About the System

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For over 50 years, the military and highly successful companies have used simulation-based skill assessment and training to enhance individual and team performance. Now, for the first time, teachers and teacher candidates have direct access to the performance enhancement benefits of simulation technology. While teacher professional development resources are many and varied, knowing what areas to focus is a key step in the performance enhancement process. Let the Skills Profiler be a valuable guide to achieving personal and professional goals that make a difference in the classroom.

How the Five Teaching Skills Were Identified

The five skill areas selected for use in the Skills Profiler were identified using a two-step process. First, relevant research publications, including Educational and Psychology journals were reviewed. In addition, selected state teacher performance measurement guidelines were reviewed. Based on this review, a list of five process teaching skills were identified along with sub-components which served to clearly define each skill area.

Next, the list of five skill areas and their sub-components were presented in a questionnaire format for review by experienced teachers. The average teaching experience level of questionnaire respondents was 14.6 years and approximately half of the teachers reviewing the five skill areas reported receiving an award for teaching excellence. The questionnaire asked teachers to rate each skill area in terms of its importance for successful classroom teaching and its frequency of use. The questionnaire also provided teachers an opportunity to identify any additional skills they thought were critical for successful teaching performance. This type of rating methodology helps to "quantify" the relevance and criticality of job activities and skills, and provides a legal basis for including them in key human resource activities, such as professional development.

The results from the questionnaire were that a large majority of the teachers indicated that the skill areas and their components were "highly" important for success and were used frequently (on a weekly basis or more often). Thus, these skills are considered "critical" for classroom teaching performance. These skills were also chosen because they could be depicted using video-simulation. The power of simulation is that it presents a realistic context for presenting the skills and thus resulting feedback is presented in a similarly relevant context that can be easily understood and acted upon.

To summarize, the five Skills Profiler skill areas have been identified in the research literature as being key factors for improving student learning, motivation and achievement, and are recognized by experienced teachers as being "critical" for success in the classroom. The five Skills Profiler skills also closely match core teacher competency areas defined by the national and state Departments of Education.

How the Five Teaching Skills Were Validated

The validation of the Skills Profiler involved a process not a single activity. An important component of this process was soliciting input from experienced teachers throughout all phases of system development. System validation began when experienced teachers were asked to review and rate the five skill areas. Next, a survey of teacher training practices that included 200 district superintendents was conducted and the results were added to the rating information.

Taken together these results strongly support the job-relevance and critical nature of the five teaching skill areas. Scripts were then written and a focus group was conducted to review the scripts. The results of the focus group showed that the situations were realistic and targeted the appropriate skill component they were written to address.

Another important step in the validity process involved conducting a concurrent validation study. This involved having a large number of teachers with varied experience levels view and respond to the video situations. The results of the validation study demonstrated that the Skills Profiler is reliable and is equally effective for all teacher groups regardless of age, tenure, ethnicity, gender or grade level. The validation results also demonstrate that performance on the Skills Profiler is positively and significantly related to classroom teaching effectiveness measures, and thus can be used effectively to identify teaching skill strengths and weaknesses.

Ongoing research is being conducted to further demonstrate that the Skills Profiler is an effective and efficient tool that can be used by both individuals and educational organizations to achieve goals objectives related to enhanced teaching performance and associated student learning and achievement.

The Power of Simulation

An Overview of Simulation Technology

Mention the term "simulation" and many people immediately bring to mind a flight simulator. In general, simulation involves placing people in realistic settings for the purpose of training or performance assessment. Simulation may take many different forms, including: "live" role-play, two- or three dimensional computer-based "virtual" environments (such as a flight simulator or virtual reality), computer gaming environments, and realistic video presentations. One may even make a case for including mental imagery as a type of simulation.

These examples point out that simulation doesn't necessarily have to involve high-end (and expensive) computer platforms, such as those used to train pilots. Research has demonstrated that even low fidelity simulations can provide an effective medium for training and assessment. In this case, the term fidelity is equivalent to realism. The power of simulation technology for training is that it allows individuals to experience realistic situations they will encounter within their work environment and to learn from their mistakes. A simulation can be "realistic" in terms of its physical and functional components, with the latter component related to the types of tasks, settings and situational factors included within the simulation.

Simulation allows people to experience a
variety of realistic situations
and to learn from their mistakes.

