Thomas Guskey: Select Talent or Develop Talent, The Question That Shapes Every Educator

If professional learning is “working”, where can you see it first: in a staff room conversation, a polished program plan, or in what students do differently tomorrow? We sit down with Dr Thomas Guskey, Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky, to get brutally clear on what counts as effective professional learning and how school leaders can evaluate it without turning it into another compliance task.

Guskey walks us through his five levels of evaluation and why so many schools get stuck measuring process instead of impact. We dig into the real leadership challenge behind “level five”: agreeing on what we want students to learn, then choosing evidence people actually trust. A key insight is urgency: teachers will often trial a new practice, but if they can’t see credible signs it’s helping students within about two weeks, they will understandably stop. That pushes us towards short-cycle evidence like formative assessment, engagement, dispositions, and other meaningful classroom indicators, not just end-of-term results.

We also explore why needs surveys often show symptoms rather than underlying needs, and why evaluation questions mostly need answering before you begin. Along the way we touch on Benjamin Bloom, structured collaboration that helps rather than resists change, principal workload, and the small acts of recognition that keep good people going. The conversation lands on one question that can reshape school culture: is our purpose to select talent or to develop it?

If you want a practical, evidence-based way to plan teacher professional development that improves student learning outcomes, hit play, then subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a short review so other school leaders can find the show.

Links and References:

To view  our Professional Learning Offerings, visit:
https://www.nswppa.org.au/professional-learning

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Transcript

Why Leaders Chase Level Five

Drew Janetzki (host) 0:00

Dr. Thomas Gusky is Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and one of the most influential voices in the world on how we evaluate professional learning. His five levels of evaluation, first published more than 20 years ago, are taught in graduate programs around the world. In this conversation, Tom puts a single question to every educator: Is your purpose to select talent or to develop it? It is one of those ideas that sounds simple and then quietly rearranges how you think about your whole school. We talk about process versus impact, about why teachers will abandon a new practice within two weeks unless they see it working, and about what evaluation looks like when it stops being a task and starts being the point. It was a real privilege to record this one. Here is my conversation with Dr. Thomas Gusky. Welcome to our podcast today, Tom Gusky. It's a pleasure to have you with us today. Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of let's for getting our audience who would be familiar with with your name and your work, you've spent more than five decades inside of the question of professional learning. What what is the question? What is the question that principals ask you most often now? And how has that question changed across decades?

Thomas Guskey 1:41

Well, of all the questions we will address, this is probably the easiest because it has remained so consistent. As you know, I've been working on how we evaluate uh our professional learning endeavors and developed a model some years ago based on what five different kinds of evidence that we could use to look at the effectiveness of those uh those particular kinds of activities. Uh it begins with people's reactions, educators' reactions to the experience, then we go to what they learn from the experience. Uh level three has to do with the organization, uh, support and change for it everyone. Uh level four deals with uh changes in practice and implementation of new ideas or practices. Level five is, of course, the impact on student learning. And across the time, that's the most prominent question that I've received, especially from school leaders, is how do we get to level five? Uh-time principals see themselves as a bit removed from student learning. They don't have a direct impact on it because they don't interact regularly with students and children. And they have to impact people who impact those students. And so that makes it a bit more challenging for them. But I would say, without doubt, that's the most common question I receive. Show us and and help us understand how we can get to level five.

Drew Janetzki (host) 3:07

And in terms of from a patient's perspective, do you give them the realistic time frame regarding how long it does take to get to to level five? Or is that an open still an open-ended uh question there in terms of a particular do you have a do you have a timeline in mind to get to the to level five?

Evidence Teachers Trust Within Two Weeks

Thomas Guskey 3:32

Well, when we deal with level five, there are two basic questions that educators at all levels need to address. The first is what do we want students to learn to be able to do? And be able to clearly articulate that. Uh but second is to consider what evidence we would accept to verify they've learned those things. I find as I work with educators and actually have studied this, that we don't all trust the same evidence. I did a study some years ago where I took 15 different indicators of student learning, and they ranged from things like large-scale national assessments, local assessments, uh, and of course tests, formative assessments, homework completion, things like that. And I gave this list to uh educators and asked them that all of these would represent valid and meaningful measures of student learning. What do you most trust? What do you consider the most important or the most valid in your context? And asked them to rank order them. So they had to compare each one with every other one. What was interesting is after they did this, I compared the rankings of classroom teachers with school leaders and administrators. It was almost exactly reversed. The school leaders said, Well, we have to look at those large-scale assessments. That's what's is publicized, that's what our school board cares about. Uh the teacher said they're not that important. We we don't do it very often, we don't get the results back for weeks or sometimes months. I care about my own evidence. And so what this says pretty clearly is because you have multiple stakeholders in professional learning process, you have to consider multiple sources of evidence. When you think about a multiple source of evidence, it also relates directly to when that evidence will be available. Several years ago, I was being interviewed uh by a publication here in the States called uh The Learning Professional. And uh in the interview they asked me when teachers are engaged in a new curriculum, new instructional practices, new innovations for their classroom, how soon should they see results? And good friends of mine, uh Michael Fulan, Andy Hargraves, other books like that have been talking about the idea that professional learning has to be as an ongoing endeavor, and efforts have to be sustained over months and years. I said in two weeks. And the interviewer was was stunned. And I said and I said two weeks because teachers are not afraid of change, but they are so committed to the learning of their children, and they are unwilling to sacrifice their students for the sake of innovation. And so they will try new things, but if they don't gain evidence rather quickly that it's working, their fear is that if they persist, their students could learn less well. And they are not willing to make that that or that change for that reason. And so in any professional learning endeavor, you must think about what evidence teachers would trust at the classroom level to show that this is making a difference. And it could be something as minor as you know, regular classroom quizzes or uh formative assessments, it could be observations about engaged rates, uh, it could be the dispositions uh children bringing to the classroom, it could be homework completion. It's you don't have to restrict yourselves narrowly to the kind of evidence you would use, but it does have to be evidence based on students and what they're showing in the classroom overall. Teachers need that pretty quickly.

