Student Failure Must Always be Associated with Teacher Failure.

Teachers in our public schools are professional licensed individuals typically certified by state agencies to be qualified to teach students in a professional manner. When students fail in relation to school learning programs, at the same time, and in the same manner their teachers fail. Since teachers are paid to provide an effective learning program for students, when even one student fails in that program, there is clear evidence that the learning program paid for was not effective for that student. When more than a single student fails in one class, or for one teacher, there is increasing evidence that the learning program provided was not effective for more students. When a house builder, or a bridge builder, builds a product that is found to be ineffective, the builder is required to return and rebuild the failed equipment; can we ask teachers to do the same for failed students?.

Self-efficacy and Learning

Bandura (1997), who won the Thorndike Award for 1999 by the American Psychological Association for his research in relation to self-efficacy has demonstrated repeatedly that learning and school achievement are intimately related to both student and teacher expectations. Teachers with a high sense of instructional efficacy operate on the belief that difficult students are teachable through extra effort and appropriate techniques and that they can enlist family support and overcome negative community influences through effective teaching. Self efficacy, then, for Bandura is a judgment of one's ability to organize and execute given types of performances. People may use their efficacy to adapt to their environment or to change it, but the self-assurance with which people approach and manage difficult tasks determines largely whether they make good use of their own capabilities. He insists that outcomes are always a product of human actions, and the outcomes people anticipate depend largely on their judgments of how well they will be able to perform in given situations. In contrast, teachers with low instructional efficacy believe there is little they can do if students are unmotivated. Bandura insists that if teachers believe they have no power to produce results, they will not attempt to make things happen. He insists that outcomes are always a product of human actions, and the outcomes people anticipate depend largely on their judgments of how well they will be able to perform in given situations. Insidious self-doubts can easily override the best of skills.

Students with high self-efficacy not only prefer normatively difficult activities but also display high staying power in those pursuits. The more encompassing the social milieu to which students gravitate, the higher their staying power in relation to learning. The stronger a student's belief in his/her personal expectations, the greater the effort in pursuit of such goals, and the greater the interest for learning and staying power in relation to learning.

Clarification of Grading Standards

Early at the beginning of each learning period teachers need to spell out in considerable detail the standards to be used for the grading of their students. First, there must be a clear understanding of when student assignments are due, and the penalty for materials turned-in late. Always, the teacher must make clear what specifically the teacher is looking for in a quality paper or assignment. For written assignments there must be a clear distinction between the acceptable use of quotes, and what constitutes plagiarism.

Normal Probability Curve

All things in nature including student learning tend to distribute on a normal probability curve where the great mass of students are average. There are typically a few who do very excellent work, and a few that do not so well. Student learning can be no exception to such typical distributions. In high schools, for example, during the freshman and sophomore years, we would expect the normal curve to follow rather precisely. Then in the junior and senior years, we would expect the curve to be negatively skewed, with more students receiving somewhat higher grades. In college, we would expect the normal curve to be rather precisely followed during the freshman year, with slight negative skew in the sophomore year, and even greater skewness in the junior and senior years. By the time of graduate school, we would expect even greater negative skewness, as students become the more select, with the less capable students tending to drop out of school. Yes, of course, there can be exceptions to the normal curve, but it always serves as an excellent guide for expectations.

Extremes in Student Grades

Typically, in our educational institutions we have teachers that either give student grades that are clearly extremes. Some teachers tend to give exceedingly high grades, and others give very low grades to their students. Rarely, is there a direct association between the quality of teaching and the type of grades being given to students. Teachers need to be informed that there is always a relation between the grades students receive and the quality of teaching received, but even the best teachers should expect to have a normal distribution of student grades.

Teacher Effectiveness

Teaching effectiveness is always based on the actual outcomes of students in relation to objective testing of students. Student grades are not considered to be a sound basis for assessing teacher effectiveness. Objective tests are only considered to be effective measures of teacher effectiveness when the tests being used are clearly related to the objectives defined for the courses involved. In addition, it is essential that similar measures are available for one or even two proceeding years to insure actual gains made for any given year.

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: W.H. Freeman

Russell N. Cassel, Ed.D., ABPP, FAPFP, Editor of Education, and Director of The Cassel Institute, Chula Vista.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Russell N. Cassel, 1362 Santa Cruz Court, Chula Vista, California 91910-7114