Focus Areas

This page indicates the primary focus areas as they are envisioned, as they will be set up as QTII grows and acquires funding. The areas are subject to change as the vision grows and research is conducted and consolidated. 

The QTII focus areas are set up to address the most critical issues we see facing education today. These issues are

• Defining the WHAT: Objectives for Effective Teaching
• Defining the HOW: Classroom Techniques for Effective Teaching
• Test Construction
• Win Their Hearts, Win Their Minds: Student Affective Development
• Curriculum
• Counseling and Advising
• Assessments
• Textbooks

See the pages for each focus are (where available) for an introduction to that focus area. Later evolutions of these pages will include guiding philosophies, and research references for each area.

WHY THESE AREAS? AND WHY IN THIS SEQUENCE?
These are the areas that current research suggests are those areas most in need of improving to ensure quality teaching, and those areas in which individual teachers or departments can have a significant effect.

There are a number of factors outside these included areas that have significant impact on student learning, such as a student's socioeconomic status, self perception, or innate abilities, but a teacher or a school has small chance of changing these factors. Instead, QTII chooses to focus on those areas in which a teacher and a school can have significant positive effects on student learning. 

For a discussion of QTII's rationale in selecting the particular sequence of our focus areas, please see the paper: "The Ordinal Nature of QTII's Effective Teaching Focus Areas."

        QTII -- Establishing, Teaching, and Certifying Standards for Effective Teaching