Thrown in at the deep end: support for teachers’ first years

by Katarzyna Kubacka
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

The first day at work can be stressful for anyone. But what if that day involves teaching in front of a classroom filled with disruptive students? This may not be the reality for every new teacher, but as the new Teaching in Focus brief “Supporting new teachers” shows, it is the case for many.

TALIS 2013 finds that in many countries, new teachers (with less than five years’ teaching experience) are more likely to work in challenging schools than more experienced teachers. This means that they may be teaching in schools where more than 10% of students have special needs; or they may be located in a rural area, where schools often have fewer resources than urban schools.

Research shows that new teachers often lack the necessary skills to keep order in a classroom. As a result they spend less time teaching and more time managing students’ behaviour, which leads to their classrooms having a poorer climate than those of their more experienced colleagues. Teachers’ confidence in their abilities as teachers (i.e. their self-efficacy) also tends to increase with experience. Therefore, for many new teachers, their ability and confidence are outmatched by the difficult working conditions in which they are placed. 

To help remedy this mismatch, education systems can support new teachers through induction or mentoring programmes. Induction programmes are formal and informal activities that have been completed during a teacher’s first regular position, while mentoring programmes involve more experienced teachers mentoring their colleagues. Both induction and mentoring programmes can be an important link between teachers’ pre-service training and the day-to-day practice of classroom teaching. The added benefit of mentoring programmes is that they can strengthen collaboration between teachers and, thus, improve school climate.

Across most TALIS countries, the majority of teachers have access to formal or informal induction or mentoring programmes. However, TALIS 2013 shows large differences between countries in terms of programs’ availability: 44% of teachers work in schools where principals report access to formal induction programmes for all new teachers; 22% working in schools where such programmes are available to teachers new to teaching only; 76% of teachers work in schools with access to informal induction.

In most countries, fewer teachers report participation in induction and mentoring programmes than principals report the existence of such programmes. For example, in the Netherlands, 71% of all teachers work in schools with reported mentoring programmes, while only 17% report having a mentor. This suggests that many systems should carefully investigate the barriers to teachers’ and consider creating incentives for participation in such programmes. To illustrate, in many countries the lack of participation might be due to programs’ costs or teachers’ other work commitments.

Investing in teachers’ first years of work is not only about making the workplace easier for new teachers.  Such support also has long-term effects, as TALIS shows that those who participate in induction programmes are more likely to become mentors and participate in professional development later on in their careers. Hence, if teachers are helped to manage those first days, weeks, and years as a teacher, they will go on to help others, creating a virtuous cycle of teacher learning and peer collaboration.

Links:
Teaching in Focus No. 11: Supporting new teachers
TALIS 2013 Results
Photo source: Businesswoman is making speech at conference room/ @Shutterstock

How Sweden’s school system can regain its old strength

by Andreas Schleicher

Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

During my days as a university student, I used to look to Sweden as the gold standard for education. A country which was providing high quality and innovative education to children across social ranks, and close to making lifelong learning a reality for all. My professor and mentor, Torsten Husén, was the architect of empirical educational science.

But not long after the turn of the 21st  century, the Swedish school system seems to have lost its soul. Schools began to compete no longer just with superior learning outcomes, but by offering their students shiny buildings in shopping centres, or a driving license instead of better teaching. And while teachers were giving their students better marks each year, international comparisons portrayed a steady decline in student performance. Indeed, no other country taking part in PISA has seen a steeper fall. School discipline has worsened too, with students more likely to arrive late for school than elsewhere.

And yet, Sweden has every chance to become one of the world’s educational leaders again. Among others, it has one asset that few other countries in the Western world offer: The firm belief of Swedes in the power of education to transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. And with that comes the unwavering commitment of Swedish citizens and policy-makers from across the political spectrum to do whatever it takes to provide all children with the knowledge, skills and values which they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world.

But some things are in urgent need of change. At the top of the list is the need to raise standards and aspirations for students. The fact that Swedish students think they are doing fine, while their learning outcomes are average at best, underlines the need to significantly strengthen rigor, focus and coherence in school standards. There is a similar need to seriously review teaching methods: According to PISA the majority of math problems which students get exposed to are tasks with relatively low cognitive demand which teacher then try hard to make appear as real-world problems. In contrast, tasks requiring deep conceptual understanding and complex ways of thinking are relatively rare.

Equally important is the belief in the success of every child. Top school systems realise that ordinary students have extraordinary talents and they embrace diversity with differentiated instructional practices. The fact that a majority of Swedish students in PISA believe that success in mathematics is owed to talent rather than hard work, suggests that Sweden must try harder to lower tolerance for failure and raise students’ sense of responsibility for learning. When students in Singapore or Shanghai were asked the same question, virtually all of them said that if they work hard, they trust their teachers to support them and that they will succeed. And they do.

