How quickly new teachers learn to manage the classroom, including student behaviors, is the best predictor of a novice’s effectiveness and likelihood to stay in the classroom, according to a new study analyzing the instructional progress of 25,000 novice teachers in Tennessee, according to an article in Education Week.
Brendan Bartanen, an assistant professor of education leadership at the University of Virginia and co-author of the study, along with his colleagues looked at data from Tennessee’s teacher-evaluation system. This includes both principals’ classroom observations and a value-added measure that gauges growth in student test scores.
Administrators observing classrooms must identify one focus area for improvement from among 19 instructional skills. These include questioning, presenting content, behavior management, and problem-solving.
No skill is weighted more heavily than others in the evaluations. But administrators were most likely to point to weak behavior management, followed by lagging content-presentation skills, among the 25 percent of new teachers who received the lowest overall observation and value-added scores.
Young teachers very rarely get fired specifically for poorly managing behaviors, but principals may informally transfer low-performing teachers to other schools or encourage them to leave.
Struggling with behavior problems is also more likely burn out teachers.
How can principals support new teachers? Provide more effective feedback after observations.
Nearly half of teachers receive no actionable or goal-setting feedback at all, a 2022 study also using Tennessee data found.
Researchers in that study recommended administrators give feedback that:
- Aligns to the skill area in which the teacher most needs improvement;
- Uses evidence-based justification;
- Sets clear and specific goals; and
- Includes the next action steps for the teacher.
What are the needs of higher-performing novice teachers? More sophisticated teaching skills such as asking and soliciting answers to questions or facilitating high-quality partner and group work were found in the new study to be areas needing improvement for both new and veteran teachers.
These teachers need targeted feedback, too, perhaps to help deepen their teaching repertoire.
Novice teachers who come in already possessing foundational teaching skills [such as class management] should have opportunities to develop a different set of higher-order teaching skills.”
The focus on skill-building needs to go beyond the novices. Most teachers improve rapidly their first few years on the job and more slowly after that. Ongoing support throughout their years of development is needed.
“Five years is not all that long when you think about a 35-year teaching career, and the fact that we’re not seeing consistent improvement after those first few years, means I think we’re potentially leaving a lot on the table in terms of helping teachers become even more effective,” says one educator.
Education Week
