils (41 schools) in the intervention, and 6,656 pupils (41 schools) in the control.
Maths and English teachers in the intervention schools were asked to take part in at least six structured 20-minute peer observations over a two-year period (with a suggested number of between 12 and 24). Teachers rated each other on specific elements of a lesson, such as how well they managed behaviour, engaged pupils in learning, or used discussion techniques.
The evaluation, which was conducted by a team from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), found that Teacher Observation had no impact on pupils’ GCSE English and maths scores compared to those of pupils in control schools (effect size = -0.01).
Source: Teacher Observation: Evaluation report and executive summary (November 2017), Education Endowment Foundation
A study published by the Institute of Education Sciences in the US evaluates the impact of the Retired Mentors for New Teachers programme – a two-year programme in which recently retired teachers provide tailored mentoring to new teachers – on pupil achievement, teacher retention and teacher evaluation ratings. The new teachers meet with their mentors weekly on a one-to-one basis and monthly in school-level groups over the course of the two years.
Dale DeDesare and colleagues conducted a randomised controlled trial involving 77 teachers at 11 primary schools in Aurora, Colorado. Within each school, half of the new teachers were randomly assigned to a control group to receive the district’s business-as-usual mentoring support, while the other half received the intervention as well as business-as-usual mentoring support.
The study found that at the end of the first year, pupils who were taught by teachers in the programme group scored 1.4 points higher on the spring Measures of Academic Progress maths assessment than those taught by teachers in the control group, (effect size = +0.064), and this difference was statistically significant. Reading achievement was also higher among pupils taught by teachers in the programme group, however, the difference was not statistically significant (effect size = +0.014 at the end of the first year and +0.07 at the end of