Improvement Routines
Practical Measures (or "PMs") are frequent, formative measures that aim to support educators’ daily practice by providing actionable data to inform instructional practice. In Edsight, PMs take the form of surveys that assess various aspects of either classroom teaching of professional development (PD) contexts. Student responses are collected via Google Forms, anonymized, and then displayed via Edsight.
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The data provided by PMs are intended to a) support teacher inquiry in the context of professional learning about aspects of teaching mathematics that research suggests matter for students’ learning; b) support instructional leaders (e.g., mathematics coaches, district math leaders) to make decisions about how to adjust the support they offer to teachers; and c) to support all users to know if intentional changes to their practice are, indeed, resulting in improvements.
PMs in a nutshell
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Are specific to improvement goals.
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Use language that is relevant and meaningful to practitioners.
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Are easy to implement.
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Provide frequent, rapid feedback.
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Directly inform efforts to track and improve practice.
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Can be easily embedded in professional learning.
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Are not meant to be used for accountability or high-stakes, evaluation purposes.
EXAMPLE: the Small Group Work measure indicates students' mathematical thinking. An example of a question is “In your small group, did listening to other students help you make your thinking better?”
Classroom Measures
The first group of measures focuses on key aspects of the classroom learning environment (what we refer to as the classroom measures) that prior research has linked to student learning.
Whole Class Discussion
This short student survey provides information about students' perceptions of key aspects of the whole-class discussion in a specific lesson. The survey was designed to take 2-3 minutes to complete and is administered at the end of a whole class discussion, or at the end of a lesson.
Small Group Work
This short student survey provides information about students' perceptions of key aspects of small group work in a specific lesson. The survey was designed to take about 2-3 minutes to complete and is administered at the end of small group work time, or at the end of a lesson.
Launch of a Task
This short student survey provides insight into students’ perceptions of the teacher’s introduction to (or launch of) a mathematical task. We designed the survey to be administered immediately after a task is introduced and to take about 1 minute to complete.
Professional Learning Measures
The second type of PM focuses on professional development learning environments. This type includes measures specific to one-on-one coaching cycles and teacher collaborative time.
Collaborative professional Development
The measure is designed to be used in collaborative professional learning settings (e.g., a group of teachers meets regularly over a sustained period of time) focused on ambitious and equitable math teaching and learning.
The measure takes the form of a short survey for teachers, and it provides information about teachers’ perceptions of the key aspects of professional learning depicted below: the focus of the group’s discussions; the group’s discussion practices; the extent to which participants feel they can deprivatize their practice, opening it to the group for inquiry; the relevance of the group’s work to participants; and the participants’ sense of membership in the group community. The survey was designed to take about 3-5 minutes to complete and is administered at the end of a professional learning session.