Teachers learn better at school

by Darleen Opfer
OECD Thomas J Alexander Fellow

Most of us probably have fond memories of time off school due to teacher training days. Whilst it may have presented a  logistical problem for our parents, it was a blissful free day off for us students. We didn’t stop and consider what teachers were actually doing during these training days. But if we had, we would have wanted them focused on activities directly related to our school experience.  The new Teaching in Focus brief shows that professional development embedded in school life has more impact on teaching practice than non-school embedded professional development.

Traditionally, teachers do not spend the training days in their own school, giving them the chance to focus on solving problems directly related to teaching their students. Instead, teachers are pulled out of their schools and attend one day, ‘single shot’ workshops or conferences where they listen to others instruct them on new policies and practices.

For both school and non-school embedded professional development there are variations in participation levels across countries. Teachers in Chile, France, Italy and the Slovak Republic indicate a high level of participation in non-school embedded professional development activities, whereas teachers in Abu Dhabi, Alberta (Canada), Mexico and Singapore report low levels of participation.

Across the countries surveyed however, teachers reported that they are more likely to participate in non-school embedded professional development activities, such as courses and workshops (70%), than in activities within school, such as collaborative professional learning (61%).

This is a shame because when teachers participate in embedded professional development activities within schools, where they can focus on problems of practice, use real student work, and collaborate with their same-school colleagues, there is a positive impact on teachers’ classroom practices. In the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), teachers reported impacts of professional development on:  knowledge and understanding of their subject field, pedagogical competencies in teaching their subject field,  ICT (information and communication technology) skills for teaching and student behavior and classroom management, among others.

In general, TALIS teachers who report taking part in more non-school embedded professional development activities tend to also report that their professional development has a lower impact on their work, in comparison to the teachers who report engaging more often in school embedded professional development.

A good example of the positive impact that can be achieved when teacher professional development is focused directly in the teaching school, can be found in Latvia’s Developing Skills for Experiential and Cooperative Learning programme, which is funded by the Soros Foundation–Latvia. Teachers in this programme work  together to identify and understand  problems in their teaching practice. Next, they generate a set of ways to address the problem and work on implementing their strategies for solving the problem. Most importantly, they do not do this work on their own, they collaborated as teams to implement and evaluate how well their strategies address the problem. Teachers in the programme continue to work on sustaining their efforts beyond the foundation funding, by forming the Latvian Association for Cooperation in Education (LAPAS, Latvian acronym ) which helps teachers develop collaborative approaches to education reform.

From this evidence, the message to teachers, school leaders and policy makers is clear: prioritise professional development activities that take place in school settings and that are sustained, collaborative, and focused on problems of practice. These are the activities that have the most positive impact on classroom practices.

Links:
Find out more about TALIS
Teaching in Focus No. 10 : Embedding professional development in schools for teacher success, by Darleen Opfer and Katarzyna Kubacka
Re‐conceptualising professional development of teacher educators in post‐Soviet Latvia
International Summit on the Teaching Profession, Banff, Alberta, on March 29–30, 2015
Photo credit: Group of People and Collaboration Concepts / @Shutterstock

Canada Welcomes the Teaching Profession

by J. Alan McIsaac

Vice-Chair, Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC)

Minister, Education and Early Childhood Development, Prince Edward Island

On March 29 and 30, Canada will play host to Implementing Highly Effective Teacher Policy and Practice – The 2015 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP 2015). The setting will be Banff, Alberta, the jewel of the Canadian Rockies and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The driving ethos of the summit is the centrality of teaching to education and, by extension, to social and economic development. Its aim is to promote the teaching profession worldwide: to improve its techniques, enhance its appeal, and raise its status as a rewarding career and a respected calling.

Canada is proud to further that aim. With hundreds of delegates from top education systems around the world, ISTP 2015 will provide a wealth of opportunities for generating new ideas and promoting new initiatives. That is one of the surest ways of leading the profession to an even brighter future.

Best practices from the best systems 

The delegates to ISTP 2015 come from across the globe. They represent a remarkable variety of languages and cultures. They come from societies of differing degrees of economic development. Yet, they all share one thing in common: they speak for excellence. 

