35,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Discover how high-performing systems shape teaching quality around the world Producing highly skilled and committed teachers is not the work of a single innovative school or the aggregation of heroic individuals who succeed against the odds. In high-performing countries, the opportunities for teachers to learn sophisticated practices and continue to improve are embedded systemically in education policies and practices. Empowered Educators describes how this seemingly magical work is done--how a number of forward-thinking educational systems create a coherent set of policies designed to ensure quality teaching in all communities. . . and how the results are manifested in practice. Spanning three continents and five countries, Empowered Educators examines seven jurisdictions that have worked to develop comprehensive teaching policy systems: Singapore and Finland, the states of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, the provinces of Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and the province of Shanghai in China. Renowned education expert Linda Darling-Hammond and a team of esteemed scholars offer lessons learned in a number of areas that shape the teaching force and the work of teachers, shedding unprecedented light on areas such as teacher recruitment, preparation, induction and mentoring, professional learning, career and leadership development, and more. * Find out how quality teaching is developed and conducted across the globe * Discover a common set of strategies for developing, supporting, and sustaining the ongoing learning and development of teachers and school leaders * See how high-performing countries successfully recruit and train educators * Understand why the sharing of expertise among teachers and administrators within and across schools is beneficial A fascinating read for researchers, policymakers, administrators, teacher educators, pre-service teachers and leaders, and anyone with an interest in education, this book offers a rare glimpse into the systems that are shaping quality teaching around the world.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 524
Ähnliche
EMPOWERED EDUCATORS
How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World
Linda Darling-Hammond Dion Burns Carol Campbell A. Lin Goodwin Karen Hammerness Ee Ling Low Ann McIntyre Mistilina Sato Kenneth Zeichner
With the assistance of Raisa Ahtiainen, Maude Engstrom, Jesslyn Hollar, Jiacheng Li, Ann Lieberman, Pamela Osmond-Johnson, Shane Pisani, Robert Rothman, Pasi Sahlberg, and Jacqueline Sohn
Copyright © 2017 by The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE). All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Brand
One Montgomery Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594— www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
9781119369608 (paperback)
9781119369615 (ePDF)
9781119369578 (ePub)
Cover design by Wiley
Cover image: © suriya9/Getty Images, Inc.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Sponsoring Organizations
About the LEAD Authors
Online Documents and Videos
Chapter 1: Teaching Policy Around the World
What Kinds of Policies Affect Teaching?
Why Study International Teaching Policy?
Why Study These Jurisdictions?
What We Found
Developing Both
Teacher
Quality and
Teaching
Quality
Organization of This Book
Note
Chapter 2: Contexts for Teaching and Learning Systems
Australia
Canada
Shanghai
Singapore
Summary
Note
Chapter 3: Recruiting and Preparing Profession-Ready Teachers
Recruiting the Best
Financial Compensation
Attractiveness of the Profession
Selection Practices
Preparing Professionals
Preparation That Enables Professional Practice
Induction
Lessons Learned
Notes
Chapter 4: Developing High-Quality Teaching
Incentives and Infrastructure for Learning
Time and Opportunity for Collaboration
Curriculum Development and Lesson Study
Teacher Research
Teacher-Led Professional Development
Feedback and Appraisal
Lessons Learned
Chapter 5: The Teaching Career and Leadership for the Profession
Career Pathways
Opportunities to Lead Professional Learning
Recruiting and Developing School Leaders
Lessons Learned
Note
Chapter 6: Perseverance in the Pursuit of Equity
Resourcing Student Learning
Recruiting and Supporting Teachers in High-Needs Schools
Lessons Learned
Chapter 7: Global Learning for Ongoing Improvement
Policy Borrowing: Learning From Success
New Horizons
Conclusion
Appendix A Research Methodology
Appendix B Qilun Elementary School Lesson Plan
Appendix C Qibao Teaching Contest Evaluation Form
References
Index
Eula
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1
Table 2
Chapter 3
Table 1
Table 2
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1-1
Policies in a Teaching and Learning System
Figure 1-2
PISA 2012 Proficiency Levels .
Figure 1-3
Relationship of Student Performance and Equity . .
Chapter 3
Figure 3-1
The Process of Teacher Recruitment in Singapore .