Sweden also needs to revert to one of the traditional strengths of its school system: support for disadvantage. This should include greater focus on enhancing language skills for migrant students and their parents; high quality reception classes; assistants in the classroom; and improved access for disadvantaged families to information about schools. And yet, the performance challenge is not just an issue of poor kids in poor neighborhoods, but for many kids in many neighborhoods. PISA shows that the 10% most disadvantaged students in Shanghai easily outperform the 10% of kids from the wealthiest Swedish families.

Nowhere does the quality of a school system exceed the quality of its teachers. Despite high job satisfaction, only five in one hundred Swedish teachers considered teaching a valued profession in OECD’s 2013 Survey on Teaching and Learning. Top school systems pay attention to how they select and train their staff. They attract the right talent and they watch how they improve the performance of teachers who are struggling. They also provide intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers. With a new career structure, Sweden has made first steps in that direction, but a lot more needs to be done to advance from industrial to professional forms of work organisation in Swedish schools that encourage teachers to use innovative pedagogies, to improve their own performance and that of their colleagues, and to work together to frame good practice.

Sweden also needs to do more to grow and distribute leadership throughout the school system. School leaders and their employers need to prioritise pedagogical leadership and encourage greater co-operation among teachers and invest more in professional development. A publicly-funded National Institute of Teacher and School Leader Quality would help improve recruitment and the quality of teaching and leadership in the education system.

Sweden has significantly increased spending in education over recent decades, but money alone will only raise education systems up to a point. Among OECD countries there is no longer any relationship between spending per student and the quality of learning outcomes. In other words, two countries with similarly high spending levels can produce very different results. So for countries like Sweden it is not primarily about how much they spend on education, but about how they spend their resources. Whenever Sweden needs to make a choice between a smaller class and a better teacher, it should go for the latter. Sweden should also review how school education is funded. The current funding mechanisms are not meeting the objectives of improving quality while maintaining equity. There are different options Sweden can use, including earmarked funding, defining criteria for municipalities and schools, and student funding formulae, to ensure equity and especially consistency in school funding across Sweden.

Perhaps the toughest challenge is to put in place a coherent national school improvement strategy. A school system must be more than a few thousand autonomous schools. School evaluation and accountability needs to be strengthened so that schools, parents and teachers obtain clear and consistent guidance as to where they stand and how they can improve. That also means that the Swedish Schools Inspectorate should provide much more assistance to schools to follow up on their weaknesses and to bring about a shift in culture from administrative compliance towards responsibility for better results.

Of course, effective policies are far easier designed than implemented. But the world provides plenty of examples of improvements in education, and there is no time to lose. The task for the Swedish government is to help citizens rise to this challenge. The OECD is there to help and our report Improving Schools in Sweden – An OECD Perspective highlights some important lessons from the world for Sweden.

Links:

OECD Press release: Sweden should urgently reform its school system to improve quality and equity

Improving Schools in Sweden – An OECD Perspective

Photo credit: Getty Images International, © Duncan1890

A mini-milestone for PISA in Focus

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

It seems like only yesterday…but it was, in fact, 50 months ago that we started our PISA in Focus series. Over these past four years we’ve mined PISA 2009 and PISA 2012 results to highlight some of the most important findings and stories from the triennial international survey of 15-year-old students – from the importance of early childhood education to the effect of family background on students’ education to whether or not doing homework is really beneficial (in general, PISA finds that yes, it really is…).

This month, PISA in Focus examines the impact of good teacher-student relations on both students’ well-being and performance. It’s not surprising that when students feel that their teachers are interested in them and support them they feel happier at school and often do better in school. What is surprising is that in several OECD countries, fewer than 60% of students attend schools whose principal reported that mathematics teachers in their schools believe that the social and emotional development of their students is as valued as the acquisition of mathematics skills. While long-term studies suggest that students’ results on the PISA test are correlated with how well they will do later on in life, good performance in standardised assessments like PISA can explain only so much. Success and well-being in life also depend on how well individuals have developed socially and emotionally, particularly throughout their crucial school years.

At this mini-milestone in our history, we’d like to thank you for your continued interest in PISA. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more findings from PISA 2012 – even as we look ahead to December 2016, when PISA 2015 results will be announced and a new volume of stories will be open for the telling.

Links:
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No.50: Do teacher-student relations affect students' well-being at school?
Full Set of PISA in Focus

Photo credit: © OECD

Education will fortify Indonesia’s future

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

In a crowded and scorching school yard, little Jabal, whose bony arms protrude from his yellow t-shirt, sits by himself.  Nearby, in a cloud of sand dust, his classmates are laughing and running around playing football. Teacher is late again today and Jabal looks downhearted.  When asked “what’s-up?” he slowly explains that he is worried. “Why?”

