Learning Efficiency Rating of Instruction

While observing over several decades hundreds of teachers instructing, I realized that I was seeing performance patterns identified in experimental empirical research literature about learning. Some teachers led their students to learning quicker than students responding to different instructional patterns. The fewer of these instructional patterns teachers used, the slower the students met learning criteria for a lesson.

What came as a surprise, some teachers chose slower learning patterns than necessary for their students. That meant that they likely limited their studends learning. That realization seemed counterintuitive, but limited learning appeared in observations repeatedly, making me uncomfortable in too many classrooms conducted by well intentioned, preservice and incumbent teachers. Also, I found in professional literature no formal way to measure learning efficiency according to teacher input.

Eventually, I formulated an informal system to rate student learning efficiency according to teacher instructional patterns. I used that system informally to rate teachers according to what I now call their learning efficiency score. Here’s a summary draft of translating this informal rating into a formal system that others may consider.

A learning efficient rating score (LERS) indicates the level of confidence someone may have in an instruction to yield a learning criterion promptly, directly, and easily. Raters use the Learning Efficiency Scale (LES) to score instruction and then convert it into a rating.

This rating is to teaching what a financial credit rating score is to lending. Both indicate levels of confidence to have in someone’s future performance, based on past performance.

I’ll post more of this rating system as I add to the Learning Efficiency Scale. Please let me know your thoughts about this effort, and if you want to work with me in developing it further. Perhaps your observations are different from mine, so together we can strengthen the scale and rating.

I want to develop the scale and rating score for teachers to use as a guide to adjusting their instruction and student learning efficiency.