Drew Janetzki (host) 7:14

Yeah. And that makes complete sense, Tom, like in terms of from the classroom perspective and thinking of the best need for otherwise it doesn't have a real significance or or meaning and purpose. And it goes back to uh uh the work of if of Simon Senec talks about the why. Why is this actually really important to us? Yeah. Really interesting. And if I go further into that, I I did do some self-indulgence here when I was doing research around this this piece of work uh during my masters. I'll put a finding to you for just to just for reflection and in that I've I looked through the work of your work of this of this particular framework and went to 61 empirical studies on leadership of professional learning between 2003 to 2025, and the findings actually were really really interesting or stood out that only 3.3% in this particular study that I did actually measured level four, uh, got to level four of practice change on this uh measurement um on the measurement you named in 2002 looks wider. It looks like it's actually gone worse. What do you make of those that particular finding that I've that's a very small finding of showing that here we are in 2026 from um your your publication? What's what's your feedback? Is it or is there a surprise to to that, or does it show there's a lot more work to be done here? What's your what's your feedback to to that to that study that uh I've just shared?

Start With Impact Then Plan Backwards

Thomas Guskey 9:14

Yeah. So often and historically, when it comes to professional learning opportunities, uh we have focused primarily on what we do rather than on results. That we we focused on what I call process versus impact. And so when we plan professional learning endeavors, we we think about well, what new ideas are we going to take on this year? Um, what is the hottest topic in education? What are the things that are attracting people's attention? Uh what's in the news that we have to consider? Uh and then we we focus on those things. I think that the way that we really need to change is to start with the end in mind. We need to begin by focusing first on how our students are doing, uh, what are their strengths, uh, what are their weaknesses, and how can we improve that overall? If we start at the end and work backward, uh uh identifying the needs of our students first, then consider what what uh practices or policies or uh strategies could be implemented that could address those learning issues for our students? And what research evidence supports those practices? Do we have evidence that is similar to our context, or was it gathered in contexts that are quite different from ours? Then once you establish that those practices are likely to help you improve, you take another step back and say, what are what does the organization have to do to support people in that implementation? Uh, what kind of time do people need? What resources did they need in terms of materials or technology that might be available? You take another step back and say, well, if if we have that support in place, what is the knowledge and skills that teachers have to develop to implement that with some fidelity? And finally, then you consider what are the professional learning activities in which we could engage educators to really develop that knowledge and skill. So it's the idea of sort of starting with the end in mind and then planning backward to get to process, but begin with your focus and impact.

Drew Janetzki (host) 11:31

So this work aligns really well with in terms of the cycle that I'm talking around a in the news in the New South Wales context and generally the Australian context of at least a four, three to four year cycle. In that just to give context, we have a cycle of we uh it's known as the school excellence framework, and in that cycle is where schools are evaluating. There's a process where um the process involves having a peer principal as well as a panel going through your school plan and judging pointing time where that school particularly is at. Is that the way we should be thinking around a three to four-year cycle in terms of really implementing that? Or should we even be thinking longer? I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on where have you found the the greatest impact in using your framework.

Thomas Guskey 12:34

Well, we went through a similar process here in the States about a decade ago where there was uh discouraging evidence indicating that so much professional learning was being done on uh sort of a district level. Uh and it was quite above principles. And so we were planning professional learning at uh at a district level, and all schools were expected to sort of follow suit. Evidence was shown, though, that these schools have such different contexts, they deal with different student populations and uh responsible to different communities, that there was a major effort to move to what we called a site-based model. Uh in the state where I live, for example, uh 60% of the funding for professional learning was allocated to individual schools. And each school had a site-based council that was to design professional learning for that particular environment, hopefully making it more context-specific and more relevant and more effective. Several years into it, we did an evaluation of this effort and we found that people were basically doing the same terrible things at the site level that they didn't at the district level. Uh there wasn't really a lot of change. Uh and again, it was because this the focus was still on process uh rather than impact. Uh, and so what we're trying to do now is to change that sort of orientation.