Watching the scene from his office, the school principal is pensive. He knows Jabal’s family and their story. How they came to his city school from the rural region of Banten.  How he enjoys coming to school and learning to read. How bright he is at maths. He also knows that time is running out for Jabal. That if he doesn’t get the teaching he needs to support him to reach his potential, he will probably leave school early (for a dead-end job in the nearby factory) and never fulfil his dream of becoming a manager in a haulage company.

The Indonesian education system is immense and diverse. It reflects aspects of its past, with a diverse ethnic and religious heritage, and a struggle for national identity. It has grown rapidly but access to good quality education is uneven. Over 50% of Indonesian 15 year olds don’t master basic skills in reading and maths.

The progress that has been made over the past decades in the economy has already pulled millions out of poverty. This has been done by encouraging and supporting education, health care and shifting actively to sectors like manufacturing. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done. Indonesia currently has 43% of its 250 million population under the age of 25 years old. What an opportunity this is, to be able to work now with these young people to advance their skills and learning. By investing in its human resources, Indonesia can propel growth further, which would permit better living and health conditions for citizens, as well as allowing the potential for added economic and social improvements.

Teachers have a critical role to play in the transformation process of the education system. Likewise, they need more support  to improve their professional abilities, and become more accountable for the results of students, as highlighted in this new OECD and Asian Development Bank (ADB) book: Education in Indonesia: Rising to the Challenge. In addition, more improvements are needed to the quality of education and skills training given to youth, along with a widening of the numbers that can participate in it, fundamentally so that all regions and social groups can benefit from it. Unquestionably, all youth deserve an equal chance to progress in their learning and to be able to reach higher levels of education. So the Indonesian government has made universal senior secondary education a priority in its 2015-2019 development plan.

Sadly, Jabal’s story is very similar to millions of others from all across the globe. On the other hand, what makes his story special is that now he can have hope. Because he is lucky enough to be living in Indonesia, where the government is committed to implementing structured educational reforms aimed at giving all youth equal opportunities to learn. Quality education enables social and economic progress, it will improve Jabal’s life and enable a more stable and happy future for him, and for all Indonesian citizens.

Links:

OECD Economic Surveys: Indonesia

OECD data on Indonesia 

OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

Skills Strategy OECD

Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 

OECD Policy Reviews of Vocational Education and Training (VET)

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

Photo credit: Dieng Plateau, Java, Indonesia - Sept 15, 2012 / @Shutterstock

Are teachers hard-working professionals?

Dirk Van Damme

Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills
 

Average number of 60-minute hours lower secondary education teachers report
having spent on the following activities during the most recent complete calendar week.

Time is no doubt an essential dimension in the identity – and its perception – of the teaching profession. In many countries the statutory definition of the working time of teachers is limited to the actual number of hours spent teaching in classes. To many people this creates the perception that teachers earn more or less equivalent salaries to those in similar professions for working half as many hours. Of course teachers are expected to undertake other tasks on top of just teaching, but their work schedule is flexible and they can do this work autonomously in their ‘own’ time. This flexibility to combine work, family life and leisure, and a comparatively high autonomy in organising one’s work, certainly contribute to the attractiveness of the teaching profession, especially among women who still take on the largest share of household tasks and responsibilities. The problem with this widely shared perception is that it is based on a very poor understanding of the nature of the work of teachers. Since the non-teaching tasks are not very visible, and are mostly executed without the close supervision normally associated with paid labour, they may not be perceived as ‘real’ work. And, more problematically, even teachers might be hesitant to see these tasks as an intrinsic part of their professional life.

The most recent Education Indicators in Focus brief combines data published in Education at a Glance 2014 and data collected in the TALIS 2013 survey, providing a very useful overview of the working time of teachers. It is surprising to learn that in the countries which participated in the TALIS 2013 survey, lower secondary teachers reported a total working time of 38 hours (of 60 minutes) in a typical working week. Only half of this total working time, 19 hours, is spent on teaching classes.

What kind of tasks and activities make up for the other half of the working week? The chart above provides an overview of the additional tasks the average teacher performs in a typical working week. In replying to this question, teachers didn’t use the tasks as mutually exclusive categories, so some overlap is possible and the categories add up to more than the mentioned 38 hours.

Tasks directly related to teaching make up a large share of the non-teaching time, such as planning and preparing lessons (7 hours) and marking/correcting student work (5 hours). Another 6 hours is spent on student counselling, extracurricular activities and communication with parents, suggesting that teachers engage in more comprehensive pedagogic relations with students than just teaching. Teachers take on crucial roles in the social and emotional development of students, thus creating a positive pedagogical climate for students to grow up in. Another 2 hours is spent on a wide variety of administrative and managerial tasks. These data suggest that the actual work load of teachers is much larger and more diversified than what popular perception tells us and in fact effective teaching requires a range of supportive activities and tasks.

