The Development and Use of the Learning-to-Teach Growth Chart/er

• In Event: Teaching Professional Practice: A Cross-Program Examination of Innovation

Abstract

Following the Resident Growth Chart/er (RGC) model, educators from the University of Michigan’s School of Education collapsed the discrete skills listed in their prior evaluation tool into narratives that represented goals for intern/resident learning, with images of expert disciplinary teaching serving as a targeted endpoint. The LTGC includes four competencies and accompanying narratives derived from literacy and learning theories and mapped to the Common Core State Standards. These competencies are focused on (a) assessing and understanding students, (b) using complex texts that represent big disciplinary ideas, (c) engaging in instructional practices around the teaching of big ideas with texts, and (d) acting as ethical professionals. Each competency is divided into progressive descriptor blocks: novice intern, progressing intern, advancing intern and novice resident. “Beginning,” “Developing” and “Secure” grades are used to describe a student’s performance throughout their teacher training program. The dimensions of change from one block to the next are growth in independence, knowledge and practice, automaticity of practice, scale of instruction, complexity of decision making or scope of instruction.

The LTGC is a novel tool that has tremendous potential for teacher education efforts. Whereas many teacher education programs ask preservice teachers to submit portfolios for review or microteaching tasks within methods coursework, the LTGC allows for consistent, program-wide formative feedback on prioritized competencies. Further, the LTGC is constructed to enable users of the tool to “see” how the many component parts of teaching practice fit together, and it promotes the construction of a shared understanding of programmatic goals. Finally, the LTGC allows the program to establish a normative trajectory of intern growth over time, potentially allowing us to evaluate whether novices are ready to be certified, especially when used with existing licensing exams and summative assessments.

Author

• Emily Rainey, University of Michigan