Needs Surveys Show Symptoms Not Needs

Thomas Guskey 14:00

Uh that you oftentimes we plan professional learning based on teachers' needs. Organizations that sponsor professional learning activities here in the states find that the most common request coming to them is do you have a need survey that we can use to administer to our staff? And then we're going to uh uh focus our uh professional learning activities based upon what the teachers tell us their needs to be. And what I try to keep reminding people is this that when you do a needs survey, it gives you some good information, but it doesn't identify needs. It identifies symptoms of needs that must be understood on a very different level. And teachers are very good at describing their problems and their concerns and the things with which they struggle, but they're not good at identifying their needs. If they could identify their needs, they would go out and and make those needs met. I mean, they wouldn't be able to do that. Uh I recall uh a wonderful experience I had when I first began my doctoral studies uh at the University of Chicago. I was working under Benjamin Bloom at the time, and he engaged a number of us in studies that were looking at engaged rates of students in school. And we found there was a very strong relationship between the engaged rate of students and how well they learned, which is not a big deal, everybody sort of understands that. But what we also discovered was there's was tremendous variation among the engaged rate of students in the same class, as much as a one to ten difference. So in a in a 50-minute class, some students were engaged for 40 of the 50 minutes they spent there, others, same class, same teacher, were engaged for use four. And so, because of this variation, we were not advocates of adding more hours to the school day or more days to the school year because our evidence indicated wasn't going to change that variation. We had to shrink the variation. We had to help that student that only is involved for four minutes to become involved for twenty. I mean, that's still it's less than half the time they spend there, but given the relationship between engaged time and learning, they were going to learn five times more. And so we had a meeting. I had just come out of the classroom and I was arrogant uh and believed that I had the answer. And I stood before our group and I said, we must focus on classroom management. We must give these teachers strategies that they can use to better manage these learners, because if they manage those learners better, more kids will be engaged, more learning will result. I was very proud. And Bloom interrupts me and he says, Tom, the way I've always thought of it is this if you manage learning well, you don't have to worry about managing learners. He was right. See, I saw the symptoms, but he understood the need. He was able to see underneath that that if we focused on helping teachers design lessons that were truly engaging, that were involved in the experiences of children that related to what they found to be real and exciting, we wouldn't have to worry about managing their behavior. And so I think that's the same position today that professional learning leaders are in. They must understand those need surveys as giving them uh problems and concerns and dilemmas and struggles and be able to understand that on a deeper level to say, what is it that would help us address those? What are the needs that underlie those symptoms of needs? It's like when you go to physician, you don't tell the physician what you need. You say, Here are my problems, I'm feeling this way, these are the things that hurt. And you hope from their expertise that they're able to look at that, look at those symptoms, diagnose with that, and then prescribe what is going to help you feel better. Professional learning leaders are in exactly the same position. They must understand those on a very different level to see what's underneath, and then be able to diagnose, prescribe solutions, hopefully research-based and evidence-based, that are going to help resolve those dilemmas.

Drew Janetzki (host) 18:09

Yeah. And thank you for just that that sharing and and knowing that you you work with um Benjamin Bloom and and the multiple intelligence or the the Bloom's taxonomy, not the multiple intelligence stuff. We could go into the multiple intelligence theory as well, but the Bloom's taxonomy is still as do you see it is still as relevant in in 2026 as when you were working under Benjamin Bloom during your doctorate studies.

Thomas Guskey 18:43

Yeah, Benjamin Bloom, of course, this the original taxonomy, they began working on it in in the 1949 and uh published the first edition of it in 1956, uh for so it's it's been around for a long time. Uh but uh Bloom always referred to taxonomy as the most widely cited, least read book in all of education. Because people people cited it in sort of they built these these crazy pyramids, you know, of the of the levels, and uh which the original committee that developed it never really advocated. But it has. It was a really foundational work for what we do in education, particularly how we think about cognitive complexity when we design curriculum or learning goals.

Drew Janetzki (host) 19:29

Should we be still referring to that model in 2026 and opposed to you? What like what are you seeing that's genuinely worked? It's been transformed with high-level professional learning, and what what could principles do be doing to make that genuine difference? In terms of the taxonomy? In terms of the taxonomy, but also in terms of the the the I guess in terms of the going back to the why, why do we do professional learning? It's obviously to benefit uh uh an identity. And I love how you talked about the um when you go to the doctor for the diagnosis, or and you also referred to the the teacher doing their self diagnosis, and do they really know what they need they need to improve on? And so the I guess the question is from professional learning perspective, the the ultimate game or ethos is to support their leadership in terms of the profession learning for educational leaders or for print for principals, their leadership which would benefit their staff, which would ultimately benefit the students at this in the school context? And is there a magic formula there, Tom, in terms of or a recipe, or uh if we're using the medical analogies, a a script that the doctor could give us to um guide us, or is that still do we go back to that framework uh that you wrote in 2002? I guess where we're where I'm going with this is is there a formula for for this? Do we treat it very much similar to the surgical procedures like the medical profession in the education sphere?

