THE ROLE OF VALUE ADDED MEASURES IN CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS

Teaching perhaps is the only profession which accommodates new and unproven, places at the same situation as veteran and provides no organized support. Academic progress of students depends heavily on talent and skills of the teacher leading their classroom. Teaching may be described as a commitment to “care and welfare of pupils” or even as the “Journey through the Heart”. Teachers are now considered as “Social Reformers”. Processes of becoming a good and effective teacher involve varying degrees of personal and professional growth. Professional learning should always address identified gaps in student achievement. Teacher professional learning can focus on real issues and avoid providing information that may not benefit the participants. Our work in educational institutions is about bridging the knowledge gap between educators and their practice. There is need to identify whether student perceptions, classroom observations and assessments of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge are aligned with value-added measures to find the areas where teachers need to become more effective. The goal of this paper is to use classroom observations to help teachers improve student outcomes. Teaching is a complex task and value-added measures can captures the impact of differences in teacher effectiveness