The professionalisation of teaching and the evolution of schools into complex, professional organisations have made the work of teachers richer, more sophisticated and more formalised. The volume of working time spent on participation in school management and general administrative work, taken together, counts for almost 4 hours per week and is a further indication of schools changing into complex and modern organisations. The fact that teachers spend another 3 hours on working and discussion with colleagues suggests that their profession is no longer is a completely solitary activity. The evidence of the range of additional tasks expected from teachers challenges the popular perception – and probably also the self-perception of teachers – that teaching essentially is an individual and autonomous job. Instead, teachers are becoming professionals collectively engaged in professional organisations. This process of change probably does not happen without contest or conflict as most of the additional activities of teachers seem to happen in a grey zone of authority and supervision that are  not well regulated by statutory provisions or labour relations.

All evidence therefore suggests that in reality teachers are indeed hard-working professionals. Their total working time does not differ from equally educated professionals. For the popular perception – and recognition – to change however, evidence alone is not sufficient. Legislation and regulation of teachers’ work need to take into account the wide variety of tasks and the changing roles expected from teachers today. It will be necessary to make such tasks visible and to bring the delicate balance between professional autonomy and supervision into the public debate. Public respect for the teaching profession and the attractiveness of the profession would be served well by the recognition that teaching today involves a range of supportive tasks. Teachers deserve to be appreciated and valued for the wide variety of tasks they are required to perform due to the changing nature of their profession.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 29, by  Eric Charbonnier and Ignacio Marin
Education at a Glance 2014
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013 Results
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart Source © OECD, TALIS 2013 Database, Table 6.12 

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

Man with a mission

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

David Puttnam had a storied 30-year career as an independent film producer (The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, to cite just a few of his award-winning films) before he retired from film production to focus on public policy related to education, the environment, and the creative and communications industries. Lord Puttnam, who is now the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma, the Republic of Ireland’s Digital Champion, and chair of Ireland-based Atticus Education, which delivers interactive seminars on film and other subjects to educational institutions around the world, quit school at 16. (“I was bored to tears,” he says. “It was night school that saved me.”) Marilyn Achiron, editor at the Directorate of Education and Skills, met with Lord Puttnam in early November when he was in Paris to give a keynote address to the CERI Conference on Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education.

Marilyn Achiron: In your keynote speech, you talk about creativity in using technologies in education. What do you mean by that? 

David Puttnam: Creativity, for me, is finding metaphors, finding ways of explaining things in an interesting manner. Innovation in teaching is more than just technique. It’s a way of getting teachers to understand that teaching is a wildly interesting, imaginative job; and the results you can get – as we used to call it, the “lightbulb moment” – when you find the right switch for that lightbulb, are absolutely remarkable. But unfortunately, because of curricula pressures, personal pressures, because of class size, etc., teachers find it increasingly difficult to individualise kids in that sense: one kid’s lightbulb is not going to be the same as that of another kid.

MA: In your travels, do you find that teachers are willing to learn new pedagogies, learn to use new technologies in the classroom, or is there resistance? 

DP: I chair the Times Educational Supplement advisory board. In 2008, we realised that we had a perfectly efficient social media site – TES Connect. And we wondered what would happen if we really opened it up to teachers, to try to encourage teachers to talk to each other instead of through us. Teachers place learning materials, lesson plans, ideas, questions on the site. We've now reached a point at which over a million teachers a day, from all over the world, are now accessing this one site. So the idea that teachers aren’t interested in talking to other teachers, or in learning from other teachers, or in passing on information to other teachers has been blown right out of the water. The day when you went to your classroom, closed the door, and jealously guarded your own pedagogy – those days are over, gone.

Having seen the extraordinary success of  social media sites – TES Connect, and others – one criticism I would make is of the overall quality of the resources that are available. Quantitatively, we’ve hit a gold mine; qualitatively, I think it’s operating at about 20% of what's possible. You need to make sure that the resources posted stimulate really innovative and interesting work. One thing we’re looking into is the concept of copyright-free classrooms, which would mean that teachers wouldn’t have to worry about what they can and can’t use – movie clips, clips from television, whatever it might be – so that we’d in effect be challenging teachers to take material and re-use it, rather than looking over their shoulders wondering if they can. It would create an environment of “permissibility” for teachers to find out what’s possible.

MA: As a film producer, you had direct control over the process and your product, you had relatively quick reaction time from the people you worked with. Are you frustrated now in your policy work on education and climate change?

