Conditions of Use
Practical Measures (or "PMs") are frequent, formative measures that aim to support educators’ daily practice by providing actionable data to inform instructional practice. Click here to read more about them.
While we continue to gather information about the use of our measures in different contexts, we cannot anticipate all of the possible uses for our measures in your particular context. This is why we have put together a list of minimal conditions for the use of our set of practical measures.
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Below you can find the conditions of use for each group of practical measures. But this list is only a starting point: we also recommend that you engage in an ongoing examination of the appropriateness of the measures within your context.
Do not use PMs to evaluate teachers or facilitators.
​It is never appropriate to use PMs to evaluate teachers, facilitators, or schools for accountability purposes. Doing so is counter to the goal of using PMs to inquire into and improve teaching. It is likely that if the measures are used for accountability reasons, teachers may feel pressure to suggest that students answer the questions in specific ways. Likewise, facilitators may influence teachers’ responses, which would undercut the intended purpose of using the measure, and compromise the data.
Classroom Measures
We recommend that the classroom measures (Whole Class Discussion, Small Group Work, and Launch of the Task) should be administered under the following conditions:
District and/or School Context
SENSE-MAKING ROUTINES
The data generated by Edsight will be most useful to teachers when they have ongoing, scaffolded opportunities to make sense of students’ responses. For example, coaches may administer the measures as part of one-on-one coaching cycles, so that the resulting data (together with other data, like student work samples) can be used to identify and negotiate goals with teachers, to inquire about the impact of current practice on students’ learning, and to assess whether subsequent changes in instruction represent improvements. As another example, a teacher leader or coach working with a grade-level team of teachers may find value in administering the measures when teachers implement a lesson that they co-planned. The team can then use students’ responses as one source of evidence to inquire into how the instructional decisions they made impacted students’ learning. As a third example, district leaders may want to ask teachers to administer surveys to inform the focus of upcoming professional development.
IMPROVEMENT PLANS
The use of the measures should explicitly link to a plan for instructional improvement in mathematics. Administering the measures only makes sense if there is a concerted plan for supporting the improvement of mathematics teaching, if there is a shared understanding of what counts as high-quality mathematics teaching (and thus what counts as improvement in teachers’ practice) and if ongoing support is provided for teachers to improve the quality of mathematics teaching and learning. These measures will be most helpful to teachers when there are district- and/or school-level leaders who have expertise in supporting the improvement of mathematics teaching, and who have time available to plan and facilitate professional learning.
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Classroom Context
INTEREST AND OPENNESS
Teachers who administer the measures should have interest in learning about their students’ perspectives on a given lesson, and be open to the results revealed by Edsight.
CLASSROOM CULTURE
A classroom culture should be established such that students feel their perceptions are valued. Although rare, we have seen cases in which students did not perceive that teachers were interested in their experiences and therefore did not provide truthful responses.
Professional Learning Measures
We recommend that the professional learning measure (Collaborative Professional Development) should be administered under the following conditions:
Professional Learning Context
FACILITATION
This measure is intended to be administered in facilitated professional learning contexts (i.e., contexts in which one or more people are responsible for planning and facilitating what happens in a session).
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INTEREST AND OPENNESS
Facilitators who administer the measure should have interest in learning about participants’ perspectives on a professional learning session.
CULTURE OF TRUST
A professional learning culture should be established such that teachers feel their perceptions are valued. Based on interviews with teachers, we have found that for teachers to provide truthful responses, it is important they perceive that their facilitators are genuinely interested in their experiences.
District, School, and/or Program Context
IMPROVEMENT PLANS
The use of the measures should explicitly link to an ongoing plan for instructional improvement in mathematics. Administering the measure only makes sense if there is a concerted plan for supporting the improvement of mathematics teaching, if there is a shared understanding among facilitators of what counts as high-quality mathematics teaching (and thus what counts as improvement in teachers’ practice) and if ongoing support is provided for teachers to improve the quality of mathematics teaching and learning.
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PRIVACY AND TRUST
For teachers to provide truthful responses, it is important that their responses from the measure are not available to district or school level individuals who assess teachers.
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SENSE-MAKING ROUTINES
While individual facilitators may find the resulting data useful on their own, the measures are designed to be integrated in opportunities for facilitators to reflect on their own practice. The data will be most useful to facilitators when they can work with colleagues to debrief a professional learning session. The resulting survey data (together with other data, like a video-recording of the session or teacher work samples) can be used to identify facilitation goals, to inquire about the impact of current practice on teachers’ learning, and to assess whether subsequent changes in facilitation represent improvements.