The systems represented are among the highest-performing in the world or are among those that have demonstrated the most rapid improvement — as measured by results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) an OECD flagship assessment programme.

ISTP has always focused on sharing best practices from around the world, and this year’s summit is no different. Education ministers and leaders of teachers’ unions and associations, along with individual teachers, students, and a variety of education stakeholders will have the opportunity to learn from each other’s challenges and successes by engaging in open and frank discussions on the many issues we all have in common. From national standards, to team teaching, to lesson study, the nuts and bolts of teaching will be on the table. 

Three themes: leadership, recognition and self-efficacy, innovation

The answers to those questions will be formulated within the context of three themes. 

The first is developing and promoting effective leadership. Participants will look at those elements that contribute significantly to a strong sense of leadership in school systems, including distributed leadership, opportunities for professional development, and instructional leadership for principals.

The second theme is supporting teacher recognition and strengthening teachers’ sense of effectiveness, or “self-efficacy.” Evidence from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) suggests that the most successful education systems are those in which the value of the teaching profession is widely recognised by society. Teachers need to believe in themselves to be the best they can be. Yet, how do we get teachers to believe in themselves? This challenge touches on many aspects of the teaching profession, from managing a diverse classroom (a universal theme in teaching) to the need for mutual support, interpersonal relationships, and professional collaboration. It is an ongoing challenge, but one that participating jurisdictions are addressing in their own unique ways.      

   

The final theme is encouraging innovation in the 21st-century classroom, which touches on another universal theme in the profession: the challenge of disruptive technology. We are all — no matter what our culture or society — grappling with the changes brought about by information technology. Those changes are driving a need for innovation. 

This does not mean that innovation itself must always take a technological form. Teachers need to develop new ways to collaborate and communicate. Administrators need to implement new structures for feedback and evaluation. Ministries need to articulate new strategies that ensure coherence across systems in the face of considerable change. These all involve the human element of innovation and do not depend on keeping up with the latest advances in smart phones or tablets.

My colleagues from Canada’s 13 provinces and territories and our co-host, The Learning Partnership, are looking forward to welcoming delegates to ISTP 2015. We encourage you to you to bring your best ideas and your most challenging questions.

(And don’t forget a warm jacket! See you in March.)

Links:

The 2015 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP 2015)
ISTP Summit Background report: Schools for 21st-Century Learners: Strong leaders, confident teachers, innovative approaches by Andreas Schleicher, Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

Join a public webinar on 27 March, 17:00 CET with Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Education and Skills Directorate. Password to register OECDEDU.

Follow on Twitter #ISTP2015
Photo credit: Council of Ministers of Education, Canada

Supporting social and emotional skills to balance our lives

by Andreas Schleicher 

Director, OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

As we know from personal experiences, when we feel a deep sense of well-being we are far better able to absorb new information, take risks and be more responsible for our lives.  So don’t we want that for all our kids?  

But growing up is often quite a challenging period.  Ensuring that kids have a wide variety of skills to help them cope with some of life’s challenges may not always occur naturally. Sometimes they will need help in building social and emotional skills - which are the kind of skills involved in achieving goals, working with others and managing emotions. These skills play an indispensable role in all stages of life. Essentially, along with cognitive and learning abilities, it is equally important that our youth develop social and emotional skills in order to balance and ground their personalities and strengthen their characters. Some examples are: Perseverance, the ability to keep going when things get tough and rough (like when the sports teacher demands that you to run another 10 laps of the pitch and you’re already exhausted). Caring, the capacity to be kind to others and to be able to show and feel empathy (like supporting an upset friend by listening and comforting them irrespective of other priorities or personal time constraints). Self-esteem is being able to feel good and being proud of their personal achievements and comfortable with their physical appearances (regardless of any unpleasant comments from peers).

