Professional decision- making is something that most educators do on a daily basis without really knowing that they are! There are so many circumstances where educators have to make decisions about the effectiveness of their professional practices and instructional approaches. The best way to gauge your success in decision making is reflected by your classroom environment. This way, educators can observe and reflect upon the student learning happening in-the-moment.

     

     As mentioned in the text Teachers as Decision Makers (2014) by researchers Paul R. Burden and David M. Byrd, there are three common practices that educators should adopt to ensure that decision- making is comfortable and consistent. These three practices are as follows: 

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1) Knowing what to teach our students (p. 10) : This refers to selecting instructional materials to support subject matter in a cross-curricular way

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      2) Knowing how to teach our students (p.11) : Using a wide variety of teaching strategies that allows for student achievement to occur in multiple learning settings. The importance of this to educators means that we are able to recognize when strategies are no longer working for us and ultimately, our group of students.

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     3) Creating a supportive classroom atmosphere (p.11): Educators need to create learning environments in which students feel safe to take risks while learning and free and open to having personal conversations with us and the students around them. We also want to model and promote these behaviours to students so they can see exactly what we are offering to them in our classroom communities . REMEMBER-the more differences we recognize among our students and ourselves, the more likely we will be more sensitive during moments of decision- making!