Being an author of this brilliant book, very enthusiastic to introduce ideas, perspectives, discussions and analysis of the topic 'Redesigning teacher evaluation' and 21st century teaching, learning styles and learning strategies' for teachers of this generation, who want to empower and enrich their students cognitive dimension process easy and comfortable manner. Author analysis of various models, strategies and techniques mentioned in this book can help teachers to perform better in their classroom transactional process by undergoing self-evaluation and self-assessment honestly. I hope this analysis help them to review their methods and understand their own learning gaps and they focus on continuous self-improvement which leads to professional growth with highest responsibility and accountability.
According to author, teaching profession is not just occupation, it is a noble profession, and it is also not just profession of teachers to produce an engineer, scientist, doctors and lawyers every year, it's about creating of better human beings. With this I would say that teachers are creators of every generation who preserve culture and morals and pass it from one generation to another. Hence, they stand at superior position in the society. Their role is enormous and limitless.
"The difference between an effective teacher and less effective teacher is that it's not about what they know about teaching &learning strategies, it's about 'how they execute, how they do things.' In this case an effective teacher will execute, and they do different. Whereas less effective teacher not."
An effective teacher is different because he/she inspires and influence their students directly or indirectly. Inspiration and influence are not from our favorite teacher that comes from anywhere, nor from any region, it has no boundaries, it's beyond our limit. If we consider the greatest scientist Albert Einstein was influenced by Isaac Newton, Michael faraday and James Maxwell scientists, with this, we can understand an influence of a teacher is not limited to particular place or particular region, it spreads like cool breeze of inspiration to anywhere to anyone in any manner.
Observation and imitation are fundamental steps to get practice of better learning to happen. Similarly, Faraday was influenced by Humphry Davy professor although he was not a regular student for his classes when he was teaching.
As we know that primary responsibility of an effective teacher of 21st century is that measuring learning outcomes quantitatively of the students in classroom transaction and also using appropriate tools and techniques in teaching learning process?
The success of the teachers in schools of India depends on appropriate measuring of the learning outcomes of students precisely and transforming them to global citizens. As you know that "Learning changes everything "As we teachers of India, reflect on our strategies and processes of our classroom transactions, like planning and developing activities for learners to get desired learning outcomes based on 'mind, hand and heart'. Major challenge of the teacher is measuring learning outcomes precisely with rating scale in a given time period. Quantifying the active learning experiences of a child in the classroom with appropriate methods quite difficult.
At this point I think myself that how to make teachers of this present generation as 'star performers or super teachers' from average. As we teachers ponder on these questions? Are we following right methods of measuring learning outcomes? Are we getting sufficient time and freedom to measure these learning outcomes of students in classroom transaction? Or just running for completion of our syllabus? In case of teacher assessment, what is the correct rating scale of the measurement of a teacher?