DP: Oh deeply. I no longer believe, in my heart of hearts, that the political will exists to turn things around – until we are faced with an evidential, existential crisis.

MA: What will that be?

It’s going to have to be pretty catastrophic to create lasting behaviour change; and it’s going to have to be something with a clear “read across” to other nations. It can’t just be inundation of coastal Bangladesh, or the vanishing of the Maldives. It can’t just be that. It’s got to be a situation in which every farmer in the [US] Midwest says: “It’s game over”. It has to shatter complacency at the UN; it has to shatter complacency within the OECD.

MA: How do we convince aging populations, particularly in the West, that improving education and maintaining schools are important? 

Anyone who is sufficiently a fantasist to think that good education systems are not a prerequisite to the health care they want, and the pensions they want, and the social security they want as they get older is bonkers, just plain bonkers!

As we discussed during the conference, the difference between the [highly innovative] medical profession and the teaching profession is quite simple. If you’re a surgeon and I come to you with a serious health issue, and you say to me, “You really do have a problem; however, I was reading the other day about a procedure which is really interesting. It’s been used several times and it could – could – save you”, I’m going to say, “Where do I sign?”

What you have is a process that constantly incentivises innovation, because through a series of relatively short-term wins you get long-term gains. The default mechanism in the education world is the opposite, which is: “How do we be sure it will work?” Because the crisis isn’t acute – or isn’t perceived to be acute. That, I think, is why the medical world has developed at an extraordinary pace – and continues to – and why education languishes.

Links:
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation: Conference on Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education
David Puttnam's PowerPoint Presentation at the CERI Conference on Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education
Photo credit: © OECD/Marco Illuminati

How can education systems embrace innovation?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Innovation in education is a highly contentious issue. Talking to education ministers one quickly gets the impression that education systems in general are very reluctant to innovate, and that there is strong resistance to change among teachers. But teachers would give you the opposite idea, by telling you that there are too many changes imposed on them without much consultation and without ensuring the necessary preconditions for a successful implementation of change. In some countries, innovative change has been implemented without either the care and diligence needed or the appropriate prior testing, experimentation and evaluation.

In its recent publication, Measuring Innovation in Education, the Innovation Strategy project of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) provides evidence that suggests that there are a lot of changes happening at various levels of the system. The widely accepted view that education professionals are change-aversive seems to be wrong. But few of the innovative changes the book documents are the result of deliberate top-down reforms. Other work in CERI, specifically in the Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) project, has revealed a huge reservoir of innovative energy at the micro-level – definitely the most relevant level where teaching and learning actually happens.

How to square these different views on innovation in education? Maybe the core of the dispute is not so much about the actual amount of change and innovation in education, but about the process - how change and innovation happen. A lot of well-intentioned innovations fail not because of a lack of quality or because their intended direction of change is wrong, but because of how they have been implemented. Teachers will be able to give you rich accounts of top-down innovations, implemented without much consultation, without taking into account the experiences and knowledge base at the point of delivery of education. Lack of trust, lack of ownership, a poor evidence base, and lack of empowerment of the key actors – these seem to be the main ingredients of the recipe for failure in changing education.

To better understand this, we need to know more about how the governance of education systems has changed. Many attempts to bring about innovative change in education do not yet seem to be based on what we already know about how education systems are governed. Decentralisation, greater complexity, multiplication of stakeholders, broader dispersion of knowledge and expertise, more levels of decision-making all make education systems more difficult to steer and to change. At least that’s the impression one gets when looking at the system from the outside. Indeed, the complexity and the multilevel nature of decision-making in education systems make top-down reform much more difficult to achieve. But complexity, in itself, does not necessarily jeopardise change through innovation.

Too often education ministers and policy makers react by tightening the screws, i.e. by reinforcing accountability, supervision and bureaucratic control systems. This may lead to short-term behavioural adjustments of the actors in the system, but very rarely to sustainable change. Work in CERI’s Governing Complex Education Systems project has shown us what makes for effective, sustainable innovation and reform: the professionalism of teachers and school leaders, strong knowledge-management frameworks and trust among all stakeholders and actors in the system. Professionals bring about innovation when they have a stake in it, when they see the evidence and the supporting knowledge base as credible, and when they trust their colleagues. In the same vein, parents will commit to innovative change when they feel involved and listened to, and when they understand the rationales and underlying evidence for change.

Does this mean that the capacity of education leaders, ministers and policy makers to steer the direction of change in education has evaporated? Have education ministers become powerless? No, definitely not. But they have to find new ways to set the course of change. Building a convincing case for change and articulating a credible narrative that appeals to both the professionalism of teachers and the interests of parents and stakeholders in the community can go a long way towards effecting change in complex systems. But change also works the other way around. The enormous reservoir of innovative energy at the micro-level can result in sustainable change if the actors involved can make a compelling case that gives direction and meaning to change.