Simulation also has the power to present a wide variety of relevant situations within a compressed time period. Typically, an individual would need several days, months or even years to experience the same range of on-the-job situations as they can encounter using simulation. As a performance assessment medium, simulation technology has been shown to accurately and reliably diagnose performance strengths and weaknesses, thereby focusing training on areas of true need. A focused training approach based on skills and abilities that are critical for on-the-job success improves training effectiveness and efficiency at both the individual and organizational levels. The Skills Profiler provides the "focus" in focused professional development by allowing teachers and teacher candidates to perform an objective confidential self-assessment of their classroom teaching skills.

As a performance assessment medium, simulation technology has been shown to accurately and reliably diagnose performance strengths and weaknesses, thereby focusing training on areas of true need.

Simulation and System Dynamics

Simulation technology is conceptually linked to what is referred to as system dynamics. System dynamics is an approach that stresses the need to view the world around us in terms of a sequence of inputs, throughputs, and outputs. Thus, a school may be viewed as taking in students as inputs, applying educational and instructional processes as throughputs, and outputting capable individuals that can readily enter the work force and society at large. Individual systems, such as a school, can be viewed as being made up of sub-systems and, in turn is itself embedded within a more encompassing system. In this case, the classroom or the student is a sub-system within the more encompassing "school system," which in turn is embedded within the more encompassing "local community system," and so on. System dynamics can be used to describe and understand cause and effect relationships, as well as "ripple effects," such as the unintended consequences of an event or activity that are oftentimes far removed in time and space from the triggering event/activity

In general, the system dynamics approach provides a way to describe and study our complex biological, physical and social world around us. Because it is focused on dynamic inter-relationships, it works hand-in-hand with simulation technology. Our WWW links page provides a number of simulation-related Web sites, as well as ones that provide information and instruction on systems dynamics. It is hoped that teachers, students, and others will use these links to explore the power of simulation as an effective tool for learning, regardless of the subject content being studied.

Benefits to Individuals

Confidential Feedback For Professional Development Planning

The Skills Profiler uses video simulations depicting realistic classroom situations that target five critical teaching skill areas. Based on responses to these situations, a confidential feedback report is generated and sent as an attachment to the email account provided by user. The individualized feedback report provides the following information related to a given teaching skill area:

• Unique strengths and weaknesses associated with the component elements that make up the skill
• Information allowing the individual to compare his or her performance to that of a normative sample of experienced teachers
• Performance enhancement suggestions for improving weaker classroom teaching skills areas

For teacher candidates, the system can help jumpstart entry into the teacher certification process by allowing him or her to demonstrate teaching proficiencies based on prior professional and personal experiences.

Benefits to Districts & Schools

Data Driven Decision Making and Program Accountability

The Skills Profiler provides district and school administrators with an accurate, data-driven and cost-effective method for determining where training resources should be focused to achieve the greatest impact. The Skills Profiler is the only available system for objectively and systematically determining what classroom teaching skill areas are in need of training. The Skills Profiler can also be used to evaluate the extent to which subsequent training improves teaching effectiveness.

Two key features of the Skills Profiler are that feedback to individual teachers is confidential and it can be administered to a single teacher or to a large number of teachers during a single session. The use of a central scoring computer allows results from multiple schools/sites to be immediately available to administrators as an aid in budgeting and resource planning activities. The Skills Profiler software provides districts with a variety of Trend Analysis Reports (TARs) that summarize performance trends across a variety of teacher groups (for example, by grade, experience level or subject area taught). These reports can also be used to compare results within the district to results of other similar districts across the state, region, or nation.

The system also can be used to demonstrate program accountability. Accountability is fostered by linking tangible outcomes to programs that produce immediate impact within the classroom. The Skills Profiler provides districts and schools with a cost-effective tool for impacting student performance outcomes by improving the information teachers have available to them when planning and implementing their ongoing professional development activities. As a result of the extensive validation and its use of a proven performance technology, the system has been incorporated into successful grants proposals related to teacher professional development, teacher quality and educational reform.

Benefits to Colleges & Universities

The Skills Profiler provides faculty members with detailed performance data that can be used to tailor program curricula, activities, and other resources to the individual needs of the student or to a specified group of students (e.g., class, cohort, etc.). The system also can be used to gauge progress through the program, for example by including a self-assessment component just prior to the beginning of the teaching internship phase. The results of this self-assessment can be used by student interns provide copies of the system generated feedback reports to their faculty advisor, as well as to the onsite teacher-mentor, for the purpose of developing a focused internship experience that facilitates knowledge/skill transfer to the classroom.

The system also can be used for research purposes, for example to establish a performance baseline to use as when making between group comparisons, or as part of a battery of variables related to teaching ability when exploring teaching effectiveness. Faculty members interested in using the Skills Profiler for research purposes are encouraged to contact Applied Simulation Corporation to discuss where and how it will be used.