Evaluating a Teacher’s Classroom Management Strategy

CASE STUDY 3

CHAPTER 8:

EVALUATING A TEACHER’S

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

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Point of View

3rd Party

Objective

To depict and analyze how the teacher applies her instructional management strategy in the classroom in relation to the diverse perspectives of participants in this case

Problem

What are the good basis and underpinnings in order to effectively evaluate a teacher’s instructional management strategy in the classroom?

Areas of Consideration

Classroom management is vital to achieving positive educational outcomes. Organization and behavior management in the classroom provide students with structure, which promotes learning.

On the other hand, evaluating teacher classroom performance is an integral part of school supervision and contributes to the on-going mission of the educational institution. Teacher evaluations, when properly facilitated, function as professional measurement that encourage excellence, offer praise for good methodologies and strategies, and highlight areas that need upgrading. If conducted properly, teachers should view evaluations as necessary addition to daily instructional routine with an end result focused on collaborative means to teach more effectively.

In this case, an evaluator questions a classroom teacher’s instructional management strategies when she applies for a permanent teaching credential. This issue reveals the underpinnings of tensions between the teacher and the evaluator in this case, noting conflicts that expose the helplessness of a new teacher, who is experiencing isolation in her early years of teaching.

 The key issues here are the teaching strategies, relationship with students and colleagues, new teacher support and classroom management. Secondary issues are: reflection, teacher self confidence and multiple intelligence theory.

The case sets back the spirit of teacher professionalism more than 50 years. Pam’s school culture is very discouraging and for its assumption that the teacher is merely a helpless victim of administrators. Theoretically, Pam alone or with colleagues, needs to raise concerns about this evaluation process with the administration.

In reality however, how can she do this when the “appropriate people” are so central to the problem—demeaning principal, an evaluator whose evaluation of her seems remote from professional standards in both substance and style, a talented but ineffectual department head whose timidity is only slightly more disguised than Pam’s, a vice principal whose leadership approach includes lurking and spying, and apparently silent teaching staff.