The education community shows a great interest in better understanding these processes of change, reform and innovation in education – and the governance arrangements that support or obstruct them. That’s why some 200 policy makers and professionals will be gathering at the CERI Conference on Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education in Paris next week. The findings from CERI work in four different research projects will be shared and discussed so that we all can better understand the conditions under which sustainable and effective innovative change can be realised.

Links:
CERI Conference on Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education
CERI Conference Webcast
CERI Conference Agenda
CERI Conference Background Paper: Innovation, Governance and Reform in Education
Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective 
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

Follow the conference on twitter: #OECDCERI

Photo credit: Brainstorming / @Shutterstock

Delivering feedback for better teaching

by Katarzyna Kubacka
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills


October 5 marks the 20th anniversary of UNESCO’s World Teachers' Day, a day devoted to “appreciating, assessing and improving educators of the world”. This gives us a great opportunity to reflect again on how schools can celebrate and develop great teaching. One way to do that is through critical exchanges – building constructive feedback systems within the schools.

The OECD Teaching and Learning Survey (TALIS) asks teachers about the feedback they receive within their schools. The TALIS definition of feedback includes formal and informal communication, resulting from some form of observation of teachers’ work. For example, feedback can be provided by comments from the principal, at the end of the school year, in regards to teacher’s work, or in the form of an exchange between teachers who jointly taught a class or observed each other’s classes.

The different ways in which feedback can affect teachers’ professional experiences are the topic of the latest Teaching in Focus brief, “Unlocking the potential of teacher feedback”. Indeed, teacher feedback has tremendous potential, with teachers reporting that feedback can have a positive impact on the professional, personal and pedagogical aspects of their work. Two in three teachers, on average, report a boost to their motivation and job satisfaction after receiving feedback.

At the same time, TALIS data show that there is still much that can be improved in the way feedback is delivered. Most strikingly, more than half of the teachers across TALIS countries report that feedback in their schools is undertaken largely to perform administrative requirements. Such perceptions of feedback as simply a box-checking exercise not only lower teachers’ job satisfaction but are a wasted opportunity to support the professional improvement of teachers.

To be sure, the success of a feedback system depends on both parties involved. School leaders, along with teachers, can use feedback as a tool to map professional development and training needs, and make sure that these needs are addressed in the school priorities. Teachers can also actively contribute to feedback systems by creating collaborative communities in which colleagues can exchange advice and opinion on teaching practices. If used constructively, teacher feedback can support teachers’ professional development as well as strengthen collaboration within schools.

Links:

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey

A Teacher’s Guide to TALIS 2013

Teaching In Focus No. 6 : Unlocking the potential of teacher feedback by Katarzyna Kubacka

Teaching in Focus No. 6: French version
Blog post: French version
International Summit on the Teaching Profession, Banff, Alberta, on March 29–30, 2015
Photo credit: Group of People Discussing About Feedback/ Shutterstock

Are teachers really resistant to change?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Teachers are often accused of conservatism and resistance to change. Many education policy makers can list numerous examples of well-intentioned reforms that were opposed by the teaching profession and their union representatives in the past. But teachers will argue that reforms are often imposed from the top down, without much consultation with or respect for the professional wisdom and experience of the teachers themselves. At the same time, the teaching profession has not yet completely succeeded in developing a dynamic and change-oriented perspective for its future. The result is that teaching methods and techniques that have worked in the past have become the yardstick by which to assess – and often condemn – ideas about what could work in the future. At least, this seems to be the dominant view.

The finding that, in fact, teachers become more satisfied in their work when education systems go through a process of innovation may thus come as a complete surprise. Innovation and teacher job satisfaction are not mutually exclusive. A new publication from the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective, brings together a wealth of data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that capture various forms of innovation in education. It also presents a composite innovation index for 28 countries or school systems with sufficient amounts of data for the period 2000-11 that covers several areas of innovation-oriented change, such as innovation in instructional practices, in class organisation, in methods of assessment, in the use of technology, in teacher evaluation and feedback mechanisms, and in the ways schools interact with their environments. The composite index measures the size of the changes that have occurred over time as a result of the combined effects of these innovations. (Of course, these school systems might have very different relative positions on the respective indicators.)

