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by Jeff C. Marshall
Table of Contents
Just as we need to differentiate instruction to accommodate varying student needs, we need to personalize professional development to address varying teacher needs. This chapter provides an individual needs assessment along with recommendations to help guide the professional development of each teacher, department, school, or district.
I recommend that you take time to determine where your greatest needs are relative to the seven research-based, classroom-tested teacher actions highlighted in the following chapters. Collectively, all seven core indicators addressed by the TIPS (Teacher Intentionality of Practice Scale) framework provide a guide to significantly enhance the teaching and subsequent learning that occurs in your classroom. TIPS comprehensively and cohesively pulls together what we know regarding the intentional decisions that teachers make that result in improved student success. Using the framework may even provide the opportunity to let go of many nonessential components that your school or district has previously required.
The needs assessment found in this chapter is composed of 28 statements. You are asked to respond to four aspects associated with each of these statements: (1) the frequency of occurrence in your classroom, (2) your confidence relative to the statement, (3) the amount of evidence that you have to support your frequency and confidence claims, and (4) whether or not you believe that your students would support your claim. The scores are weighted as follows: frequency (50 percent), confidence (20 percent), evidence (20 percent), and student perspective (10 percent). After you have completed the needs assessment, rank your total scores for each indicator (category) from 1 to 7, with 1 being your lowest score and 7 being your highest score.
The goal is to help you clarify your strengths and weaknesses, recognizing that we all have some of each. Specifically, the intent is for you to honestly and accurately report your perception for each statement. The column that asks you to reflect on the degree of evidence available is an attempt to align your perception with your actual, observable practice. Each statement is linked to a specific research-based, classroom-tested TIPS indicator.
Instead of recording your needs assessment responses directly in the book, download it from www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/books/marshall2016.pdf. The password is marshall117001. The spreadsheet automatically tallies your results for each category. After completing the questionnaire, all you need to do is rank the items. You can then save, print, and share your answers. I recommend that you work with another teacher and have weekly discussions about your needs, your plans, and your growth. Or, if you prefer to work on your own, this chapter can help you establish professional goals for the next year or two.
On a broader scale, a department or a school can use the collective responses to spend professional development funds on the actual needs of the department or school, rather than acting on hunches or responding to sales pitches of unjustified needs. The results may lead a school to focus on one of the topics that most teachers agree is a weakness, or the school might focus on several topics, with each teacher targeting one or two areas of greatest need. We have known for years that just attending a one- or two-day professional development workshop or a single conference session will not improve teacher performance or student achievement—unless these experiences are situated in a sustained professional development effort that actively engages teachers in goals specific to their content or grade level (Banilower, Heck, & Weiss, 2007; Darling-Hammond, Chung Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Marshall & Alston, 2014; Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007). However, once the core needs are known and identified, then purposeful, sustained, and well-supported professional development can be created to move teachers, departments, and schools further along.
After you have completed your rankings, identify which two TIPS indicators ranked lowest. These are the most appropriate areas to target first. The seven needs assessment clusters correspond to the following TIPs:
Although they are not absolutes, the following recommendations may help guide your next steps. If TIP 1, 2, or 3 is among your lowest rankings, then you should address these more fundamental pedagogical issues before moving to the other TIPS indicators. You are ready to move forward to another TIP only after you have consistently demonstrated and achieved proficiency. This accomplishment could take several months to a year or more, depending on whether you are seeking significant, sustained change and on the complexity associated with the intended change.
Questions
Frequency Score 0–5
Confidence Score 0–2
Evidence Score 0–2
Student Support Score 0–1
Total
Rank
1a
My lessons are well aligned (standards, objectives, lesson/activities, and assessments are all clear, aligned, and well sequenced).
1b
My lessons require students to engage with both process skills and content.
1c
My lessons connect to other disciplines and within my discipline.
1d
My lessons make connections to students' lives and the real world.
Total 1:
2a
My students are actively engaged during instruction, and abstract ideas are tied to concrete experiences.
2b
My instructional strategies are student centered (requiring more than mimicking or confirmation of what was modeled).
2c
My materials and resources make abstract ideas concrete and visual.
2d
My materials, resources, and strategies are purposeful, and technologies are transformative (allow student to do something not otherwise possible).
Total 2:
3a
My pacing and transitions are efficient and smooth, and students respond promptly to cues.
3b
Routines flow smoothly; my classroom almost appears to "run itself."
3c
I convey a solid presence, positive affect, and patience with my students, and my students also engage in positive, respectful interactions.
