What Do Teachers, Principals, and Students Think?
In the fall of 2009, MetLife asked 1,003 K-12 public school teachers, 500 K-12 public school principals and 1,018 public school students in grades 3-12 to share their views on their respective roles and responsibilities, current practice, and priorities for the future. The effort marked a continuation of MetLife’s Annual Survey of the American Teacher, which it has been conducting since 1984. The first report on the survey findings, Effective Teaching and Leadership, compares teachers’, principals’, and students’ perspectives on responsibility and accountability and explores the nature and extent of collaboration in schools today.
Among the key survey findings:
- On average, teachers spend 2.7 hours per week collaborating in a structured way with other teachers and school leaders.
- The most frequent type of collaborative activities are teachers meeting in teams to learn what is needed to help their students achieve at higher levels; school leaders sharing responsibility with teachers to achieve school goals; and beginning teachers working with more experienced teachers.
- The least frequent type of collaborative activity is teachers observing each other in the classroom and providing feedback. (Less than one-third of teachers or principals report that this type of activity frequently occurs at their school.)
- Most notably, two-thirds of teachers and three-quarters of principals think that greater collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on improving student achievement.
These and other results from the MetLife survey can be found here.
