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UFT looking for volunteers for teaching study
Sep 17, 2009 11:08 AM
“It’s about being proactive,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew of the union’s push to recruit volunteers for a new two-year teaching study. “It’s about protecting our profession by researching and validating the multidimensional work that goes on inside of classrooms.”
The Measures of Effective Teaching Study, being conducted by independent researchers funded by the Gates Foundation, is aimed at capturing the complexities of teaching and learning.
New York City will be one of six urban school systems involved in the research, which will include 3,700 teachers nationwide. One thousand volunteers are being sought in New York City.
The union’s participation in the independent study underscores its long insistence that teaching is much more than just about test scores.
Participation is completely voluntary. Those eligible to participate are 4th- through 8th-grade math and ELA teachers on the elementary and middle school level and high school Living Environment, English 9 and algebra teachers. In addition, teachers need to be teaching in a school where there are at least two other volunteers on the same grade level.
The project is designed to answer two basic questions: what is our common understanding of the teaching-learning process, and how do we measure it consistently in order to support good teaching and learning? From that work, the researchers hope to develop a variety of consistent lenses through which to look at what teachers do in the classroom.
Teachers who volunteer will allow the researchers to capture their lessons on video four times each year. The videos will be confidential, but the teachers themselves will have access to them. Teachers will also provide supporting material for each of those lessons; administer student assessments and surveys; complete a survey about their instructional environment and working conditions; and have their pedagogical content knowledge assessed in year two.
Researchers estimate teacher participation will require about 12 hours of work per year for which they will be compensated $1,500 at the end of the project.
“This is an exciting venture, and we can’t wait to get started,” UFT Vice President and Director of the Teacher Centers Aminda Gentile said. “Let’s show the nation what good teaching really is.”
The UFT has made sure that the project must comply with legal research guidelines that restrict the use of individual information. None of the data for any individual teacher can be shared with principals or any other DOE of- Icial, nor can it be used for evaluation purposes. In addition, the data will be securely stored and locked in a password-protected database that contains no identifying names of participating teachers and students.
“It is imperative that we engage those who want to change our profession but do not truly understand what it takes to educate a child,” Mulgrew said. “The real work of real teachers in real classrooms will be central to every aspect of this project.”
Mulgrew added that the teachers who volunteer “will bring their voices and classroom perspective to cutting edge research that will have significant impact on the profession here in New York and across the country.”
For more information, visit the “Measures of Effective Teaching Project” page.
