What can we learn from our teachers?

by Kristen Weatherby
Senior Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

 

The latest results from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) are made public today at various events in countries around the world. TALIS 2013 surveyed 107,000 lower secondary school teachers in 34 countries.  Everyone from education ministers – who are gathered at an event in Tokyo – to teachers – like those at a TALIS conference in Madrid – want to learn from the data collected in the survey in order to improve the teaching and learning in their schools.

So what are teachers telling us? First of all, teachers love being teachers. On average across TALIS-participating countries, 9 in 10 teachers report being satisfied with their jobs, and nearly 8 in 10 (78%) report that they would still choose to become a teacher if they had to make the choice again.

Given this finding, it is perhaps surprising that, on average, more than two out of three teachers across TALIS countries do not feel that their profession is valued by society. This percentage varies by country: in some countries, particularly those with high-performing education systems (Finland, Korea, Singapore), notably larger proportions of teachers report feeling that their profession is indeed valued by society.

Why do most teachers feel that teaching isn’t valued? And why does it matter? In some countries, it could be that the teachers’ perceptions are correct, and that societies may not value teaching as much as other professions. But it could also have something to do with how teaching has evolved – or not – as a profession. If you take a look at TALIS 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning, you will learn a great deal about what teachers say about their background, education, support, development and teaching practices. Together with data from school principals, these data paint a picture of the teaching profession around the world today.

When you look at the statistics on teacher appraisal and feedback, for example, it’s not difficult to see why some teachers may not feel valued. The teachers surveyed agree that appraisals are helpful, with more than 6 in 10 teachers reporting that appraisal leads to positive changes in their teaching practices. Yet nearly half of teachers feel that the appraisals in their school are performed simply to fulfil administrative requirements. Only about one in three teachers feels that the feedback received will lead to any kind of career advancement, which might include higher pay or additional responsibilities. Indeed, nearly 80% of teachers report that annual increments in their salaries are awarded regardless of the outcome of formal teacher appraisals.

If we want teaching to improve so that school systems can produce the skilled citizens that our societies need, then we not only need to change the practices of existing teachers, we also need to ensure that teaching attracts high-quality candidates. Providing teachers with a career path that includes recognition for good performance and support to improve is certainly one way to start. TALIS data also indicate that teachers who are given the opportunity to participate in decision making at school not only are more likely to report that teaching is valued as a profession, they also report higher job satisfaction and more confidence in their own abilities as teachers. Thus it seems about time to treat teachers as the professionals they are.

Links:
2013 TALIS Results
Free Teachers’ Guide to TALIS
Join:
Education Fast Forward (EFF10) Global live debate - 25 June 2014
Alliance for Excellent Education webinar - 27 June 2014
Photo credit: © Fotolia

What do we really know about teaching?

by Kristen Weatherby

Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

I have often heard it said that everyone thinks they are an expert on education simply because they went to school. This is an overstatement, of course, but it does seem today that more and more people have – and express – an opinion about teachers and the quality of their teaching.

But what do we really know about how the majority of teachers are teaching today? Data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) show that on average across TALIS countries, 13% of teachers did not receive any appraisal or feedback on their teaching. In several countries, this number approaches a quarter or even half of teachers in the country. One can imagine these teachers as completely alone, teaching with the door closed and never receiving feedback on how to improve their practice.

The eighth Education Fast Forward online debate will take place today to discuss in more detail the development of new teaching practices, with the objective of driving deeper learning for every learner. Michael Fullan, the esteemed former Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto will open the debate. Recognised as a worldwide authority on education reform, Michael will first explore the concept of new pedagogies and what they might lead to. He will then look at how teachers might use technology to develop and change the way students learn, and how changes in teaching over the coming decades could be greater than those that occurred over the past 2 000 years.

I will then take a closer look at what the TALIS data tell us about teachers’ practices today and what factors might contribute to how teachers are currently behaving in their teaching. Research shows that high-quality teaching is linked to the use of a variety of classroom teaching practices that include both student-led and teacher-directed approaches. I will look at what the international data say on whether today’s teachers are equipped to teach in this manner and what kind of support they are receiving to develop their practice.