Figure 3-2
Teacher Selector Tool .
Figure 3-3
MOE Teacher Induction Framework .
Figure 3-4
Cycle of Teacher Inquiry and Knowledge Building .
Chapter 4
Figure 4-1
Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Level and the Frequency of Teacher Professional Collaboration .
Figure 4-2
Teachers’ Job Satisfaction Level and the Frequency of Teacher Professional Collaboration .
Figure 4-3
Teacher Study Group Conducting a Post-Lesson Discussion with Professors from East China Normal University, Pujian No. 2 Elementary School, Shanghai
Figure 4-4
Teaching Competition Photo Posted by a Teacher on WeChat, a Social Networking Platform in China
Figure 4-5
Example of a Balanced Scorecard Approach
Chapter 5
Figure 5-1
Career Tracks for Teachers in Singapore .
Figure 5-2
Award-Winning Teachers in School Display at Pujian No. 2 Elementary School, Shanghai
Figure 5-3
The Ontario Leadership Framework
Figure 5-4
Australian Professional Standard for Principals .
Figure 5-5
Australian Professional Standard for Principals Leadership Lenses .
Chapter 7
Figure 7-1
Policies in a Teaching and Learning System
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Chapter
Pages
v
vi
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
249
250
251
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
278
276
277
279
280
281
FOREWORD
We can probably agree that great schools, without exception, are staffed by great teachers. It follows that if one wants an entire nation, state, or province with great schools, then one must provide all those schools with great teachers. Few, I suspect, would disagree with that. But then the question arises, how can that be done?
Roll the clock back to the United States in the years leading up to the American Civil War. We know now that this was the period in which the outlines of the current American school system were taking shape under the pioneering leadership of Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann. Those communities that had any schools hired young men to tutor the children who were not working in the fields. Their wives were at home, and an increasing number of their daughters were working long hours in the mills for next to nothing. Those students who got any education got mostly drill and practice in the rudiments of reading, writing and, as they said, “‘rithmetic.”
Beecher and Mann had another idea. Send the men into the mills. Take the young women who had been working in the mills and put them in the schools. Although Beecher and Mann saw this move as building a profession for women, and advocated the creation of normal schools for professional preparation, the feminization of teaching typically took another turn as it played out across the country.
Scientific managers and town guardians often favored the move for financial reasons. They argued that schools could pay the women a pittance, because they were either single and living with their parents, and so did not need much pay, or they were married and it was up to the husband to provide for the family. They would not need much skill because they did not need to know much more than their students, and their students did not need any more than the basics. As the system grew, these young women were fired when they became pregnant, so it was hardly worth while investing in their development as teachers. Of course, it would take real skill and ability to manage this system, especially in the big cities, where there were lots of schools and lots of people and money to manage, but the managers would be men who would be paid a lot more than the teachers to tell the teachers what to do and how to do it. This was the model that was being used in America’s burgeoning industrial enterprises with enormous success, and there was no reason why it should not work in the schools.
And it did. The United States used this model to set one new global benchmark after another in educational attainment. By the middle of the 20th century, it had the best educated workforce in the world. It had done it with a classic blue-collar model of work organization in its schools.
Educators from all over the world came to look at the American education system, learn its lessons, and take them home. Variations on the American model popped up everywhere.
But, as the 20th century drew to a close, the world was changing. Poor countries were learning how to use the model of schooling just described to deliver the same basic skills that schools in the more developed countries were delivering. But the graduates of those schools in these poor countries were willing to work for much less than their counterparts in the more developed countries. Jobs for people with only the basic skills in the more developed countries migrated to the countries where employers could get the same skills for much less. Hundreds of millions of people in the less developed countries were lifted out of poverty this way, but people in the more developed countries who had only the basic skills were in real trouble. Then the jobs of people who do mostly routine work began to be done by robots and other automated machinery. Between outsourcing and automation, the market for people with only the basic skills in the most developed countries was devastated.
That fact was a death knell for the blue collar model of school work organization. One country after another began to realize that cheap teachers responsible only for teaching the basic skills, working in schools in which they were expected to do what they were told to do by school administrators who were selected not for their ability as teachers but for their skills as managers, could no longer do the job that had to be done. A model in which teachers were expected to come from the lower ranks of high school graduates, to be educated in the lowest status higher education institutions, who were paid poorly, all of whom did the same job and had no career to look forward to, who were not rewarded at all for getting better at their work but simply for their time in service, while others, not them, were expected to figure out how to improve student performance—a model like that could never accomplish what now had to be done.
