The Power of Peer Reference: Findings From a Teacher Education Experiment on the Influence of Relative Performance Feedback

• In Event: Using Experimental Designs to Study Innovations in Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that preservice teacher education has the capacity to serve as a valuable lever for improving outcomes for early career teachers and their students. A number of recent studies have found associations between particular kinds of preparation for preservice student teachers (PSTs) - especially their clinical experiences - and better initial workforce outcomes (Authors, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018a/b). However, little empirical evidence exists about the causal relationship between PSTs’ clinical experiences and their improved early career performance, an integral missing link that could offer policymakers and practitioners a promising mechanism for educational reform.

Thus, in partnership with six teacher education programs across three states, we designed a randomized controlled trial with the goal of improving the timing and rigor of feedback PSTs receive during their clinical preparation. In this initiative, we randomly assigned PSTs within each program to receive automated reports containing highly individualized feedback about their teaching; reports were constructed using clinical assessment data gathered by PSTs’ cooperating teachers and university-based field supervisors, thereby relying only on information already collected by the programs. PSTs in both conditions already received, and continued to receive, clinical assessment (rubric-based) feedback from their mentors; our initiative input existing clinical assessments data and, for PSTs assigned to treatment, generated individualized feedback.

More specifically, reports – which were emailed to PSTs, their cooperating teachers, and their field supervisors – (a) identified the observed domains in which an individual teacher was evaluated highest and lowest (compared to her other domains) and (b) provided an indication of her performance in each domain in comparison to her peers. This latter feature was motivated by evidence from nudge experiments in social psychology which have shown that comparative feedback on a particular activity can prompt substantial behavioral changes (Allcott, 2011; Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008; Nolan et al., 2008). Meanwhile, PSTs in the control group simply received the feedback typically offered by their program in its original form. At the end of their clinical placements, we surveyed all PSTs about their preparation experiences (including the frequency, types, and quality of coaching received), their perceptions of their own readiness to teach, and their career plans.

Overall, treatment assignment was statistically unrelated to most overall PST perceptions of their clinical experiences, although those who received more reports did answer as more likely to enter the teacher workforce. However, in investigating the specific domains in which PSTs were given feedback, we find evidence that the provision of reports increased the accuracy of PSTs’ evaluation of their own performance; that is, when high-performing PSTs were informed about the areas in which they excelled, particularly in reference to their peers, they reported feeling more prepared in those specific areas than their similarly performing control peers who were not sent reports. As many of these former PSTs wrap up their first years in the workforce, we aim to explore whether the impact of these individualized reports on preparedness in particular domains carries over to higher instructional effectiveness in the same areas in the classroom as well.

Authors

• Matthew Truwit, University of Michigan

• Matthew Ronfeldt, University of Michigan

• Dan Goldhaber, American Institutes for Research

• James Cowan, American Institutes for Research

• Hannah Mullman, University of Michigan

• Emanuele Bardelli, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Chris Tien, University of Washington