The second book I have read since Christmas is Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. I am a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell having devoured The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking & Outliers: The Story of Success.
Gladwell makes you think twice about things you might otherwise take for granted or just not think about at all. This book comprises a collection of Gladwell’s articles from The New Yorker.
I will give you a quick dip into two of these articles. The first changed my mind about a television ad that has irritated me for a long time – it’s LÓreal’s “Because you’re worth it”. I have always thought this is somewhat cynical when associated with make-up and hair colour. What Gladwell presents however is the context for a campaign designed to follow Clairol’s “Does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure”. This was a very clever campaign to present hair dyes as natural in appearance. The response from L’Oreal was designed by a 23 year old woman working for McCann-Erikson. She decided that L’Oreal’s ad was not going to be about women wanting to meet men’s needs - it was about how this slightly more expensive product made her feel about herself – she didn’t mind spending a bit more meeting her own needs – “Because I’m worth it!” It was a deliberate push back against the ‘I have to look good for my man’ attitude. And it worked! So although the phrase has changed, I have seen it in a different light and am much less irritated – maybe I am worth it!
Another article should be required reading for the Minister of Education “Most Likely to Succeed”. It starts off by highlighting how difficult it is to select a quarterback for the NFL from the College superstars. The difference between how the games are played are just too great. As Gladwell says “There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired.”
He goes on to compare this to teaching. He describes ‘value added’ analysis, which uses standardised test scores at the beginning and again at the end of the school year and then follows the teachers’ scores over the next three or four years. Over time it is possible to assess the quality of the teaching.
He refers to an economist, Eric Hanushek, who estimates that students of a very bad teacher learn on average half a year’ s work; whereas students of a very good teacher learn a year and a half’s worth of learning in a single year. That’s an entire year’s difference.
“Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a bad school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a better teacher.”
The trouble is that “no one knows what a person with the potential to be great teacher looks like. The school system has a quarterback problem.”
Would one of the Tories out there get the Minister of Education to think about value added analysis before she wastes another cent on national standards! Unless the standards measure the ‘value-add’ (which they don’t) they will obviously be meaningless!
Malcolm Gladwell makes you think and that’s why I love reading his stuff.
Highly recommended!
Thanks for the recommendation Lianne. Will get them.
I agree that Gladwell’s value add analysis means that the rate of improvement of students should be measured rather than the “lowest common denominator” approach of measuring to s specific (and in many cases low) standard.
He also implies that we would get more benefit from measuring teachers’ performance. If teachers are made not born the poor performers could given additional training in the successful techniques of the good teachers. If teachers are born not made and, as Gladwell says, we are unable to reliably select them then we need to look at some kind of long term probationary period across a range of teaching environments to select the best teachers.
Finally, in the interests of getting the best education for your child the “teacher rating” of schools should be published to enable us to select the best.
Interesting pieces.
Love the idea of ‘value-added’ analysis. It’s frustrating to hear about the brightest students slipping backwards each year but nothing done because they are still ‘well above average’ (although less far above than the previous year).
@grant – “Finally, in the interests of getting the best education for your child the “teacher rating” of schools should be published to enable us to select the best.”
Interesting point Grant – just how do you think that might occur? Teacher quality is dependent on many variables – what makes a good teacher great in one setting could make another good teacher in the same setting, less so, depending on variables such as:
- School leadership
- School Culture
- Professional Development
- Student/teacher body
- ability to teach curriculum rather than to standards
- etc….
I would think a ‘teacher rating’ would be quite a subjective kind of thing.
Often the things that make a teacher ‘great’ are not so easy to define. This is one of the reasons Nat stds are dodgy – again the variables are quite diverse and context can be an important factor. In saying this however, an ineffective teacher usually has a number of traits that are quite easy to unravel – and a good teacher can, with the right support, be great, but a bad one, despite intervention, will remain so.
Thanks for this Lianne.
Those interested in the full article on the quarterback problem can read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Lianne, your point about National Standards is a good one, but I’d also be interested in your views on some of Gladwell’s later points (mentioned by Grant above) about how we should be recruiting and evaluating teachers.
Gladwell says that we should leave the door to teaching wide open, then evaluate teachers rigorously over an apprenticeship. This requires paying good teachers a great wage, apprentices a relatively small one (what he calls ‘apprentice wages’) and, implicitly, sacking apprentice teachers who don’t make the grade.
We often hear complaints from Labour MPs that the National Standards will lead to performance pay, which is at best ineffective and at worst the root of all evil (see this thread: http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2009/10/04/excellent-teachers-not-national-standards-will-raise-achievement/). Gladwell, and I, would argue that performance pay is a good thing providing you’re measuring performance on a valid basis (and raw National Standards results are not a good measure). Interestingly NZEI have agreed (see here: http://www.nzei.org.nz/site/nzeite/files/primary%20teachers/IsuueSheet_PerformancePay_web.pdf).
What say you Lianne (and Trevor and others)?
@Paul
Parents are interested only in the improvement that their child gains from being taught and this is what I think Lianne was alluding to. Do not measure the child’s performance against a standard but measure their change(hopefully improvement) over time.
Gladwell’s paper is clear that you can measure the quality of teaching by measuring the outputs. You listed a number of inputs to good teaching and I agree that they are difficult to tease out but do not confound these inputs with the measured output.
If a school is providing the right teaching environment and professional development then the “teacher rating” of the school should improve with time as the inputs improve the teacher output.
Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to this, but have been out of cellphone range. I would like to think about the approach around teachers and maybe do some more research on it as I am no expert. When I did my ‘Walk in the Shoes’ of a teacher aid I said to the principal how brilliant I thought the new entrants teacher was. When I reflect on what I liked it was that engagement with students and making sure they were not put down when they got the answers wrong. These children were learning to love to learn. We do need to make sure that teachers are taught how to teach and to get as much from their students as they can. I will blog again when I have some more to add. Cheers.