Multiple Perspectives on Teaching Excellence: a Case Study

Abstract

Teacher compensation is the largest part of the monies spent by school boards in Ontario annually and currently all teachers are paid following a grid system that rewards teachers for time spent in the system rather than the quality of their work. For example, in 2018-19, the York Region District School Board’s instructional costs were 59% of their total budget at over 800 million dollars. An exemplary teacher costs the province and its school boards just as much as a poor one. Consider the possibility that teachers could be paid on a merit based model. There is currently no way to differentiate between poor and exemplary (or any other part of the spectrum) teachers. This research attempted to utilize an existing set of characteristics of excellence (Grieve 2010) to prepare a foundation upon which a methodology could be built to standardize a method to identify exemplary educators. The goal of this study was to understand the long-term perceived effect that George Turcotte has had on his students. Mr. Turcotte has been teaching elementary school in Kingston since 1966 and has taught in the public, the separate, and private systems over those years. He is widely acknowledged locally as an excellent teacher if not entirely unique. Any attempt to create a methodology of measuring excellence would need to include unique educators such as Mr. Turcotte.