Legalizing scientism through teacher evaluation

✍ Scribed by Helen M. Hazi; Noreen B. Garman

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 807 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1874-8597
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00124962

✦ Synopsis

Recently a Pittsburgh supervisor recounted an incident that happened during a training session on teacher evaluation:

We were being advised by the trainer as to how to conduct a conference after observing and evaluating a teacher's lesson. We were told that when we want to tell the teacher about what she did wrong, the supervisor should not say "I think you did that wrong" --the supervisor is suppose to say to the teacher, "research says you did that wrong," or to soften the language, "research says that that was not appropriate." When I asked the trainer, "What if research doesn't cover that particular aspect of teaching," the trainer was rather vague in his answer. He seemed to be saying that the way research on teaching is today, we could fit most common sense teaching into it. But by saying "research says" it gives us more clout to persuade the teacher.