Is a 'guide on the side' better than a teacher?

Good teachers don't do much teaching, according to popular teacher evaluation frameworks, writes Daniel Buck, a former teacher and assistant principal. As "guides on the side," they set up their classrooms so students teach themselves and each other.

One of the most popular ways to evaluate teachers, the Danielson Framework, gives top marks to teachers who facilitate activities and run learning centers, Buck writes.

In "distinguished teachers" classrooms, students “critique and write” their own curricular materials. They design “their own rubrics.” Teachers invite students to teach each other the content.

By contrast, “unsatisfactory” teachers teach explicitly, give students lots of practice and arrange desks in rows.

There's lots of evidence that "direct instruction, spaced and interleaved practice, worked examples, and other traditional, structured instructional techniques" are more effective than "project-based learning and inquiry learning," he writes. But the rubrics reward "happy-clappy pedagogy."

Buck wants to rethink what it means to be a good teacher. Perhaps a class of busy, chatty students is not as good as a class of students who know how to multiply fractions or explain the causes of the Civil War.