Teacher – Full Teacher Evaluation Information - North Dakota ...

These and other studies provide compelling evidence that
quality improvement efforts focused only on increasing early
childhood teachers’ degree acquisition or lowering class
sizes are unlikely to have strong effects on child outcomes.
Improvement efforts need to focus directly on the quality of
teachers’ interactions with children if we want to positively
affect children’s learning gains. These findings highlight the
need for teacher education programs to consider the ways in
which their curriculum and practicum experiences for future
early educators may be enhanced by a more explicit focus on
knowledge about and use of effective teacher-child
interactions.
Quality improvement efforts that focus
only on increasing the level of early
childhood teachers’ education or
lowering class sizes are unlikely to
have strong effects on child outcomes
unless they are coupled with more
direct efforts to improve the quality of
teachers’ interactions with children.
4. Carefully designed and implemented professional development support can
effectively improve the quality of teacher-child interactions.
As noted earlier, CASTL has designed tools to help teachers improve the quality of their
interactions with children. These professional development supports have been rigorously
evaluated and demonstrate that teachers can make sustained improvements in their practice.
As one example, teachers who participated in a CLASS-based coaching program,
MyTeachingPartner (MTP), showed significant increases in their sensitivity to children, became
more effective at engaging children in learning, and used more effective language facilitation
strategies, compared to teachers who were not provided with a coach (Pianta et al., 2008).
More details on MTP are provided later. This and other studies demonstrate that teachers can
change the way they interact with children. However, professional development supports
intended to improve the quality of teachers interactions with children must be developed and
chosen carefully to ensure efficacy.
CLASS Implementation Guide 19