A new book launched today by the OECD, entitled Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills, addresses the importance of these types of skills to enhance and balance our lives. This report confirms international research studies, which validate the need for a steady set of cognitive, social and emotional skill in order to succeed well in life. Fortunately, some of these skills are flexible and adjustable during the growing up years, allowing policy makers, teacher and parents the opportunities to provide the right kind of learning environments to support and nurture them. In the past, we often thought that these types of skills couldn’t be successfully quantified, but fortunately this report demonstrates that they can be measured meaningfully, within cultural and linguistic boundaries. Additionally, the OECD is going to develop more measures and an international comparative framework, in order to better grasp youth’s current and future needs for social and emotional skills. So this report augments the reflection on how future policies could best encourage and nurture the development of social and emotional skills, of course, working hand in hand with parents and teachers. 

Not surprisingly, we need a wide range of diverse skills to contribute to the economy, support better social outcomes and build more unified and tolerant societies. Cognitive abilities such as literacy and problem-solving remain crucial. But, people with strong social and emotional foundation skills thrive better in a highly dynamic labour market and rapidly changing world.  Investing in these skills will be central to addressing numerous socio-economic challenges, and for ensuring prosperous, healthy, engaged, responsible and happy citizens.

Links:

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 

Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills  

Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies 

Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 

Photo credit: Little Girl Climbing Rock Wall / @Shutterstock

Why boys and girls still don’t have an equal chance at school

by Marilyn Achiron

Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

So: girls are now widely recognised as better students than boys and as more likely to earn a university-level degree than boys. Gender equality in education is achieved!

Hang on. What happened to the boys? And what about all those high-achieving girls who still shy away from further studies in mathematics and science, and who arch an eyebrow in disbelief when someone suggests a career in engineering or scientific research?

If you want to know why real gender equality in education still eludes us, take a look at The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence.An analysis of PISA data reveals how student performance is affected by such “intangibles” as behaviour in and outside of school, and self-confidence, and how, in turn, students’ behaviour and confidence can be influenced by parents’ and teachers’ attitudes and expectations.

So, no, we’re not there yet; but this book offers practical ways for teachers, parents and students, themselves, to shrink the gender gap in education outcomes even further – so that girls and boys have an equal chance of fulfilling their potential, both in school and beyond.

Links: 

OECD Press release: Early gender gaps drive career choices and employment opportunities, says OECD

Download the book: The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour, Confidence

OECD Gender Portal
Download the summary: PISA in Focus No. 49 What lies behind gender inequality in education?

Join a public webinar  on 5 March, 17:00 CET with Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Education and Skills Directorate, and Francesca Borgonovi, Education Analyst.  Password to register OECDEDU.
Follow on twitter #OECDPISA.

Further reading:

A closer look at gender gaps in education and beyond by Stefan Kapferer, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD 
Girls do better than boys despite inequality, The Telegraph 

Girls Get Good Grades But Still Need Help. As For Boys ... SOS!, NPR news
Academic Science Isn’t Sexist, New York Times
Infographic: ©OECD

Boosting growth through better foundation skills

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

The links between income inequality and economic growth are fairly well established: If income inequality becomes too high, large numbers of people no longer have the means to participate in the economy and economic growth suffers, nor will people be able to invest in their skills to climb up the social ladder. If income inequality is too low, no one goes to work and growth suffers too. A conventional way to move between these two undesirables is to redistribute income, e.g. through taxes. But wouldn't it be much smarter if, instead of dealing with the consequences of income inequality, we could address the root of the problem and moderate the sources of income inequality? Then things would not be a zero-sum game but everyone would win.

One such source of inequality in wages is inequality in the skills of people. Our parents told us that we should study hard to get a good job and a decent salary. And that wisdom has never been more true than today. As you can track with our annual publication, Education at a Glance, the highly educated never had better life chances than they enjoy today, while those without baseline qualifications have never faced a greater risk of social and economic exclusion than today. And the rapid rise in knowledge workers in advanced economies has not led to a decline in their pay, which is what happened at the low end of the skills distribution.

