Improving school climate and opportunities to learn

by Gabriela Miranda Moriconi
Researcher, Department for Educational Research at Fundação Carlos Chagas, Brazil

January marks the preparation for the academic year in the Southern Hemisphere, where the school year spans from February/March to November/December. More than simply allocating time for classes and other extra-curricular activities, it is an opportunity to reflect on  how to make the best use of classroom time, in order to maximise  learning opportunities for all students. The new Teaching in Focus brief “Improving school climate and opportunities to learn” provides some useful insights into how school climate issues affect actual learning time and discusses some initiatives that could be promoted to make the most of the time that students spend in the classroom.

Teachers can certainly face challenges in the classroom. In TALIS participating countries and economies, almost one in three teachers report having more than 10% of students with behavioural problems in their classes. Whilst teachers may have different perceptions/ideas/classifications of what behavioural problems are, this shows that it is nonetheless an important source of concern for many teachers. And, as expected, students’ behavioural problems do affect instructional time: in all the countries and economies participating in TALIS 2013, the more challenging the classroom, the more class time teachers report spending keeping order and therefore not actually teaching – almost twice as much time for teachers with more than 10% misbehaving student, compared to classrooms with less than 10% of students with behaviour problems.

In addition, students miss out on opportunities to learn when they are regularly absent from classes. Across all TALIS countries and economies, 39% of teachers work in schools where absenteeism of students occurs every week. Not only does missing classes consume time that should be used for learning, but it is also related to other negative factors in schools, such as student intimidation or verbal abuse among students. Thus, different factors seem to go together in schools and result in a negative environment, which undermines teaching and learning.

Nonetheless, building a positive school culture could be one way to reduce behavioural problems and absenteeism, and therefore improve the learning conditions of students. One way to create a more positive environment is to involve students, parents and teachers in school decisions. Indeed, across TALIS countries and economies, teachers who work in schools with a higher level of participation among stakeholders are less likely to report high proportions of students with behavioural problems in their classrooms.

These results indicate that educational systems and particular schools should make an effort to promote positive relationships among students, as well as between students, parents and teachers. TALIS also suggests that there are many benefits to involving students, parents and teachers in school decisions, for instance, attempts to increase student engagement should in turn improve the use of school time for learning.

The author(s) received funding from the OECD Thomas J. Alexander fellowship program for carrying out this work.

Links:
The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)
New insights from TALIS 2013: Teaching and learning in primary and upper secondary education
The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey
A Teacher’s Guide to TALIS 2013
Teaching in Focus No. 9 : Improving school climate and students’ opportunities to learn, by Gabriela Miranda Moriconi and Katarzyna Kubacka
International Summit on the Teaching Profession, Banff, Alberta, on March 29–30, 2015
Photo credit: Illustrated silhouettes of two classroom scenes / @Shutterstock

Order in the classroom

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

There was a good reason why our teachers demanded our attention in class: it wasn’t about power; it was about performance – ours. As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, the disciplinary climate in schools is strongly related to student performance.

You might be surprised to learn that, according to the reports of students who participated in PISA 2009, most students in most PISA-participating countries and economies enjoy orderly classrooms. For example, across OECD countries, more than two out of three students reported that never or hardly ever is there noise and disorder in their classrooms. In some countries, classrooms are models of orderliness: fewer than one in ten students in Korea and Thailand reported that they cannot work well in class because of disruptions; and fewer than one in ten students in Japan, Kazakhstan and Shanghai-China reported that their teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down before they can begin class.

But orderly classrooms are not ends in themselves; they seem to be the preconditions for learning. In 55 countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009, students in schools where the classroom climate is more conducive to learning tend to perform better. True, schools with more positive disciplinary climates also tend to have other qualities that are related to better student performance. For example, the students in these schools generally come from more socio-economically advantaged backgrounds. Indeed, in 36 countries and economies, there is a positive relationship between schools’ disciplinary climate and the average socio-economic status of their students.

But PISA results show that even after accounting for the socio-economic status and other characteristics of both students and the schools they attend, including the educational resources available to the school, the way the school is governed, and how the school assesses the performance of its students and itself, in 31 countries and economies, schools with a more positive disciplinary climate tend to perform better. In other words, disciplinary climate is one of few school-level characteristics that show a significant positive relationship with performance consistently across countries. In fact, given the strong relationship between students’ socio-economic status and disciplinary climate, results from PISA suggest that a positive disciplinary climate in school can reduce the impact of a student’s socio-economic status on his or her performance. That is, in more orderly classrooms, students from all backgrounds have the same chances to succeed in their school work.

So maybe orderly classrooms really are, in the end, about power: about students being able to use their inherent power to seize opportunities to learn and work to realise their potential.

For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No.32: Do students perform better in schools with orderly classrooms?
Photo credit: Children in a classroom with a teacher/ @ Shutterstock

A class act: giving teachers feedback

by Kristen Weatherby
Senior Analyst, Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

When I think back on my first experiences as a student teacher of English language and literature to 13- and 14-year-olds, I don’t really remember the successes; I am not sure there were many during my teaching practice. Rather, I am reminded of the more colourful episodes of classroom management and student behaviour that seemed to occur all too frequently. For example, there was the time I looked up from reading to the class to see one student staring back with a green mustache and eyebrows. Another time one student jumped up from his desk and threw another student’s books out the window before I could blink. And then there were the countless times that I had to take away combs, brushes and makeup from both girls and boys in an effort to turn my classroom from a beauty salon into a place of learning. Needless to say, in these moments I didn’t feel like a very effective teacher.

Little did I know it at the time, but I was not alone in feeling a bit like a failure due to a less-than-ideal classroom climate. The newest Teaching in Focus brief, “How can teacher feedback be used to improve the classroom disciplinary climate?” discusses how providing teachers more feedback to improve their classroom’s disciplinary climate can have a positive effect on their sense of mastery of the situation, what is known as self-efficacy. The OECD’s  Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) measures classroom disciplinary climate by the amount of time it takes to ready students for a lesson, the number of student interruptions, and the amount of noise in the classroom, among other factors. TALIS data shows that, on average, 13% of a typical class’s teaching and learning time is lost to keeping order.

TALIS data also shows that most teachers are not receiving the kind of feedback that helps them to improve their classroom disciplinary practice. As a result,  teachers are left feeling much as I did as a new teacher – not very effective. In fact, this is supported by the TALIS data, which indicates a relationship between teacher self-efficacy and classroom disciplinary climate. Teachers’ self-efficacy can have a significant impact on what goes on in the classroom, as it indicates not only aspects of productivity but also how teachers act in class. And teachers who report poor classroom discipline also report lower levels of self-efficacy.

Policymakers, union leaders, and teachers will be meeting next week in Amsterdam for the third International Summit on the Teaching Profession. This year’s topic is teacher evaluation and professional standards. Constructive feedback – as part of formal or informal teacher appraisal – could help teachers to improve their classroom disciplinary climate. TALIS 2008 results suggest that individualised feedback that considers the teachers’ characteristics, competencies, and individual classrooms, would be most helpful in improving classroom disciplinary climate and teacher self-efficacy. It undoubtedly would have helped me to chalk up a few successes during those early days in front of the class.

Watch this space for more blogs related to the Teachers’ Summit. We’ll also be tweeting live from the Summit. Follow the summit on twitter: #ISTP2013

Links:

For more on the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey:www.oecd.org/edu/talis
Teaching in Focus: How can teacher feedback be used to improve the classroom disciplinary climate?
Third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession, 13-14 March 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching
Follow TALIS and Kristen Weatherby @Kristen_Talis
Photo credit: Positive feedback/Shutterstock