On the devil in the detail of teaching practice

I'm not generally a great fan of over-hyped Malcolm Gladwell, and the overall starting point of this article— that by culling the worst 10% of teachers school standards in the US could be greatly improved—is contestable to say the least (although "instructional quality" does come out with a high effect-size in Hattie's meta-analysis of educational variables).

However, here he does offer a very accessible discussion of the problems of judging the "worst 10%", and his eavesdropping on a panel assessing teaching skills on video is fascinating and informative. Assuming, of course, that the panel are focusing on significant behaviour.