What now had to be done was to provide almost all students in the most developed nations with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that only the elite students had been expected to develop before. All students would have to emerge from schools with the qualities that only the future leaders of society had been expected to have before if the nation was going to be able to maintain its standard of living. In an era like the middle of the 19th century in the United States, in which only a handful of people had any education beyond high school, it was obvious that only the high schools educating the future leaders of the whole society could afford to staff their schools with well-educated teachers. The blue-collar model of teaching was, in fact, the only model available to a country at that time that wanted to educate the masses.
But the blue-collar model of teacher work organization could not produce elite outcomes for the great mass of students. Only a professional model of teacher work organization could do that. So the search was on. What would such a model look like? Where would the future teachers come from? How would they be attracted to teaching? What sort of education would they need? How would they learn their craft? How would they be selected? Against what criteria? How would their work be organized? What sort of career could they be offered? What sort of incentives would they need to do the best work of which they were capable? How could their workplace be organized so that they would be constantly working to improve their skills, the curriculum, the schools, and student performance? What would schools look like if it was teachers, not managers or policy analysts or the research community, who was expected to lead the schools to higher performance? How would the answers to these questions change the kind of school leadership that would be needed? What, in other words, would a professional model of teaching look like when applied not just to an isolated elite school but to an entire country, province, or state?
That question—perhaps the single most important question facing educators today—is the question this book and the study on which it was based was designed to answer. Three years ago, my colleague, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, the director of NCEE’s Center for International Education Benchmarking, and I asked Linda Darling-Hammond if she would be interested in leading a major international comparative study of teacher quality to look at how the leading countries were answering the kinds of questions just asked. Darling-Hammond, of course, is one of the world’s leading education researchers and has had a lifelong interest in the teaching profession. She leaped at the chance. Such studies are usually done by a lead researcher with a gaggle of graduate students actually doing much of the field work. Darling-Hammond did not do that. She assembled a team of leading researchers from all over the world to join her in this very large research program. The result is a stunning piece of work, the result of a true collaboration among an all-star cast of researchers. It is everything we hoped it might be and more.
Don’t look here for the one country, state, or province to be copied. What you will find is a picture in which the jurisdictions described tried first this and then that. Some had opportunities that others did not have. Some worked on this while others worked on that. As they were doing this, they looked over each other’s shoulders for inspiration, ideas, and tools. Gradually, themes emerged. If you want a model, you will have to assemble it from those themes and the mosaic of policies and practices you will find in this volume and the others in the series of books from this project. And then you will have to adapt what you have learned to your own goals, values, and context.
There is plenty of inspiration here. Some of the key changes these countries made were nothing if not dramatic. Some countries look at their teacher education systems in despair, thinking there is no way that they can make the changes they ought to make in the education of teachers at the scale that is needed, given the politics. But look at how Finland decided to abolish all of its teacher education institutions at once and created in their stead a much smaller number of institutions, all of them at their research universities and all of them with a similar curriculum intimately tied to that nation’s aims for its schools. Or look at Shanghai, which created out of whole cloth a career ladder system in which teachers get more compensation, more authority, more autonomy, and more status as they go up the ladder, in the process transforming what it means to be a teacher from the blue-collar model to the professional model. Or consider Singapore and Australia, where carefully considered standards for teachers and school leaders have been developed to drive their systems forward in the same way that the development of professional standards have characterized the professionalization of medicine, the law, engineering, accounting, and many other professions.
