Collaborative Peer Coaching That Improves Instruction
The 2 + 2 Performance Appraisal Model
- Dwight W. Allen
- Alyce C. LeBlanc - Capella University, NC, USA
Coaching | Professional Learning Communities | Staff Supervision/Evaluation/Retention
Using the 2+2 performance appraisal method, teachers regularly visit each others' classrooms during instructional time for as long as it takes to write two compliments and two suggestions for improvement.
In a time where teachers have become increasingly isolated, this strategy increases meaningful contact and collaboration, and allows for administrator participation in a less threatening context than the traditional performance appraisal, greatly reducing teachers' levels of anxiety and self-doubt, which in turn leads to increased job-satisfaction.
The authors present a wonderfully simple idea for turning a school into a learning community. It is a powerful, growth-oriented strategy for creating instructional focus in a school.
The book is an action-oriented game plan to improve teachers' performance--designed, initiated, and implemented by teachers. It tackles one of education's toughest issues--teacher isolation.
A refreshing dose of what the educational world (and others, too) needs for joyful accountability.
The authors present a powerful idea with the potential to transform schools by tearing down walls between teachers.
The 2+2 system fosters collegiality and contributes to professional development by reducing teacher isolation and encouraging collaboration among teachers.
Encouraging teahcers to visit each other's classrooms and create an environment of sharing and mutal trust has the potential to transform the profession.
Sharing ideas and feedback leads to teaching improvement and helps create valuable discourse on the learning process. A 2+2 program is a powerful way to change the culture of isolation. Education majors would experience a shared teaching culture--a model to emulate one day in their own classroom.
"Collaborative Peer Coaching That Improves Instruction: The 2 + 2 Performance Appraisal Model provides a simple method for performance apraisal for teachers that could be used by either peer teachers or administrators...The model provides feedback, encouragement, discussion, discourse, perspective, and collaboration in the improvement of instruction...model has been effective...The components of the model can be applied to other professions, especially those in the fields of social service and customer support."