Simple Evidence And Structured Collaboration

Thomas Guskey 21:30

Well, I do think that we could make very positive change by developing a stronger focus on level five but on student learning outcomes. And this doesn't have to require a sophisticated statistical analysis. I recommend, for example, that uh immediately following any classroom assessment, regardless of its form, just to do a little tally about how many students answered each question correctly or ready to perform each skill. Uh I do this in classes that I teach. After I give a little ten point quiz, I just make a tally. How many students miss each question? If I come to a question on that, that half the students in my class missed, that is not a student learning problem. That is a teaching problem. And what that says to me is, no matter how I taught it, it just did not come across. And I discovered that I'm not very good at predicting this. There are times I teach lessons and I think they are magnificent. I I finished that lesson and say, oh, I was on today. This was good. You know, we should have video cameras rolling, right? Uh but then I asked my students about it and they didn't get it. And and see the bottom line we have to recognize is if they didn't get it, it didn't work. The effectiveness is not defined by what I do, it's defined by what my students are able to do. And that means having the courage to set aside those pretty powerful ego issues. And I I am the worst in this. I mean, when I when they blow it, my first response is, well, what's the matter with them? And to step back from that, to say, no, what can I do differently? But from a leadership perspective, what it means is to uh to focus your attention on those indicators of student learning. In an environment where there's trust and support, that teachers have to know that admitting their weaknesses or admitting the difficulties they're having is a call for help. It's not uh a reason to be critical or to say you should be doing better. Um, but if there's an environment in the school of trust and support that is pervasive throughout the school, then we can structure opportunities to sit down with colleagues. And we find one of the most beneficial opportunities for improvement is just that kind of collegial sharing that is structured. Uh the be simply providing opportunities for teachers to meet collaboratively doesn't seem to work. Um there's some research coming out that that oftentimes with these professional learning communities that teachers are now collaborating to resist change rather than to go along with it. Uh but if that collaborative experience is structured, and by structured, I mean led by the principal who is looking at shared evidence on student learning, then it can be very meaningful. And if I have the opportunity to work with a colleague, or if you and I have an opportunity to work together, even if we don't teach the same grade level or the same subject, and I'm struggling with something, you have a different perspective. And you can be a fantastic resource to me for different ideas that I could use to approach the topic, different examples I might be able to employ, different materials that I may call upon. And we find when those structured opportunities for collaboration are provided, not only does it improve the quality of the work of each individual, that it makes it so much easier. It reduces the amount of work that's necessary as well. So it's easier, it's better, and it can lead to very positive improvements. But you need someone with building-wide responsibilities to set that up. And so it's the principle that that leads this effort to focus on student learning and then try to identify what we're doing well, and then identify where we're struggling, where we're not doing so well, and more importantly, what we can do to make that better. And in that environment of trust and support that says, we're all in this together, we all want to do the better, what's better for kids, and and then try to help each other in that effort.

Drew Janetzki (host) 25:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and well said, and in terms of going to the professional learning principals, and we all want to utilize an evidence base or research-informed processes, how can the busy principal who is trying to generally improve their professional learning and from an evidence base, how can they decipher that between the clever uh marketing, I should say, in terms of because it's there is there are there are so many options, Tom, as you would be familiar with in professional learning, and e everyone wants their piece of attention. And how is there anyone is there any advice regarding that piece? Because there's an avalanche of professional learning, and we find that through our association of Thomas choice, if there's such a thing as choice fatigue of where to solving are we best to f to solve go narrow and deep, or what's your what's your feedback to that piece?

Evaluation As Planning Not Paperwork

Thomas Guskey 26:47

Well, what I would advise leaders to do is to make that transition to focus more on impact than on process. Umce you address the impact questions, then process will sort of be answered for you. Uh, or at least it gives you the direction for looking uh at what would be the most appropriate process. Uh I believe that principals are really positive people and they contribute so much to this kind of improvement, but they need to see evaluation, not as something you do only at the end. You you s we have this mistaken perspective of evaluation, that it's something that we just commit at the end, we look at what worked, and we try to make some uh decisions about what practices were successful or not. 90% of the questions that are addressed in any effective and successful evaluation are addressed before you start. That if you plan well, evaluation takes care of itself. And with that mindset of approaching something to say, what are the needs of our students? What do we want them to be able to learn well? What are they learning well? And where are they not learning so well? And use that impact to guide, then let's turn to what practices or strategies or innovations or curriculum modifications do we need to make to be able to help them learn that well? What evidence would we trust to verify that it worked? And does everybody trust the same evidence? And can we gather evidence in such a way that it's meaningful to those various stakeholders? Uh, which probably means multiple sources of evidence. And then once we decide on those practices and strategies, then we take the other step back and say, what support is necessary from the organization to gain successful implementation of those? What do people need in terms of materials and time and resources and technology and support to do that? Then we can take those other steps backwards. So if you plan backward from the results you want to have, evaluation pretty much takes care of itself. You know what you want to do ahead of time. And so it's it's not something that we do only at the end. It actually is the guide to the planning process that allows us to ensure the success and effectiveness of those endeavors.

Drew Janetzki (host) 29:13

And should we be measuring, going back to your 2002 paper, should we be measuring what does that look like in, for example, a m one month from, three months from? Because that's the ultimate tool to see how effective the professional learning is and was and what that uh what does that particularly look and sound and feel like uh so that it's ingrained, so to speak, into from the from the learning, into practice. Is there a is there a or do we just refer back to that framework that has been developed, the fives, the five-step model?

