A Summing Up. Robert Eaker
educators and get-to educators. I was amazed at the differences between schools and within schools regarding this basic attitude. Some educators seemed to have an attitude of “I have to come to work and do these things I am told to do,” while others expressed excitement or gratitude that “I get to work with my colleagues and these kids.” What a difference!
A get-to teacher attitude is exemplified by Eleanor Roosevelt. After her husband, Franklin Roosevelt, was elected governor of New York in the election of 1928, Mrs. Roosevelt refused to give up the job that meant the most to her. She was teaching American history and 19th century literature three days a week at the Todhunter School for girls in Manhattan. She remarked, “I teach because I love it. I cannot give it up” (Ward & Burns, 2014, pp. 268–269).
Another example: For years one of my dearest friends was Richard Marius. Although Richard passed away in 1999, I often think of him and his impact on me—and countless others. For almost two decades, Richard was director of expository writing at Harvard University. Beyond directing expository writing, Richard frequently taught a course in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences on William Faulkner’s novels, from Soldiers’ Pay to Go Down, Moses. Although the university catalog course description noted enrollment was limited to fifteen students, in the fall of 1996 his final grade sheet listed grades for seventy-one students (Anderson, 2006)!
Richard did not feel he had to teach those additional students. Instead, he felt grateful that he got to share his knowledge of and enthusiasm for Faulkner’s life and novels with students. Later in my career, as a university dean, I witnessed get-to attitudes like Richard’s time and again. Unfortunately, I also occasionally encountered faculty members who would not allow any additional students in their courses beyond the published class size limits, regardless of the circumstances.
What a difference attitude makes! What would lead us to believe that students will have a better attitude than their teachers or that teachers’ attitudes will be more positive and enthusiastic than the attitude of their principal? Doesn’t the attitude of the superintendent have an effect on an entire school district—especially on principals, teachers, and support staff? The answer: absolutely!
During this period of utilizing the clinical supervision process as a vehicle for improving instruction, both Jim Huffman and I (and, I am sure, others) began to realize the process had some severe limitations. While the process offered educators helpful skills at observing and recording classroom interactions, along with a framework for partnering with teachers to reflect on their instructional effectiveness, the process did not place a heavy emphasis on providing teachers specific research-based approaches for improving their classroom effectiveness.
We saw that at the end of post-observation conferences, teachers would often agree that some changes in their classroom instruction would enhance their effectiveness and asked for recommendations on what to change, but the supervisors had only limited knowledge of research-based effective instructional practices. Interestingly, in many cases, the teachers were much more knowledgeable regarding effective teaching strategies than those conducting the observation!
Fortunately, the latter part of the 1970s witnessed an increased interest within both the U.S. Department of Education and the research community in pursuing research around teaching effectiveness. And fortunately for me, like so many times in my life, I serendipitously met a person who would make a significant impact on my professional career and greatly enhance my knowledge of and thinking about instructional improvement—a meeting I’ll describe in the next chapter. But it’s safe to say that without my prior decades of experience with classroom observation through the clinical supervision process and the friendship and mentorship of Jerry Bellon, this new research wouldn’t have had nearly the impact on me that it ultimately did.
CHAPTER 2
The Consumer-Validation Approach
Research Into Practice
The clinical supervision framework continued to be the focus of my thinking about instructional improvement well into the mid-1970s. In the fall of 1972, I joined the faculty at Middle Tennessee State University. I was sure I would stay at the university for four or five years and then move to a larger university. Instead, I remained for the next forty-one years!
There were many reasons. Some were personal. We were settled in the Murfreesboro community, and our extended family was in nearby Chattanooga. Other reasons were professional. I eventually worked for five university presidents, all of whom treated me wonderfully. From the time I joined the faculty until I became dean of the College of Education, I was mentored by Ralph White, chair of the Department of Educational Leadership. More than a mentor, Ralph became a great friend. And importantly, each dean, vice president, and president not only allowed me to continue my consulting work with K–12 schools but also encouraged me to do so. Although in subsequent years I had opportunities to move to the University of Georgia and the University of Virginia, both of which I seriously considered, in the end, I realized I could not find another university culture as supportive as Middle Tennessee State.
In the early 1970s—along with Peabody College, Tennessee State University, and the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools—Middle Tennessee State joined a consortium, the Teacher Education Alliance for Metro, to supervise and develop preservice teachers and provide in-service opportunities for educators. When I joined the university faculty, my initial assignment was with the consortium. During my second year on the faculty, I was joined by my good friend and colleague Jim Huffman, who had also received his doctorate from the University of Tennessee. Working daily in Nashville’s schools gave us the opportunity to expand our public school experiences, particularly in inner-city schools, even though we were full-time university faculty. Although the consortium was our primary responsibility, we were also assigned to teach graduate classes.
The combination of working in schools within a large metropolitan district, consulting in suburban districts in Chicago and Long Island, and teaching graduate classes composed primarily of teachers from surrounding suburban and rural districts in Tennessee provided a perfect laboratory for our interest in research-based instructional improvement.
As a university faculty member, my interest in the research on effective teaching practices became more focused. I learned of efforts by the U.S. Department of Education and the educational research community, particularly at Michigan State University and the University of Texas, to improve student achievement through research to identify specific teaching behaviors that directly affected student learning and behavior—what was at the time referred to as the teacher effects research. One of the researchers who had an early impact on our thinking was Jacob S. Kounin (1970).
The Kounin Research on Classroom Management
The work of Kounin (1970) was groundbreaking in two ways: one, it impacted the way both researchers and practitioners viewed classroom management, and two, it fueled the emerging interest among researchers in objectively observing classroom instruction and its effect on student learning and behavior.
Kounin’s (1970) interest in classroom management began quite accidentally. During one of his classes, he reprimanded a student for reading a newspaper during the lesson. He noticed that although he had reprimanded only one student, his reprimand had an effect on other students in the class. He later asked, “Why were students who weren’t targets of the reprimand affected by it? Do differences in the qualities of the reprimand produce different effects, if any, on non-target students?” (Kounin, 1970, p. iii).
Kounin’s curiosity eventually led to years of research on the subject of classroom discipline—specifically, the effects of how teachers handle student misbehavior. He sought to discover if some discipline techniques are more effective than others when it comes to affecting the behavior of an entire class. He also wanted to learn if and how the discipline techniques of teachers who are perceived as good disciplinarians differ from the techniques of those who are perceived as weak disciplinarians (Eaker & Keating, 2015).
After