Malpractice is defined as improper, illegal, or negligent professional activity or treatment, esp. by a medical practitioner, lawyer, or public official. Medical malpractice can cost the lives of patiences and is widely litigated, but what about the long term effective of education malpractice?
By education malpractice I mean any strategy that educators utilize in spite of research that clearly demonstrates the strategy does not work. One prominent example of education malpractice is our habit of one-shot workshops with no follow-up. School districts continue to host or send teachers to workshops with no follow-up coaching. We know intuitively, by experience, and through research that these "one shot affairs" have very little impact on teacher or student learning. So why do we continue this malpractice?
Maybe we continue this behavior because it makes us feel we have done something to attack a problem. For instance, if our problem is our teachers are not properly analyzing student data to improve teaching and learning, we may send a group of teachers to a workshop that teaches them to better analyze and use student data. The teachers are excited about attending the workshop, and we as school leaders feel we have done "something" to attack the problem. But the sad truth is that with no follow up coaching, very little change will probably occur.
So what should we do? I propose that we should utilize our limited resources to attack fewer problems with more in-depth strategies. Instead of utilizing our resources for a number of workshops on a myriad of subjects, we should attack one problem at a time with training and the all important follow-up that will truly change teacher behavior and impact student learning.
James Hutto's Unpremeditated Thoughts