Thomas Guskey 29:59

Yeah. No, Drew, you make such an excellent point. And the idea is that the we go back to the work of Ralph Tyler. Ralph Tyler was actually Benjamin Bloom's uh mentor and uh the chair of uh his committee. And Ralph Tyler in 1949 wrote a very classic little book called Basic Principles of Curriculum Instruction. In his book, uh Tyler argues that to teach anyone anything, there are two fundamental decisions you have to make. Number one, you must decide what it is you want them to learn to be able to do. And number two, you must decide what evidence you would accept to verify they learned it. That's the basis of all this. And so it goes back to that work. So Tyler is also known as sort of the father of modern evaluation. Uh and what Tyler said as he was writing about evaluation, he said that evaluators don't have to have the answers. They just have to know the right questions to ask. And and so I think that can guide us in this work, even for the perspective of a principal, you don't have to have all the answers. You just have to be in a position to ask the right questions. And and so the questions would be once we decide those learning goals, what we want students only be able to do, then we can talk about evidence. And and you can specifically ask teachers, if this is the evidence we accept, how soon should we see those changes? And and recognize that it it needs to be pretty quick, because again, teachers aren't going to persist in activities unless they gain evidence that it does work. I mean, I I equate this with what I see in advertising done for uh different like exercise programs or dyes or things like that. Uh I'm I I'm getting these these advertisements all the time for this new Tai Chi chair exercise program. And the way they advertise it is that they say, uh, in one week you will feel the results, right? In two weeks, you will see the results, right? In three weeks, your wife will compliment you on the results. And so it makes sense. Uh I mean people want to see results. You're not going to stay on a diet or persistent exercise program if you don't see results for two or three months. You want to see those results pretty quickly. And that's the major appeal of those things. The same is true here. Teachers want that evidence pretty quickly, but we don't have to tell them what evidence they can rely on. We just have to ask them what evidence they would trust. And get them to give us that information, and then let's talk about how we can gather it and report it in ways that are going to make sense, that'll let us know if we're making the improvements we want, and we can see those improvements in very tangible form.

Drew Janetzki (host) 32:53

Yeah, yeah. And well, well said, because it's such a complex topic, and there is so much at stake if it's if it doesn't go well at all. So we uh essentially want to and and people can feel if it's to to use the analogy, they're not getting the immediate results from the immediate feedback from um using the Tai Chi example, getting that, getting that immediate where is my how come my physique isn't changing? Or in the education, why isn't that moving? Or why, you know, if it's a a piece of trying to address an issue, why isn't that why isn't that I've done the training, how come that hasn't occurred at this point in time? Goes back to asking us I've heard the right question. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's

Purpose Joy And Education Fads

Thomas Guskey 33:46

so important. And again, it's that laser-like focus on our impact on students. Um, but what I find also appealing about this is this is what is most meaningful to teachers. When we do studies, when we ask teachers what is most rewarding to them about being a teacher, um what is their primary criteria for effectiveness? How do they define a good day? How do they uh judge whether they're doing a good job or not? 90% of their answers relate to their students. You know, I I feel good when when suddenly my students are getting it, when I when I see those lights come on, when I see them uh being in, you know, excited about something that we're doing. And so what we're able to do through professional learning is give more of that to teachers, which is why they became teachers in the first place. So it ties into all those ingrained um needs that we have of wanting to be effective, wanting to help young people learn. People do not go into education because they want to become rich. You know, our our list of billionaires in the world doesn't include any teachers or school principals. Um we don't do that because we want to have a lot of power influence. We we do it because we want to we want to help young people learn better. And I think that's that that's the power of professional learning, but it's also the the great joy of a school leader, because you you are in a position to help teachers do what they've always wanted to do and do it better than they've ever done it before. You control their feelings of success and joy by simply helping them have a more powerful influence, good positive influence on the students that sit beside them and in front of them every day.

Drew Janetzki (host) 35:33

Yeah, and very much so. And uh for those it's very values driven. It's a very much uh you hear the word, it's a it's a it's a calling. I'm sure you've heard that in in your um in your in your role as well. It's a very much a a profession of calling and a values base driven with with a high moral purpose of of giving back and serving and supporting you are spot on. There's nothing better than that feeling of knowing that someone's actually understanding and uh understanding knowledge and using the knowledge that is being shared, um you get a real sense, whatever level you're at in the system, whether it's you're from a principal, from an executive position or a teacher, to see the the ultimate impact of the lights go on for the student or the or the teacher to see that that impact. And I guess in we get into that loop, don't we, where we we're seeking for that. And sometimes, and I'm I'm going to your your recent piece, your education week piece, which argues that education has become a pendulum swinging between fads as we keep um the field. And I'm just quoting your work here because the field is ignoring uh its established knowledge base, and I'll indulge in that research that I said from my own research, the evaluation you identified in 2002. It looks like one symptom of the same problem. We keep rediscovering the the question of impact without building on the answers where we already have. Is that a fair connection to draw? Are there or are there are these um two separate problems?

