Measuring Impact
Quite a number of years ago I was fortunate to spend a full day learning with Thomas Guskey around moving beyond the workshop and focusing on the ultimate purpose of professional learning – impacting students. His framework below has been a touchstone:
Here are some examples from back in the day when I was the coordinator of the Beginning Teachers Program in TDSB. These may be helpful as you seek to measure the impact of the learning experiences you plan and facilitate.
Smart List
These are email messages sent six to eight weeks after a learning experience asking participants to complete a short online survey about the impact of the learning experience on their teaching practice and student learning.
The charts below represent the input of 1752 educators who participated in Classroom Observation and Debriefing.
End of Year Data Collection
This table reflects data collected from 652 TDSB Beginning Teachers about how they felt the New Teacher Induction Program impacted the learning of their students. The information provided highlighted for our steering team the importance of responsiveness, authenticity and choice in the “menu of supports” we were offering new teachers and their mentors.
From my time at the Ontario Ministry of Education, here are examples of streamlined end of year survey templates for new teachers, mentors and principals linked to the core goals of the New Teacher Induction Program. The intent of these survey templates was/is to provide interested boards with a practical tool that they can adopt and adapt to help measure the impact of the program in their district.
So What | Now What
Our learning sessions, whether they be in-person or online, are simply provocations. The real work happens every day in our classrooms, schools and districts.
Below are prompts I currently use facilitating a variety of ongoing communities of practice. They reflect the importance of providing embedded time for participants to think together about how the ideas and approaches shared can be applied in their context.