Michael and I will be joined by education experts from all over the world who will contribute their insights and experiences to this global conversation. The debate will be streamed live to Promethean Planet from 12.00 until 14.30 GMT. Join us to get an inside look at what is really happening in classrooms around the world, and how this might change in the future.

Links:
For more information about Education Fast Forward, visit  www.PrometheanPlanet.com/EFF
To learn more about TALIS visit www.oecd.org/talis or follow @Kristen_TALIS on Twitter.

Photo credit: Classroom © Shutterstock

Who says she’s a great teacher?

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Skills, Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

Most of us have been lucky enough to have had at least one great teacher in our lifetime: a teacher who inspired us to work hard and take risks, who opened up new worlds for us; a teacher whom we remember years, even decades, after the brief intersection of our two lives as someone who changed the course of our life or deepened the meaning of it.

What makes a teacher great? And who gets to decide? Students? Parents? Fellow teachers? Principals?

There are some countries where mentioning the phrase “teacher evaluation” around educators, teachers’ union leaders and policy makers provokes a rise in the ambient temperature. Teachers in the United States and France have gone on strike over the issue and Britain’s teachers’ unions and those that represent head teachers found themselves on opposite sides of a recent debate about whether to base teachers’ pay on their performance.

Nearly everyone agrees that school systems need to find a way to encourage promising teachers, reward those who have demonstrated their effectiveness, and remove underperforming teachers from the profession. And in the 23 countries that participated in OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), 83% of teachers who had received appraisal and feedback considered them to be fair assessments of their work; of those, 78.6% found that the appraisals were helpful in developing their work as teachers. But agreement on how to measure teachers’ skills is harder to come by.

Teacher-appraisal systems in most countries are still a work-in-progress – where they exist at all. Some 13% of teachers in countries that participated in TALIS had never received any feedback or appraisal of their work from any source. This is partly because such systems may be costly – in money and time – to design and maintain. More often, though, it’s because there is no consensus on what criteria should be used to measure teacher performance (student test scores? a teacher’s ability to engage a classroom full of students? students’ and/or parents’ opinions? some or all of the above?); who should do the measuring (an inspector from a central education authority? the school principal? fellow teachers?); and how the results of an evaluation or appraisal should be used (to determine salary? to shape the trajectory of a career? to signal professional-development needs? to weed out ineffective practitioners?).

Stakeholders are already beginning to find common ground on a few issues. They note, for example, that while student test scores offer important information, they cannot provide a complete picture of teaching quality; multiple sources of evidence are needed for that. And they agree that teacher-appraisal systems must be part of a holistic approach to the teaching profession that includes high-quality teacher training and professional development, attractive working conditions, nurturing school leaders, and engaging teachers in innovation and reform.

The subject of teacher evaluation came up briefly during the first two International Summits on the Teaching Profession, both held in New York. This week, participants at the third Summit, which is being held in Amsterdam and hosted by the OECD, Education International and the Ministry of Education of the Netherlands, will be examining the issue in depth from their various perspectives as teachers, union leaders, education ministers and experts in education – and perhaps, too, as former students who may have once had a great teacher. Consensus might be too ambitious a goal for this meeting; but a lively – not to say provocative and passionate – discussion is all but assured.

Links:
Third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession, 13-14 March 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching
Related blog: A class act: giving teachers feedback
Follow the summit on twitter: #ISTP2013
Photo credit: Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc./Blend Images/Corbis

A Window into the classroom

Dirk Van Damme
by Division Head, Innovation and Measuring Progress (IMEP) and Head of Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

An excellent teacher is what makes students learn and succeed in school. Everything else – standards, curricula, assessments, resources, school leadership – come second. Yet, what do we actually know about what teachers are doing?

