EFFECTIVE TEACHING DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Given the belief that the teacher is indeed the key to effective instr uction, the Educational Quality Indicators Project for the Spirit Rive r School Division involved developing and validating a set of indicato rs that can be used to assess teacher effectiveness in formative and s ummative processes. All the key stakeholders in education were consult ed in this process: teachers, administrators, students, and parents, w ith teachers playing the largest role largely as a result of their dir ect responsibility for the quality of the teaching-learning situation. The project focused on professional development and staff inservice. A collegial, nonthreatening model for more effective teaching using fo rmative supervision and observation was developed and implemented over three years.