Does the Teaching Performance Record (TPR) measure effective teaching or teaching that influences student learning? Yes. Results of an experiment with 680 randomly assigned students suggests that if a teacher demonstrates Strategic Teaching — a concept with strong support in the literature — that he or she will have students who perform better academically than students with teachers who do not teach strategically. Strategic Teaching explained 20% of the variance in middle-school students' test scores in mathematics — a remarkably large influence by anyone's standards.
Teachers who teach strategically do the following: (1) concentrate on "focus" or the objectives of the lesson, (2) attend to "syntax" or the sequence of activities in a lesson, (3) use "principles of reaction" or tactics to maintain and enhance student participation, (4) establish and maintain a "social system" that encourages students to work productively, and (5) provide opportunities to "evaluate" students' contributions.
Make no mistake, research on effective teaching has a rich history, but it has only really begun. As people investigate teaching and learning in communities across the nation new ideas will emerge. The TPR puts users in an excellent position to help shape these ideas and to support effective teaching.
The TPR is a complete professional development system. Developed by faculty and students at the University of Virginia, the TPR offers principals a valid, reliable, useful method to collect information on the teaching practices of their teachers. Based on the latest educational research, the TPR describes the extent to which teachers behave in ways that influence student academic learning, involvement in classes, and motivation. Administrators are presented with informative reports on the classroom practices of their teachers, suggestions for post-observation conferencing, and targeted professional development plans for individual teachers and their entire faculty.
Click here to learn about Teachers for a New Era (TNE).
In addition to data on Strategic Teaching, the TPR presents administrators with information on the following areas of professional practice:
Supportive Teaching - information on a teacher's attention to student needs — both affective and cognitive.
Opportunity to Learn - data on teachers' and students' uses of valuable instructional time.
Curricular Alignment/Coherent Content - information on how teachers focus on and convey the overarching goals of instruction to their students.
Setting Learning Goals - how a teacher provides students with pointers and cues during instruction.
Thoughtful Discourse - how teachers ask questions that encourage students to think critically, that is, to synthesize ideas, solve problems, and make decisions.
Application & Practice - information on how teachers provide students with opportunities to use the skills and understandings they have learned.
Scaffolding Students' Engagement - information on how teachers provide appropriate levels of instruction for students, and thereby increasing the likelihood of student engagement and academic success.
Collaborative Learning - teachers' encouragement of cooperation among students.
Assessment - how teachers help students understand and demonstrate success.
Achievement Expectations - how teachers communicate what students should know, understand, and be able to do.
Pupil Involvement and Behavior - The TPR also captures information on student intellectual involvement and behavior.
Contextual Demands and Activity Level - Because teachers work in a multitude of contexts, under very different circumstances, the TPR records information on the type and difficulty of the environment in which teachers work. The TPR also records the difficulty of the learning outcome the teacher has prepared for students.
