A learning group of Israeli practitioners, policy makers and professional developers is convened by the Initiative for Applied Research in Education to study cutting-edge methodologies using video recordings of classroom practice to improve teaching effectiveness
The Trump Foundation has adopted a strategy to nurture the clinical skills of mathematics and science teachers in Israeli secondary schools in order to help them increase the number of students choosing, persevering with and succeeding at high level matriculation in these subjects. Many of the foundation’s grantees work to improve teaching quality in different ways, yet face the same challenge of how to link their work with teachers to the improvement in student performance. There is a need for a systematic approach which will help teachers to improve their classroom practice and to evaluate their progress in a way that contributes most effectively to their students’ learning.
An innovative methodology using video recordings of classroom practice and analyzing them in accordance with standards of teaching effectiveness does just this, and is currently gaining grounds in the US and around the world, with substantial support and leadership from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the umbrella of their Measures for Effective Teaching (MET) project.
The foundation’s staff believes that the common search for a systemic framework on which to ground their work creates a unique opportunity for dialogue and collaboration between our grantees, and an opening for shared measures and collective impact. To this end, we approached the Initiative for Applied Research in Education (‘the Initiative’) of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, to act as a professional convener. Established in 2003, the Initiative is highly regarded by practitioners, policy-makers and researchers as accomplished in bringing together knowledge and learning of important issues facing the Israeli education system.
The Initiative was asked to assemble a learning group of approximately thirty participants including the foundation’s grantees and partners, potential grant recipients, teachers, policy makers and professional developers. The group will meet over a period of six months in order to expose Israeli practitioners to cutting-edge developments in classroom videotaping; to present them with systematic and validated frameworks for teacher evaluation; to study applications of these tools for generic and disciplinary purposes; and to discuss possible implications for customizing them for Israeli secondary school mathematics and science teaching and learning.
Professor Charlotte Danielson of Yale University, who has developed an elaborate framework for teaching assessment, and Mr. Mark Atkinson, the founder of Teachscape – a group which specializes in classroom video – will be invited from the US to organize a workshop for the learning group as well as to participate in a conference which will be open to the professional community. Prof. Lee Shulman, Chair of the foundation’s Advisory Council, will be closely involved in this process, acting himself as advisor and convener between parties. The output of the learning process will include an assembly of literature and case studies which will be accessible via the internet and a final report summarizing the major issues that are relevant to the teaching of learning of mathematics and science at Israeli high schools.
* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 58