Framework for Teaching Not Quite Enough

Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching is, according to ASCD, “a benchmark for thousands of school systems and educators around the world.” Popularized in her 1996 book, Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching (1996, 2007).The Framework for Teaching is “a research-based set of components of instruction…grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching” in which the act of teaching is broken down into 22 components.

Danielson identifies several purposes for the Framework, emphasizing its value in promoting professional conversations among teachers. Most commonly, however, it appears to this educator that her construct is being used as a foundation for teacher evaluation. While no doubt a powerful structure for analyzing and assessing the main facets of what teachers do, the Framework does not quite get to the core of the matter – student learning.

Perhaps that’s OK. For Danielson, “An effective system of teacher evaluation accomplishes two things: it ensures quality teaching and it promotes professional learning.” Few would dispute that the quality of teaching is the prime determinant of student learning and that promoting professional learning is important. The four “Domains” of the Framework (Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Professional Responsibilities, and Instruction) cover those elements well. However, to focus evaluation of teachers on things teachers do rather than on the results that they get is myopic. It would be like evaluating an orthopedic surgeon on her knowledge of the patient’s x-ray CT, the cleanliness of the operating room, her latest article in The Journal of Orthopedics, and her scalpel technique. Don’t we really want to know if the patient can walk after his total knee replacement?

Evaluating teachers on the results of their teaching is certainly far more difficult than documenting the things they do. All kinds of factors that the teacher cannot control come into play: students’ capabilities, motivation levels, and interests; support from home and community; resources available; schedules; mandates; school climate… just to name a few. But there are also a host of intangibles that matter that teachers do control: relationships with students; ability to personalize instruction; sensitivity to individual needs; understanding of context for student – intangibles vital to enhancing learning but not directly addressed in the Framework.

We owe a great deal to Ms. Danielson for giving us a structure to analyze the craft of teaching, and the many schools using her Framework as the basis for teacher evaluation are certainly leagues ahead of their neighbors still relying on a few classroom observations to assess teacher performance. But, we must not lose sight of the core of what we do as teachers – create learning. Evaluating a teacher’s role in that core task fairly, accurately, and meaningfully is the challenge.