Thomas Guskey 37:24

Um no, I I think as you sort of alluded to, that they are definitely connected. Um and it relates to the issue we described earlier, people focusing more on process than on impact. Um if we can change that, if we can make our focus uh truly student-oriented and and direct our efforts to what impact we're going to have on students. Uh I we share this understanding that that's our goal and what we're trying to achieve. And we can disagree on our means to get there. And it might be that different people would choose different means to get there. Um, but let's agree on the results, let's agree on the end. Uh so we we have a common destination in mind, even though we might have different paths to reach that destination. Even among teachers in the same school, you know, we we don't always have to teach in the same way, but we do have to have some agreement about our purpose, and that is that we want our students to learn these things well. There has to be some consistency in that, some agreement for it. Uh, I always go back to the idea of Ralph Tyler's idea in curriculum development. And and Tyler suggested that when you develop a curriculum, you identify what you want all students to be able to learn well. Nobody would put something in a curriculum we expect some students not to be able to learn. That doesn't make sense, right? And so our job as educators is once we define that curriculum, our job is to work very diligently to have all of our students learn that excellently. Not just some. Uh I wrote a piece recently about uh the major question that educators must address when they first begin teaching. I I think this question will dictate uh the trajectory of your career, it will dictate how you judge your success, it will dictate how you go about your work. The basic question is this is my purpose uh to select talent or is it to develop talent? It's one or the other, and there's no no in between. Uh if your purpose is to select talent, then what you must do is accentuate the differences between students. We must spread them out on any measure of learning, because if they're all clustered close on any measure of learning, it's difficult to distinguish between them. Unfortunately, uh from the perspective of students, the very best device to accentuate the differences between students is poor teaching. Nothing does it better. I mean, if you want to if you want to select talent and spread them out, teach as poorly as you know how, because that will do it well. There are some students so talented that they are going to learn regardless of what we do. But the vast majority of students who need our help and our guidance and our direction won't get it and we will spread them out. On the other hand, if your purpose is to develop talent, then you go out things very differently. The first thing you do is decide uh exactly what you want students to learn to be able to do. And having made that decision, and we can talk about is it sufficiently rigorous? Is that the most important things that we want? Uh, but those are good, those are questions about philosophy and and questions about you know goals and aspirations, and questions about rigor, which are good questions to ask, but they're curriculum questions. Once we reach some consensus on that curriculum, then our job is having all the students learn it well, not just some, all. And so then we go about the work very differently. Then we we adapt our instruction to those individual differences. We we recognize that some students will learn the curriculum well and only the curriculum. Some are going to learn the curriculum and a whole lot more. So we're we're not making everybody the same, but we are providing that foundation of shared knowledge and skills that we as educators have decided are important for a an adult, a contributing member to our society, someone who's going to make a difference in the world today and in their lives and the lives of others. Once we do that, then we have our direction clear.

Drew Janetzki (host) 41:43

I really like that, Tom. It's uh it's a it's as simple. It can be as of all the complexities that we've discussed and frameworks, it can come down to really mindsets. Am I a giver or am I a taker? And uh can I see the can I see the mindset, can I see the genius in my students or or not? Is is the and I'm thinking of some work that we do. Um this wiseman is um part of the uh a professional learning suite that we offer, and she talks about multiplying students or the seeing the genius in others is um trying to think of the the cor the correlation with those two questions that you've said. And if you do see the genius in others, you just look at it um in a different paradigm of what isn't what this these students are essentially capable of of doing to and to reach their full potential. And you can look at it at that from your staff as well. What uh genius and genius do you have with your staff that you can really uh see and give them those opportunities? Yeah, yeah, really refreshing and nice to see that thread. Um it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me when you said that it comes down to those two questions. Could you restate those again? Because I think that's really important for uh takeaway so far. We've had what are those two questions again to to for our listeners to consider?

Thomas Guskey 43:24

I think too that if we we have that guiding premise, then it puts us all on the right track. So that we agree this is our direction. Uh I've always said this is the most wonderful thing about working in the field of education is that you get to work with such very good people. Uh, we're we're in this for the same reason. As I said, nobody enters education because they want to make a lot of money. Uh they don't enter education because they want to have a lot of power, you know, or or political influence. Uh people that enter education are there to do good things for others. And it's A very different orientation, but it also makes it so exciting to be able to offer those dedicated individuals the means to accomplish the goal that drove them to enter this field in the first place. So if what we can do through professional learning provides teachers with ways that they can be more effective, help more of their students learn all the things they set out to teach, then our joy is going to be reflected accordingly.

Workload Pressure Recognition That Works

Drew Janetzki (host) 44:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if I segue now into the I go back to our thesis, uh thesis that I was reading in the and I'm not sure if you're familiar with this research. In 2024, the research showed that a s staggering 68% of Australian principals report unmanageable workload. I'm interested in your perspective on this and seeing if that's uh if that has shipped is also a similar theme broadly. And 31% intend to leave the profession within five years. Uh how I guess the question of of that, knowing that data set that we have, how do we re- redesign professional learning that respects that reality without compromising the rigor? Because I think it's it's I think we need to address that elephant in the room at the moment with this this is a real statistic. And I'm not sure why we've got to this point, but we are, and that's what the statistics are showing. And I'm I'm I'm optimistic. I hope that can be turned around, Tom. I'm sure it really saddens me to see that, as we said, we got into education for all of those right reasons, yet we're seeing, as we said, this uh negative spiral coming through. And I'm not sure if whether whether that's related to the COVID aftermath or that was prior to, but there seems to be this real decline in uh well-being or manageable workload. Is that similar correlation to the research that you have undertaken or you're seeing currently?

