So…my son and I get into a discussion about his baseball and football coaches.
My son loves his football coach but had a horrific season last year with his baseball coach. As we talked about the two coaches here is what he said about both.
Football Coach
- commands respect when he steps on the field, locker room, or classroom
- never gets out coached
- never would put a player in a position to get hurt
- squeezes every inch of talent out of the players
- pushes players beyond their own expectations
- straight forward and honest
- always coaching and talking to players throughout the day
Baseball Coach
- demands respect
- doesn’t understand the finer parts of the game
- uses sarcasm to bully players
- publicly humiliates players
- compensates for his lack of knowledge with sarcasm
From these two lists it is pretty easy to figure out who had credibility.
Teachers need to have trusting relationships, competence, and passion to be credible to students. Teacher credibility has twice the impact as student motivation.
Teacher Credibility has an effect size of 1.09. This means a student at the 50th percentile will increase 36 points to the 86th percentile if they believe their teachers are credible. Put another way, teacher credibility has the potential to considerably accelerate student achievement, increasing a student’s chances of success by 184% and placing them in the top 86% of their peers. As Hattie notes in Visible Learning, “If a teacher is not perceived as credible, the students just turn off.”
There are four key factors of Teacher Credibility: trust, competence, dynamism, and immediacy.
TRUST – Students and teachers need to place confidence in each other…sincerity and honesty go a long way to help develop trust.
COMPETENCE – Competence is more than knowledge and intelligence. It is the teachers ability to be in command of the subject…organized, prepared, and relevant.
DYNAMISM – Teachers need to be energized and in charge of their classroom…move around the room, varying tone of voice, variety, and flexibility.
IMMEDIACY – Teachers need to reduce the distance between themselves and the students (physical and psychological)…get up from the desk or podium, smile, and be relaxed.
“But don’t most teachers like to see themselves as credible? They probably do, but it is not teachers’ perception of themselves that matters. Rather, it is a student’s perception that is important (http://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/teacher-credibility/)”
Watch teacher Dina Burow as she establishes credibility with her students.
Let’s look at the football coach again…
- commands respect when he steps on the field, locker room, or classroom (Dynamism)
- never gets out coached (Competence)
- never would put a player in a position to get hurt (Trust)
- squeezes every inch of talent out of the players (Competence)
- pushes players beyond their own expectations (Trust)
- straight forward and honest (Trust)
- always coaching and talking to players throughout the day (Immediacy)
Mastering the power of credibility has the potential to considerably accelerate increase student achievement. Let’s stop looking at the teaching and start focusing on the impact on learning.