Brandon White Final Dissertation.pdf

This qualitative study aimed to identify teaching competencies teachers attribute to student achievement and what evaluator feedback they want and need to improve their instruction. Participants from one school district were interviewed. The data were coded through the lens of Marzano’s (2017) Art and Science of Teaching Framework. Of Marzano’s 60 competencies, teachers overwhelmingly focused on competencies around engaging students, specifically noticing when students are not engaged. The participants in this study desired evaluator feedback on strategies to better engage students, yet did not identify, by name or insinuation, those teaching competencies critical to actually engaging students, such as planning and preparing content material or how to differentiate the delivery of content to meet each student’s needs. In essence, the art of teaching trumps the science of teaching when it comes to what teachers focus their instruction on and what they want feedback on. The data from this study also suggested participants were more likely to use feedback given by an evaluator if they respected the evaluator and their professional knowledge and skill in the teacher’s content area.