Thomas Guskey 46:15

Uh sure. I mean, I think that that's uh a dilemma that we need to address in good and practical ways. Uh our society is changing so rapidly, and now educators have to be abreast of that, but also realize how it affects our work. And so, uh, you know, 10 years ago, we didn't worry about uh whether we should allow students to have their phones when they're in school or not. Uh we didn't worry about if we should every student have a device or not. We didn't worry about students using AI to produce their compositions or uh write papers for them, things like this. And so as our society evolves, especially through technology, it's putting additional challenges on us as as educators. Uh, and there's no way to avoid that. Um, but I keep coming back to this idea, this uh what is most frustrating to the people with with whom I have this these deep conversations uh about their work. And they do describe how there are additional responsibilities that educators are called upon to address. Um, and they find that they're working very hard and they're not getting rewards for it. They're not seeing a payoff from it overall. If if we can uh change that focus to the idea of of seeing a difference for our students, I think all that would change. Um I find that and I I've had opportunities to work with thousands of teachers in different places, and they show that share this common element. Teachers don't mind working harder if they see those efforts are leading to a change for their kids. Uh what frustrates them is they're working harder, they're putting in all this time, and they don't see it improving. They don't see it improving what's going on with the kids. Um and so to be able to focus on that and then provide a recognition to them for this kind of success, that little things can make a really powerful difference for people, to let them know that that extra effort they're putting in is recognized and is appreciated. Uh little small things can make a difference. I tell the story of uh taking over one time. I was asked to serve as a uh interim principal at his school. The principal there had been engaged, had been involved in a very serious automobile accident, was going to be out of school for several weeks. And I was asked to go and just serve as the interim principal in the school to keep things running, you know, while the principal was recovering. And one of the things I discovered while there was that, especially my my beginning teacher was not really good in lesson planning. They were sort of scattered. And so we had a little uh session where I gave them some hints about lesson planning and and particularly establishing procedures when kids come in and uh efforts like that. And as a result, when they would uh design their lessons, they would bring their lesson plan books to me and and they would ask me to check them over. And I would, and I'd give them some suggestions and feedback on it. And when I checked it, I put a little sticker inside your lesson plan book. Little small thing. I had no idea that this was making any difference. But the third week I was there, one of my young teachers came up to me halfway through the day and said, uh, Dr. Gasky, you checked my lesson plan book this morning. I said, Yes, yes, I did. Jeremy, it was really, really good. He said, Yes, yes, and and you gave me a pineapple. I was just talking to Nancy and and she got an orange. Is a pineapple better or worse than an orange? I said, you know, Jeremy, I had fruit. That's what I had. Um see it made a difference to him. And and that's that little bit of recognition, you know, can really matter. Um people don't mind working harder if they see results and they know that it's being appreciated. And so one of the things that the principals can do is just let people know that that extra work they're putting in is appreciated, uh, that it's making a difference, and that we care about that positive change they're bringing about. Those things can be very, very powerful. And and we need to do it more. Yeah.

Drew Janetzki (host) 50:27

Love that story. That is uh um it's uh have I got the is the pineapple higher or the or it's the what's what's the hierarchy of fruit? But um But so good to bring the positive and go back to the you you really brought it back to the ethos of the why. Why do we why do we get into education in the in the first place? And that is to support to support students and and a little bit of and and everyone just wants to be heard and seen is the takeaway from that um that comment. And and if we continue to incorporate being seen and heard, then those statistics hopefully will just go down into the other direction as well, which yeah, yeah.

Thomas Guskey 51:21

Great, great. That's such an important point.

Drew Janetzki (host) 51:23

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Guskey 51:24

And it is, it's that's what makes the valuation so critical because you're providing for people what they really want and need. You know, you're you're providing evidence to say this is making a difference, it's moving us in the right direction. Uh, the evidence is trustworthy, it's evidence that the people believe, uh, and it's meaningful. It moves us in the right direction for all. So I I hope through this work that I can help people understand that evaluation is not an additional task that they have to take on that makes their work even more difficult. But evaluation is the means to accomplish what they really want. And it's the it's the formative aspects of it become so crucial to guide us in making these decisions and and moving in directions that are going to be helpful to us in improving our results with students.

Drew Janetzki (host) 52:16

Yeah. Yeah. You give such hope, uh, Tom, it's it's it's it's very inviting in terms of how you how you respond and give optimism and hope and and and for our listeners, if a New South Wales, whether it's a New South Wales principal or an Australian principal or or a leader listening to our podcast today could wake one change to how they evaluate their professional learning, whether it's next term, what what do you think it could be or what would you want it to be?