But be careful. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues point out that it is not any one of these innovations and others like them that account for high teacher quality. It is the whole system and the way it fits together that is most important. They point out that it is not just all the parts and pieces of the teacher quality system that account for the differences they observe in student performance; it is also the way that these teacher quality systems fit together with the larger design of the education systems of which they are a part. The issue of equity is a case in point. It is not just a matter of making sure that new teachers have had classes in which they are introduced to the essentials of teaching students from low-income and minority backgrounds or get some experience in doing that in their clinical work. Shanghai has designed its career ladder system so that it is virtually impossible to go up the ladder without having worked in a variety of schools serving low-income and minority students. In Singapore, one is very likely to find that the best teachers are the ones working in classrooms with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority students. Singaporean teachers are taught early diagnosis and intervention in order to make sure that vulnerable students do not fall behind. In Toronto, with one of the most diverse student populations in the world, equity considerations govern virtually every aspect of the continuing development of teachers. Australia is working with its teachers to make sure that the curriculum they develop provides rich opportunities for indigenous students to see themselves in the materials they use in the classroom.
What emerges from this composite picture is almost the antithesis of the world that Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann created more than a century ago. The leading jurisdictions are selecting their teachers from among the more capable of their high school graduates. They want to make sure that they are not only strong in academics, but that they can connect with young people and have a passion for teaching. They are upgrading the status of the higher education institutions that are responsible for preparing teachers, making sure that they have a deep, conceptually based understanding of the subjects they with teach and have really mastered the craft of teaching. The most advanced are creating real careers in teaching to match the kind of careers that are available in the high status professions. They are creating professional standards for teachers, paralleling the high standards set for professionals in the high status fields. They are reorganizing schools and changing the way they are managed so that teachers, far from simply doing what they are told to do in isolated classrooms, can instead work with one another in teams to design more and more effective experiences for their students. Teachers in these systems are increasingly seen as the engine for school improvement, not simply implementing the recommendations made by university researchers, but doing their own research, sharing it with their colleagues and advancing the field themselves, with the support of the research community. Teachers in these top performing countries are treated with respect not because these countries are mounting respect-for-teachers campaigns, but because they are treated like professionals, are expected to work to professional standards, and are producing professional results in a professional work environment.
This landmark study documents that transformation in detail.
MARC TUCKER, PRESIDENT
NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NO MAJOR PROJECT LIKE this one is completed without the participation and assistance of many people. We wish to acknowledge and thank the many individuals and organizations who generously donated their time and energy to help with the planning and implementation of the study and who shared with us their knowledge and experiences in the preparation of this book.
First, we’d like to thank Marc Tucker and Betsy Brown-Ruzzi at the National Center on Education and the Economy for conceptualizing and guiding this study and helping it come to fruition. We would also thank the advisors of the Center on International Education Benchmarking who provided thoughtful reviews and feedback about the drafts: Kai-ming Cheng, Michael Day, Sing Kong Lee, Tony Mackay, Barry McGaw, Ursula Renold, and Minxuan Zhang.
We acknowledge the contributions of the Ford Foundation to the components of this research addressing the uses of time in the different educational systems we studied. We also offer our thanks to Barnett Berry and the Center for Teaching Quality, whose teachers contributed their experiences and perspectives to this work.
We would like to give our sincere appreciation to the members of the project team—Sonya Keller and Jon Snyder—for their critically important help in organizing and managing the research process—and to Maude Engstrom for her excellent research assistance in summarizing key themes for the cross-case volume. We thank Kathleen Cushman, Ben Pender-Cudlip, and Justin Samaha for their wonderful work developing the many audiovisual items that accompany this volume, along with Brendan Williams-Kief and Jennifer Craw for their work on the project website.
In addition to the leaders of the case study teams, named as authors of this book, we want to gratefully acknowledge the other contributors to the teams: Raisa Ahtiainen, Jesslyn Hollar, Jiacheng Li, Ann Lieberman, Pamela Osmond-Johnson, Shane Pisani, Pasi Sahlberg, and Jacqueline Sohn. Robert Rothman assisted in drawing from their work for the cross-case analysis.
We’d also like to thank the many educational experts with whom we spoke. We acknowledge in particular the faculty and staff members of the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Wollongong, and of La Trobe University; Shanghai and East China Normal Universities; University of Helsinki; Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Calgary, and Ontario; and the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technical University.
We are grateful to the many policy makers who gave their time to this project. This work would not have been possible without the cooperation of the ministries of education, teachers’ federations, and other governmental and regulatory agencies in each jurisdiction. We give our thanks to the many senior staff members who provided important information on the context and goals of policy reforms, and we are grateful for their generosity with their time and thoughtful perspectives.
