Teacher Effectiveness & Coaching

The most powerful tool we can give our teachers is an understanding of current research on effective practice.  And the most powerful learning aid is feedback on how much of that effective practice they are evidencing when they teach.

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No one can argue that time spent to develop curriculum, locate necessary resources, and create assessment vehicles is not time well-spent. But today’s teachers also need to know how to most effectively parlay that work into effective teaching and learning strategies in daily lessons.

The teaching profession continues to be the beneficiary of profoundly important research regarding techniques and strategies that yield better learning results. John Hattie’s groundbreaking work persists in making teachers aware of the effect for more than 250 strategies on learning, thereby helping teachers base their decisions regarding instructional strategies on solid research that can help their learners better achieve. Combined with corroborated scholarship of other giants like Charlotte Danielson, Robert Marzano, and many others, today’s teachers can enjoy great comfort in making educated decisions about the “how to” of teaching and learning as they go about creating and implementing learning experiences for their students.

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While the work of Hattie and others is not subject-specific, world language teachers are able to access an additional body of work that takes much of the research and scholarship mentioned above and places it within the context of teaching world languages. The Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Project provides specific guidance on many strategies that teachers can use in designing learning experiences that will be based on research and a broad base of experiences in teaching additional languages. Curated by the University of Maryland and the National Foreign Language Center, TELL is nothing short of a gold mine for world language teachers.