A Matrix of Music Supervisors' Stories in the Midst of School Reform

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Music Teacher Evaluation: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going?

Abstract

Race to the Top (RttT) was used to focus school reform on the improvement of teaching through teacher evaluation based on student growth data. Papay (2012) was among the researchers who argued that “evaluators must be well-trained, knowledgeable about effective teaching practices, as defined in the standards, and able to analyze observed practices to determine how well teachers are meeting those standards” (p.135). Hill and Grossman (2013) claimed that, in the current era of reform, content-area experts were the best means of supporting teachers and helping them improve their practice. In light of this assertion, music supervisors have vital expertise, yet they are seldom represented in the music education research literature.
Craig’s framework of knowledge communities arising on the knowledge landscape was essential to this inquiry. I made the assumption that, because music supervisors interact consistently with teachers as well as other administrators, their knowledge landscapes are complex, and I wondered which knowledge communities shaped music supervisors’ professional practice, and also how their story constellations were shaped in the midst of education reform brought about by Race to the Top.
Through narrative inquiry, I was able to depict the lives of myself and two other music supervisors. We recorded six conversations, and I created transcripts from those recordings. The participants and I engaged in co-construction of an interim text until each of us was satisfied that the transcriptions sufficiently illustrated the complexity of his or her temporality, sociality, and place. The final research text was represented in script form as ten scenes related to the themes we uncovered, and I subsequently interpreted those scenes.
In our story constellations, reform stories were about trying to link evaluation of student growth to evaluation of teachers with no model to follow, while our stories of reform were about moving to a system where multiple sources of evidence were brought to bear in teacher evaluation. Our reform stories expressed fears that lack of validity in student growth assessments would eventually dishearten teachers, but in stories of reform, we expressed that teachers should be deeply engaged in considering how their students’ growth was best demonstrated.
A variety of people shaped our knowledge communities, from music teachers to non-music teachers. In addition we worked hard to build knowledge communities among our teachers, and ironically by engaging in this study ourselves, we formed our own knowledge community.
We indicated that prior experience being evaluated influenced our current evaluation technique, actually doing evaluation helped us improve, and that there was significant importance of having content-specific evaluators providing feedback. We discussed evaluation techniques, including what we take in immediately when we enter a teacher’s classroom and how we offer feedback to teachers, and how professional development was a better method of actually improving teaching that writing summative evaluations. This study concluded that in order to create a more informed and more consistent evaluation of music teachers, content-area supervisors need consistent opportunities such as this, to interact with one another and share their stories of experience.

Author

• Heather Cote, Westwood Public Schools