Data from OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills, which measures not just the formal qualifications people have attained, but also what they actually know and can do, allow us now to study this in new ways. An OECD Working Paper has just done that and found several things. If all adults were simply to complete an additional year of education (which no doubt would be good for each of them, as well as for the overall economic and social well-being of their country) top earners would actually benefit much more than those with lower wages. So wage inequality would rise. The red line in the chart above shows the increase in wages if people would increase the length of their education by one standard deviation for each part of the wage distribution. Essentially, it shows that the more people earn, the more further improvements in their education boosts their earnings. The data* also show that the financial returns to tertiary education would increase more steeply at the top end of the wage scale, while returns to secondary education would actually decline. This may be because higher education is where individuals acquire the specialised knowledge and skills that are more highly rewarded in the labour market. Another explanation is that technological advances mainly benefit the most skilled individuals, boosting their earnings most. In a nutshell, raising overall levels of educational attainment alone could actually increase the wage gap.

There is another angle to this. The data also show that countries were people are more highly skilled, on average, are also those where skills proficiency is spread more evenly across the population*. So better and more equitable skills actually go together.

The most worrisome finding from the paper is that countries with greater inequality in skills are also those where parents’ education has a stronger impact on their children’s skills**. In other words, where skills are less evenly distributed in the population, young adults are less likely to attain better skills than their parents – and thus inequality in both skills and wages become more firmly entrenched

But the data also show that ensuring that more people acquire essential foundation skills, whatever their skills or formal qualifications, can be an effective way to lead to a more equitable increase in earnings. This is shown by the blue dotted line in the chart above. So increasing investment in foundation skills – by raising the quality of basic education across the board – would not only result in higher productivity and greater employability among adults, but would also ensure that the benefits of economic growth are more equally shared across the population.

* Figure 2, page 10 of the OECD Working Paper "Skills and wage inequality: Evidence from PIAAC"
** Figure 3, page 11 of the OECD Working Paper "Skills and wage inequality: Evidence from PIAAC"

Links:
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators
OECD Skills Outlook 2013
Skills and wage inequality: Evidence from PIAAC
New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC)
Chart source: © OECD

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 

Got a math problem?

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

Some 37% of students in the Netherlands reported that they often worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them. In Argentina, 80% of students reported the same worry. What is the percentage-point difference between the two countries in the proportion of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them?*


While reading the above mathematics problem, did you:

1. start hyperventilating and repeat to yourself “I  can’t do this;
   I can’t do this; I can’t do this”
2. grab your mouse with the intent of clicking off this page
3. feel as though you have never encountered such a confusing
   jumble of words and numbers before
4. all of the above?

If you answered a, b, c or d, you’re in good company: on average, about one in three students feels anxious when confronted with a mathematics problem, and more than one in two students reported that they often worry that it will be difficult for them in mathematics classes. Those are alarming statistics – especially because PISA finds that greater anxiety towards mathematics is strongly related to lower scores in mathematics. As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, on average across OECD countries, mathematics anxiety is associated with a 34 score-point decline in mathematics performance – the equivalent of almost one year of school. In New Zealand, Norway and Poland, the decline associated with anxiety towards mathematics is even larger: at least 45 score points.

More worrying still, in almost all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2012, girls reported greater anxiety towards mathematics than boys. Only in Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates did boys report greater anxiety than girls.

PISA finds that students’ anxiety towards mathematics is not just about the subject, itself. Students are more anxious towards mathematics when their schoolmates get better marks than they do, on average. In Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and Slovenia, students who attend schools where the average student performs better than they do in mathematics tend to be considerably more anxious towards the subject than students who earn similar marks in mathematics, but attend schools where the average student performs as well as they do or worse.

So how can students learn to adopt a more Zen attitude towards mathematics? The answer may lie in their teachers. In 39 countries and economies, among students who performed equally well in mathematics, those students whose teachers consistently tell students how well they are doing in mathematics, give students feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in mathematics, and/or tell students what they need to do to improve in mathematics reported less anxiety towards math. Knowledge is power; and when staring down a mathematics problem, it can relieve stress too.

* There is a 43 percentage-point difference between the Netherlands (which has one of the smallest proportions of students who worry that mathematics classes will be difficult for them) and Argentina (which has one of the largest proportions of these students).

Links
PISA 2012 Findings
PISA in Focus No. 48: Does math make you anxious?
PISA in Focus No.48 (French version)
Full set of PISA in Focus
PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn (Volume III) : Students' Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs
Photo credit: The Scream / @Wikimédia