“My Teachers Rode with Jesse James,” or Teaching Is Hard: A Political Scientist's Reflections on Good Teaching

ABSTRACT This article examines the chief characteristics that make for good or great teaching. A combination of professional, disciplinary, and key interpersonal factors is required to advance from good to great. The alchemic process of learning—especially “how” we learn—also is explored.

Empirical Study of Toyota Motor Corporation Relative to the Good to Great Framework

Best-selling business bookGood to Great was published in 2001 as the result of an effort to understand what characteristics, if any, companies who experience an extended run of greatness have in common compared to companies who do not. The resulting seven-component framework of Good to Great has brought the book both wild acclaim in management circles and heavy scrutiny in the research arena. While the book originally studied only American companies, this research will examine Good to Great’s research methodology and definition of “great” in order to compare the framework to Toyota Motor Corporation. A consistent tenant in Fortune’s Global 500 top 10, Toyota is arguably one of the most successful companies in the world, showing a growth that has been remarkably steady for almost 80 years. This paper examines empirical data and evidence from Toyota research and analyses the degree of fit relative to the Good to Great framework. The outcome of the paper offers evidence to support Good to Great framework by putting it on trial against a large international organization.

Yes, DI did it: the impact of Direct Instruction on literacy outcomes for Very Remote Indigenous schools

In the journal article Did DI do it? The impact of a programme designed to improve literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote schools, Guenther and Osborne (2020) compare schoolwide NAPLAN reading scale scores for 25 Very Remote Indigenous schools implementing Direct Instruction through the Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Program (‘Flexible Literacy’ or ‘the program’) with those for 118 Very Remote Indigenous schools not involved with the program, to assert the program has not improved literacy outcomes. Good to Great Schools Australia (GGSA) undertook an analysis of the same school data for Reading, Writing, Spelling and Grammar and Punctuation scores. Our findings contradict theirs. In all areas, schools participating in the program show significant growth compared with all Australian and all Very Remote Indigenous schools. In Reading, schools involved in the program from 2015 to 2017 averaged 124% growth, while the average growth for comparable ages was 19 and 34% for Australian and Very Remote Indigenous schools, respectively. In Grammar and Punctuation schools involved in the program in the same period grew 180%, whilst growth for Australian schools was 15%, and for Very Remote Indigenous schools, 28%. These contrasting results illustrate the importance of evaluating growth to assess the impact of educational programs, rather than achievement alone, particularly in the case of Very Remote Indigenous schools where achievement levels are far below Australian grade levels. Guenther and Osborne's comparison of achievement across schools rather than measuring growth within schools obscures real gains and is misleading.