3d
I am approachable, supportive, and respectful during all interactions with students.
Total 3:
4a
I establish and communicate high, appropriate expectations for all students.
4b
I model, and students demonstrate, persistence, perseverance, and self-monitoring.
4c
I ensure that all students are appropriately challenged (regardless of ability).
4d
I differentiate and scaffold learning for all learners based on varied levels of readiness.
Total 4:
5a
I stimulate participation and involvement of all students throughout the lesson.
5b
I facilitate conversational, engaging, and motivating interactions throughout the lesson.
5c
My assignments and classroom interactions are purposeful and personal.
5d
My students are challenged to explain, reason, justify, and critique responses of others.
Total 5:
6a
I model creative approaches, and students are expected to find novel ways to communicate, share, present, and discuss ideas.
6b
I create a culture of curiosity and questioning in my classroom.
6c
My students are fairly self-directed and actively seek solutions to open-ended problems.
6d
My students are expected to consider multiple perspectives or alternative solutions/explanations.
Total 6:
7a
I provide specific, focused feedback (not just confirmatory responses like "yes/no" or "correct").
7b
I provide frequent feedback to scaffold learning.
7c
I use formative assessments to inform instruction and learning.
7d
I continually probe all students to determine prior knowledge and misconceptions.
Total 7:
© 2015 J. C. Marshall. Used with permission.
In districts or schools that have adopted new standards, new textbooks, or a new curriculum, it is imperative to spend sufficient time on TIP 1. Neglecting to support the transition to new standards or curriculum (including through the provision of targeted professional development) will result in teachers simply continuing to achieve the same teaching performance as in the past.
Proficient or exemplary performance in TIPs 4 through 7 is frequently what distinguishes good teachers from great teachers. Although every individual and every school has differing needs, preliminary trends from observational data from TIPS indicate that teachers' lowest areas of proficiency are found in TIP 7, TIP 6, and TIP 4, respectively. TIP 3, TIP 1, and TIP 5 are the areas of highest noted proficiency respectively. Remember that even though TIPS has been standardized so that the descriptive rubric for Level 3 details the expectation for a Proficient level of performance, teachers will vary in their proficiency among the various TIPS indicators. Don't feel the need to align with these more general findings from a sampling of K–12 teachers. However, the findings do provide a default context if you must work on your district's professional development needs with minimal input—and they may serve to confirm or refute what administrators and instructional coaches observe in their own buildings. Using a default is not my first recommendation because it does not allow for targeting actual needs identified or personalizing professional development.
The following chapters can begin to guide the analysis, the conversations, and the critical questions relative to each TIP. Please don't look at the ranking of TIPS indicators from the needs assessment in a dogmatic fashion. If scores are close, and if many individuals in the department or school have a similar need, then it may make sense to go with the group need over an individual need. The fact is that we all can probably grow further in each of the seven indicators, so you need to focus on where you can get the greatest return on your investment of time, energy, and school funds.
A few final suggestions may be helpful. First, proficiency in TIP 3 is a necessity. If you lack a safe, respectful, well-organized learning environment, then you will struggle to succeed with every other indicator. Second, TIP 7, which focuses heavily on formative assessments, is an area where fairly immediate changes can quickly result in improved student success. Third, TIP 6, which focuses on facilitating a creative, problem-solving culture, will be more challenging in some disciplines than others, but proficiency in this TIP is essential for living, working, and learning in the high-tech, modern world where students must learn how to do something purposeful with the information they have gathered, not just memorize and restate it. Finally, because many programs will want to delve deeper in their study of a given TIP, a list of resources is presented in Appendix B to guide further development toward proficiency and above for each TIPS indicator.
The TIPS Needs Assessment appears on pages 10–12. Use the following key to score each item in the assessment:
Key for TIPS Needs Assessment
Frequency Score
0 = Never or very rarely
1 = Monthly
2 = Weekly
3 = Multiple times per week
4 = Daily or almost daily
5 = Multiple times per class or throughout class
Confidence Score
0 = Low confidence or not confident on topic
1 = Moderately confident on topic
2 = Highly confident on topic
Evidence Score
0 = No evidence to support frequency and confidence claim
1 = Some evidence to support frequency and confidence claim
2 = Multiple sources of evidence to support frequency and confidence claim
Student Support
0 = Students would not support my frequency and confidence claim
1 = Students would support my frequency and confidence claim
After completing the self-assessment, rank all of the total scores from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 being the highest.
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