Examining the Educator :: Education School Essays

One of the final problems identified in the topic of decreasing educational standards is the lack of educational competency. Educational competency is defined as a measure of excellence in the knowledge of individual educators and the ability of said educators to instruct students so that students are able to apply the knowledge to their own individual abilities; students should gain the ability to forge connections in the subject beyond the curricular base. Research also proposes than an adequate measure of defining excellence does not exist in the current educational system. It has been attempted, through research, to find a new measure - such as a peer critique and corrections system - thereby providing a medium through which a form of field expertise would arise in education. The topic of educational competency can be divided into subdivisions, these being the current institutions, evaluations, and theoretical basis of school systems. By studying literature, guidelines, philosophies, and proposals - which dominate modern education - the goal is to examine the strengths and flaws within the institution and its curriculum. In the end, the body of research examined should be sufficient to suggest the altercation needed in our current educational system. Evaluation Theory A main key to changing a system is finding a method by which to judge positive and negative changes in that system and in components of that system. Editors Donovan Peterson and Annie Ward compiled several articles pertaining to teacher competency and its theories in their book, Due Process in Teacher Evaluation. Boyd Applegarth, an author of one chapter in Due Process in Teacher Evaluation, focuses on a description and explanation of an operational evaluation system that includes classroom activities of teachers and extends to include examples of non-classroom activities that are considered crucial to the evaluation of teachers. Richard Brandt reviews several sources of nondiscriminatory criteria for evaluating teachers in his essay "Teacher Evaluation for Career Ladder and Incentive Pay Programs," in the anthology Teacher Evaluation Policy: From Accountability to Professional Development, edited and compiled by Daniel Duke. Brandt is interested in establishing criterion for a salary and career ladder for teachers based on competency. He addresses several modern systems for evaluating and rewarding teacher performance. Brandt recognizes the difficulty of judging teachers in an impartial way.