According to this index of overall innovation, Denmark, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, the Netherlands and the Russian Federation have seen the greatest innovation-orientated change between 2000 and 2011. The state of Massachusetts in the United States, Austria and the Czech Republic show the smallest innovation-oriented change. The greater change seen in countries like Indonesia and the Russian Federation can be explained by a catch-up effect, whereas the relatively small change seen in Massachusetts may reflect the state’s already-high level of innovation in education at the beginning of the period. Both the Russian Federation and Indonesia show large changes in more interactive and realistic instructional practices, in encouraging students to reason, rather than learn by rote, in independent work by students, in giving more individual attention to students, and in changes in class organisation and assessment. Both countries also reported large improvements in the use of information and communications technology and in Internet connectivity in the classroom. In Massachusetts, these practices were already in place in 2000 or a negative change was observed in some of the data.

In 23 school systems, this overall innovation index can be correlated with a measure of satisfaction among 8th-grade mathematics teachers between 2003 and 2011, based on TIMSS data (see chart above). The outcomes of this exercise are amazing: the correlation between the two sets of data is strong. In general, school systems that have gone through an intense process of innovation in education tend to be those where teacher satisfaction has increased the most. The relationship is very clear in the upper right quadrant, which includes countries that have innovated more than the average among the OECD countries with available data. However, less change related to innovation does not necessarily correlate with less teacher satisfaction. Some countries in the lower left quadrant have seen a smaller increase in teacher satisfaction than the OECD average, or, in the case of Chile and Sweden, even a decrease, but in the other countries shown on the left of the chart, there is no real relationship between the two data sets.

The composite system-level innovation index includes measures of innovation-oriented change on two levels, the school level and the classroom level. The analysis shows that classroom-level innovation is more strongly correlated with the trend in teacher satisfaction. Clearly, innovation that affects teachers’ daily work – and which probably tends to increase their professional autonomy – matters most for teacher satisfaction.

Interestingly, the composite system-level innovation index also correlates positively with trends in the TIMSS 8th-grade mathematics learning outcomes between 2003 and 2011, as well as various PISA measures of equity in learning. At the risk of over-generalising, it seems that the kinds of innovation in education captured by this OECD innovation index increased the capacity of teachers and schools to cope with challenges, boosted teacher autonomy, and improved teacher satisfaction, ultimately improving students’ learning outcomes and the capacity of systems to create favourable learning conditions for all students in a more equitable manner.

The bottom line is that change, in itself, does not run counter to teacher satisfaction – quite the contrary. In countries or systems where there was a process of rapid innovation-related change, teachers reported greater job satisfaction. If teachers react so positively to change, they can hardly be seen as “conservative”.

Links
The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Chart source: © OECD

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

Higher but also more flexible teacher salaries

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

 

If one were to ask today’s education ministers which topics were at the forefront of their mind, they would almost certainly refer to the quality of the teaching work force in their country. Countries have been looking towards combination of ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ policies to address quality concerns regarding teachers. ‘Stick’ policies mainly include strengthening accountability and teacher evaluation procedures, sometimes linked to student achievement measures. But many countries understand that tightening the screws on teachers might not be the best answer;  the attractiveness of the teaching profession also comes into play. They are concerned that they don’t get the most promising students in teacher training, that they don’t recruit the best graduates in the teaching profession, and that many of them leave the profession too soon. And several countries fear being confronted with / the confrontation of teacher shortages in specific subject fields, but also more generally as the ageing teaching work force will result in important replacement problems in the near future.  A bigger ‘carrot’ might also be part of the solution.

The compensation of professionals is a complex issue, with many costs and benefits entering the equation of the relative attractiveness of a profession in an increasingly competitive market. Salaries are seen as part of the full package which also includes medical insurance, pensions, etc. In the case of the teaching profession, several secondary benefits – such as the work-life balance or the autonomy in the time-organisation of the tasks in relationship to the overall work load –play an important role in the  student’s decision-making. But the monetary compensation in the form of salaries is a crucial component of the package.

The most recent issue of the Education Indicators in Focus series provides the comparative statistical evidence on the salaries of teachers. The positive side of the picture is that in virtually all OECD countries, teachers’ salaries increased in real terms between 2000 and 2011. This trend coincided with a general rise in the qualifications needed to enter the teaching profession. However, the brief also shows enormous/ significant differences between countries in the relative pay of teachers, measured against the salaries of tertiary qualified professionals in general. As the graph above shows some countries pay their teachers up to 30% more than the average for tertiary educated professionals, but there are many more which pay them up to 30% less. The OECD average for upper secondary teachers is 89% of that benchmark salary. For lower-secondary school teachers it is 85% and for primary school teachers it is 82%.

Even if partially compensated with various other benefits, these figures do not support  the claim that teachers are among the better paid professionals. Their level of monetary compensation does not match the increasing social expectations and demands being placed on teachers or the ambitions of policy makers to recruit future teachers in the upper ratio of skills distribution of tertiary qualified graduates. Budgetary concerns, with which many countries are confronted, preclude massive increases in the short term. The expectation that a demographic decline in the size of the student population would create some room for salary increases, did not materialize due to a higher participation to education as a result of the economic crisis. Still, it is difficult to see how countries will be able to resolve their concerns in regard to teacher recruitment, without including higher compensation in the package of teacher policies.

