TEAM System for Kindergarten Teacher Evaluation in the United States and Its Inspiration

Abstract

The core issue of current kindergarten teacher evaluation reform is to focus on professional competence building, to motivate kindergarten teachers to be dedicated to their work, and to devote themselves to educating people. The TEAM system for kindergarten teacher evaluation in Tennessee, USA, was introduced to promote the professional development of kindergarten teachers, and it has formed a closed-loop operation process. In the preparation phase, the Tennessee Department of Education conducts training and certification for the evaluators; in the implementation phase, evaluators conduct the activities on kindergarten teachers through evidence-based observations of instructional activities, value-added portfolios, and equitable third-party evaluations; and in the feedback phase, the evaluators and kindergarten teachers hold a concluding meeting that integrates evaluation and guidance, and the education department uses questionnaires and other methods to continuously optimize the evaluation system. This brings a lot of inspirations and references to the reform of kindergarten teacher evaluation in China, such as creating an evaluation linking assessment and guidance, exploring value-added evaluation that empowers teachers' development, and constructing an iterative evaluation system for kindergarten teachers.

Keywords

• teacher evaluation
• kindergarten teacher evaluation
• developmental evaluation
• value-added evaluation
• evaluation reforms