Classrooms seem to be the ‘black boxes’ of the education system. There is not an awful lot of research on classroom teaching practices, but TALIS 2008 provides some self-reported data on teaching practices and professional activities including participation in collaborative learning with colleagues. The main TALIS report, published in 2009, compared the relative preference for three different teaching practices – structuring, student oriented and enhanced activities – across the 23 different countries that participated in the survey. The report showed differences between countries regarding the extent to which teachers are favouring directive and teacher-directed practices over more activating and learner-centred ones. These TALIS results were received as rather disappointing signals, suggesting that the teaching profession was relatively resistant to change in many countries.

In collaboration with the TALIS programme and as part of its Innovative Teaching for Effective Learning project the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has just released a research report which delves deeper in the TALIS data on teaching practices in classrooms and schools. Based on some advanced analytical tools (multilevel latent profile analysis), this new book called Teaching Practices and Pedagogical Innovations: Evidence from TALIS  identifies underlying profiles in teachers’ classroom practices. A large set of variables about teachers, such as gender, training, subjects taught, but also their pedagogical beliefs, the degree of professional development, the amount of feedback and appraisal received, etc., were brought together and in each country different profiles of teachers were distinguished.

The scientific and policy implications of this research are huge. Many learning researchers and education policy makers strongly – and rightly so – believe in the benefits of more student-oriented, self-regulating approaches to teaching and learning. This suggests that a particular form of teaching is outdated and should be replaced by a more innovative one. Consequently, this report now suggests that we should not look at the quality of what happens in classrooms in an ‘either-or’ way. While it is true that the best teachers differ from their colleagues in their relative use of activating, student-oriented ways of teaching, they also use more structuring, teacher-driven forms of classroom practice. Teaching quality is a matter of diversity of practices, not of one set of practices against the other. Excellent teachers are those teachers who master a large repertoire of teaching practices, which they can deploy according to learners’ needs and varying classroom conditions. Those teachers are also the ones who actively advance their own professional competence by professional development and who feel more satisfied and effective about their own work.

A final important finding is that there is also a clear difference between these teacher profiles in the degree of co-operation with other colleagues and engagement in collaborative learning communities in and outside schools. Excellent teachers view teaching as a collective responsibility within the profession, not as an individualised thing happening behind closed doors. They open the doors of their classrooms, inviting colleagues to engage in what they are doing but also disclosing what happens in classrooms to the outside world. It is that kind of teachers we need to work with our kids.

Links:
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) Activities
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)
Teaching in Focus Briefs

Photo credit: © By happy via

Are Teachers Getting the Recognition They Deserve?

by Kristen Weatherby

Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

More and more countries are having discussions about how to evaluate the quality of their teaching workforce and, subsequently, how to reward teachers for their work. The OECD’s newest series of briefs, Teaching in Focus, launches this month with a discussion of the appraisal and feedback teachers receive and the impact of both on their teaching.

Teaching is often thought to be an isolating profession, with teachers receiving little or no feedback that enables them to improve their teaching practice. Data from the  Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)  supports this claim in many countries, indicating that more than one in five of all teachers in the 24 countries surveyed report never received a formal appraisal of their teaching practice. Indeed even those teachers who are receiving formal appraisals may not ever learn the results of those appraisals. In several countries, teachers reported never receiving any feedback on their work regardless of whether they had received a formal appraisal.

Yet teachers are eager for information that will help them improve their teaching. The vast majority of teachers (79%) feel that the appraisal and feedback they have received are helpful in the development of their work. Those teachers who do receive appraisal and feedback report changes in their teaching practice as a result of this information, especially in the areas of improving student test scores, student discipline and classroom management. Furthermore, teachers in nearly half of TALIS countries find that being publicly recognised for their work is closely connected to their own feelings of self-efficacy.

The message seems pretty clear: If countries want to improve the quality of their teachers, they need to provide teachers with feedback on their teaching that helps them make changes to their practice.

To learn more about this topic, check out this month’s Teaching in Focus brief. Look for further Teaching in Focus briefs on topics relevant to the experience of teachers in the coming months.

Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: Blue stage with falling stars / Shutterstock