The brief also reveals another important point: the rigidity of the salary structure of teachers. Statutory salaries are mainly determined by the level of education and by the age of teachers, formal criterions for which the rationality is difficult to ascertain (why should a primary school teacher be less educated and less well paid than an upper secondary one?). There still seems to be very little diversification or flexibility in the compensation of teachers. This fact is at odds with developments in other highly educated professions. The role of remuneration in the attractiveness of the teaching profession is perhaps not so much determined by its average level, but instead by the more specific relationship of salaries and tasks and demands, as well as the way teachers can positively influence their salaries through excellent performance. Countries should use salary flexibility to address specific policy concerns, such as recruiting/placing the best teachers in the most demanding schools. Teachers deserve a better compensation, but excellent teachers in demanding jobsare the most deserving.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 21, Eric Charbonnier
International Summit on the Teaching Profession 2014
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Related blog post:
The ever growing generation gap in the classroom, Dirk Van Damme

Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013: Indicator D3.1  (www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm)

The ever growing generation gap in the classroom

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

It is perfectly normal that teachers and students are not of the same age. In contrast to other public services, it is a distinctive feature of education that the professionals, i.e. the teachers, are older than their clients, i.e. the students. One could think of education as an institutionalised dialogue between generations, as a social space in which they interact. Through education, societies transmit the knowledge, skills, culture and values of a society from one generation to another. Nevertheless, students are not just passive recipients of former generations’ knowledge and values, but also transform and build upon them, thus influencing the development of societies. Especially in a period of rapid social change, the dialogue between generations is critical to ensure that no generation gets left behind. Across OECD countries, some schools take this role very seriously and even try to organise opportunities for individuals of all ages to meet and exchange, for example by inviting grandparents to school or by welcoming senior members of the community to interact with younger students.

From an educational point of view, the age of teachers is an important variable in the quality of teaching and learning environments. Ideally, students should be able to interact with a variety of generations of teachers. Each age group adds a specific dimension to the learning process. Older teachers bring quality associated with their experience, both with regard to professional experience and wider life experience. And younger teachers bring innovation associated with recent training and the enthusiasm of youth itself. Adolescents generally connect and identify better with younger teachers and expect that they will have a greater understanding of their lifeworld and the challenges related to growing up in modern societies. Education systems benefit from a balanced age distribution among teachers.

The new issue of the Education Indicators in Focus series presents the most recent statistical evidence on the age of teachers. The data show a worrisome trend. The average age of teachers in secondary schools across OECD countries continues to increase. A male secondary school teacher’s age was 44 on average in 2000; and 45 in 2011. For a female secondary school teacher, the average age in 2000 was 42, while it was 43 in 2011. Correspondingly, the share of older teachers (>50 years old) in the teaching work force also increased. Among secondary school teachers, the share of older teachers increased from 35% to 39% for males, and from 28% to 34% for females. These changes may not seem very dramatic, but they imply that every year a typical secondary school teacher is one month older than the year before. Differences between countries are large: in 2011, 55% of the male secondary school teachers in Germany were over age 50, 52% in Iceland, 55% in The Netherlands and even 67% in Italy.

An ageing teaching force leads to various policy challenges, such as upward pressures on the salary mass, peaks in teacher replacement and recruitment, or increased needs to invest in training and professional development. From an economic point of view, countries would be better off with a more balanced age distribution of teachers. But maybe more important are the implications for the quality of the teaching and learning process. Older teachers have the experiential knowledge and skills which potentially make them excellent teachers. But if the professional development is lacking to enrich their experiential knowledge and skills with the best recent research and evidence from innovative practice, older teachers risk sticking to what has worked well in the past and may have the tendency to sidestep innovation.

No one would accept being treated in hospital by a medical doctor who would not have updated his knowledge and skills since he or she left college 20 years ago. The teaching profession also would benefit from balancing experiential knowledge embodied by older teachers and innovation-oriented, research-informed knowledge which comes with younger teachers. In order to connect and identify with schooling, adolescent students need teachers who can read and understand their behaviour, their issues, their culture and values, teachers whose world view is not too remote from their own. It is difficult to imagine that, with more than half of their teachers 35 years older than they are, adolescent students can identify with school and engage in high-quality teaching and interactive learning.

Links:
Education Indicators in Focus, issue No. 20, Dirk Van Damme
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm
Chart source: OECD Education at a Glance 2013, Indicator D5 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932851991)