One Change For Principals To Make

Thomas Guskey 52:51

I would want us to see evaluation as a way to focus on impact rather than process in professional learning. That um that the to focus on our reason for doing it in the first place, and that is to help us improve. I know we began our discussion with thinking that principals are so removed from that direct contact with students, how can they really make that impact? And uh and would we excuse them if they did not? And my my response is always this if you did your job really well, everything you expected to do, and but over time you saw no improvement in the learning of your students, would you consider yourself a success? Every principal to my ever addressed that question has said, No, I could not. And I said, Well, there you have the point. That your success too is judged based on what influence you have on the people you work with directly and how that translates to the good things and positive things for your students. So they judge their effectiveness too on showing that their actions enhance the learning opportunities of students in their school. Um, it's not something that we're trying to impose on anybody. We're giving them the tools they need to do that better.

Drew Janetzki (host) 54:14

Know thy impact, Tom. Know the impact. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Look, in in terms of you've you've uh 23 years on from your 2000 your famous 2002 article. It's been such a rich conversation so far. If you were to look into the future, Tom, what would you would what would you like the next generation of leadership or professional learning researchers to do that your generation could not do?

Thomas Guskey 54:47

Well, I I would most want us to do what we have described on multiple occasions here during our conversation, and that is to change our focus from what we do as educators to how that is going to impact our students. And I think that the political orientation toward accountability is trying to do that by saying you need to show you're having some impact on students. But often those political solutions don't match what's most important at the classroom level. That's why I say that when you begin, it needs to be with conversations with teachers to say, what do you want your students to learn and what evidence would you trust to verify they've learned those things well? And and so instead of saying I'm going to do it in a uh a state or province or territory exam or national exam, I'm going to look at the evidence that teachers gather on a regular basis. Now we can debate how valid and reliable that is, and we can talk about the technical aspects of it. But to me, those pale in consideration to the meaningfulness of it for the individuals involved. If it's meaningful for the students, if it's meaningful to the teachers, then it carries meaning to what it is we're trying to accomplish. And again, it fits into that important criteria that we talked about before is that it has to come pretty quickly. Teachers need to see that it's making a difference. Uh, but the third aspect of it is it doesn't have to be related only to student achievement. There are important student outcomes that the teachers look for that can be equally valuable and valid. Um engaged rates of students, students excited about the class, students who are doing homework more regularly because they find it meaningful, uh, students who are more cooperative in the classroom and see are seen helping each other learn well, uh, engaging in peer tutoring activities without the teacher prompting them, uh, who seem excited about learning, who talk to their parents about the things they're doing in school. Uh, all those kind of things are are important and there are ways to gather that evidence as well. So I think it's broadening our definition of student learning to include not only the cognitive, but also the affective and behavioral areas as well. Um, and then to look at what teachers can see and judge and use to recognize the important contribution they're making. Yeah.

Drew Janetzki (host) 57:31

Well, thank you for your insight and the contributions that you you make. It's been an absolute pleasure. The optimistic, the hope and the values of bringing it back to the student. You it's been a terrific conversation, and we'd love to continue having further conversations, and we'd love to see you in Australia whenever that is that is feasible from your end, because your insights, you bring it back in our conversation. You always brought it back to the students, which is clearly in your in the values of of effectiveness as well. So just a huge thank you for uh your generosity of time with us today.

Thomas Guskey 58:16

Thank you, Truth. I've really enjoyed our conversation and have always enjoyed my opportunities to work with the educators there in Australia. I've I've worked with folks at uh University of Melbourne, uh at the University of Tasmania, over Western Australia and in Perth, uh, and am always impressed by the the dedication and commitment of the educators there. It's been my joy uh to work with them. And I hope there will be other opportunities coming up and we can continue that work together.

Drew Janetzki (host) 58:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, Tom, and and thank you again for our podcast today. All right. Thank you, Drew. Take

Takeaways Links And Listener Requests

Drew Janetzki (host) 58:55

care now. That was Dr. Thomas Gusky, Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. A few things from that conversation are going to stay with me. The first is his two question test. Are we trying to select talent or develop it? The second is the line he carried from Benjamin Bloom. If you manage learning well, you do not have to worry about managing learners. And the third is his reminder that teachers will not persist with something new unless they see evidence it is working and they need to see it quickly. Underneath all of it is one idea. Move your attention from process to impact. Not what we did, but what changed for our students. If this episode was useful to you, the most valuable thing you can do is follow the show and leave a short rating and review. It genuinely helps other principals find these conversations. In the show notes you will find links to Tom's four most recent books Evaluating Professional Learning, Implementing Mastery Learning, Grading with Integrity, and Engaging Parents and Families in Grading Reforms, along with his recent education week piece that is well worth reading, titled Beware of Consultants. Thank you for listening, and thank you for the work you do every day for the children in your schools. I am Drew Janetsky and this is the New South Wales Primary Principles Association Professional Learnings Educational Leadership Podcasts. I look forward to sharing further conversations with you. If you have made it this far, please subscribe for further updates and give us a rating. It helps us bring and get access to world class educational leaders such as Dr. Thomas Gusky.