Professions, Process, Outcomes
I'm helping to teach a course for first-year doctoral students, a required course actually. I do less teaching than the master professor at the helm. Actually, I take care of the mechanics.
Yesterday the class discussed what would make teaching more of a profession. It's too long to get into every nuance here.
But one of the conclusions was that teaching is measured (for whatever reason) by outcomes. Whereas other professions are not measured in only that way.
For example, physicians worry about process first. The correct process leads to the best outcome, so process is first. Physicians share a common language for discussing process and procedure.
Doctors who work with the sickest patients are often the most skilled doctors, and their outcomes are probably not as good as doctors who work with less sick patients. So measuring a doctor's skill might not be best done using outcomes.
Another example, physicians dissect their failures in Morbidity and Mortality meetings. They go over their failures not so much to point blame, but to examine the procedures and processes, and look for ways to improve and learn. Clearly, a physician who makes an error or doesn't follow the best procedure is not going to look good in an M&M meeting. But that doesn't change the focus of the meeting away from examining process.
The students and professor in the class concluded that educational practitioners (teacher, principals, etc.) spend far less time examining procedure and process in school. The students mentioned parts of a book called the Teaching Gap, that emphasized the Japanese emphasis on lesson study. This is a process-oriented approach to teaching, looking at what teachers do and how lessons actually work to build learning.
Anyway, it's interesting to consider the question, and how one might build a process-oriented approach to teaching that would lead to better knowledge of how to get better outcomes.
UPDATE: EdWahoo who graduated from college and joined TFA would love to have some procedures for teaching math.
Yesterday the class discussed what would make teaching more of a profession. It's too long to get into every nuance here.
But one of the conclusions was that teaching is measured (for whatever reason) by outcomes. Whereas other professions are not measured in only that way.
For example, physicians worry about process first. The correct process leads to the best outcome, so process is first. Physicians share a common language for discussing process and procedure.
Doctors who work with the sickest patients are often the most skilled doctors, and their outcomes are probably not as good as doctors who work with less sick patients. So measuring a doctor's skill might not be best done using outcomes.
Another example, physicians dissect their failures in Morbidity and Mortality meetings. They go over their failures not so much to point blame, but to examine the procedures and processes, and look for ways to improve and learn. Clearly, a physician who makes an error or doesn't follow the best procedure is not going to look good in an M&M meeting. But that doesn't change the focus of the meeting away from examining process.
The students and professor in the class concluded that educational practitioners (teacher, principals, etc.) spend far less time examining procedure and process in school. The students mentioned parts of a book called the Teaching Gap, that emphasized the Japanese emphasis on lesson study. This is a process-oriented approach to teaching, looking at what teachers do and how lessons actually work to build learning.
Anyway, it's interesting to consider the question, and how one might build a process-oriented approach to teaching that would lead to better knowledge of how to get better outcomes.
UPDATE: EdWahoo who graduated from college and joined TFA would love to have some procedures for teaching math.
posted by Jenny D. at 12:12 PM
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