Special thanks go to the many schools, principals, teachers, staff members, and students who so generously opened their doors to us, provided us with information and materials, and allowed us to enter and observe their classes. In particular, we’d like to thank the staff members and students of Engadine High, Canley Vale Primary, Homebush West Primary, Footscray North Primary, Willmott Park Primary, and Rosanna Golf Links Primary schools in Australia; Myllypuro Primary, Poikkilaakso Primary, Langinkoski, Koulumestari, and Viikki Teacher Training schools in Finland; Shanghai Jiangsu Road No.5 Primary, Qibao Experimental Junior High, Pujiang No. 2 Elementary, and Qilun Elementary schools in Shanghai; and Kranji Secondary and Raffles Girls’ schools in Singapore.
This work has benefited from all those who contributed their time, energy, and expertise toward this research. Any remaining errors or omissions are our own.
ABOUT THE SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS
THIS WORK IS MADE possible through a grant by the Center on International Education Benchmarking of the National Center on Education and the Economy and is part of a series of reports on teacher quality systems around the world. For a complete listing of the material produced by this research program, please visit www.ncee.org/cieb.
The Center on International Education Benchmarking, a program of NCEE, funds and conducts research around the world on the most successful education systems to identify the strategies those countries have used to produce their superior performance. Through its books, reports, website, monthly newsletter, and a weekly update of education news around the world, CIEB provides up-to-date information and analysis on those countries whose students regularly top the PISA league tables. Visit www.ncee.org/cieb to learn more.
The National Center on Education and the Economy was created in 1988 to analyze the implications of changes in the international economy for American education, formulate an agenda for American education based on that analysis, and seek wherever possible to accomplish that agenda through policy change and development of the resources educators would need to carry it out. For more information visit www.ncee.org.
Research for this book was coordinated by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) at Stanford University. SCOPE was founded in 2008 to foster research, policy, and practice to advance high-quality, equitable education systems in the United States and internationally.
ABOUT THE LEAD AUTHORS
Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign.
Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of its awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy. She is also a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education. From 1994–2001, she was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future was named one of the most influential reports affecting US education in that decade. In 2006, Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy. In 2008, she served as the leader of President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team.
Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and cofounded a preschool and a public high school. She has consulted widely with federal, state, and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices. Among her more than 500 publications are a number of award-winning books, including The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World and The Flat World and Education. She received an EdD from Temple University (with highest distinction) and a BA from Yale University (magna cum laude).
Dion Burns is a senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute and research analyst at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. With a background in policy and quantitative analysis, his research has focused on international education policies, particularly those that promote high-quality and equitable learning opportunities.
Over the past 20 years, Dion has variously worked as a teacher in Japan, a higher education policy analyst in New Zealand, and an education diplomat with roles in Latin America and the Republic of Korea.
Carol Campbell is associate professor of Leadership and Educational Change and director of the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her publications include Teacher Learning and Leadership: Of, By and For Teachers.
A. Lin Goodwin is the Evenden Professor of Education and vice dean at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. She recently served as vice president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)-Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education.
Karen Hammerness is the director of Educational Research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History. She has previously contributed chapters about teacher education to a number of books, including Teacher Education around the World: Changing Policies and Practices and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World.
Ee Ling Low is professor of Applied Linguistics and Teacher Learning at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she is head of Strategic Planning and Academic Quality and elected member of the NTU Senate.
Ann McIntyre is an experienced principal, superintendent, and former director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development in New South Wales, Australia. In this role she led the development of professional frameworks, programs, and research. Ann’s work is recognized for its impact on quality teaching, leadership, and school improvement.
Mistilina Sato is an associate professor of teacher development and science education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She is the inaugural holder of the Carmen Starkson Campbell Chair for Innovation in Teacher Development.
Kenneth Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, Seattle and a member of the National Academy of Education. His publications include Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice (2009), and Struggling for the Soul of Teacher Education (2017).
ONLINE DOCUMENTS AND VIDEOS
Access online documents and videos at http://ncee.org/empowered-educators
Link number
Description
URL
1-1
Video of professional learning practices at Kranji High School, Singapore
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-professional-development-in-singapore/
2-1
Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership Chair Tony Mackay discusses key challenges Australia faced in making systemic educational change.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/interview-with-tony-mackay-part-1/
2-2
The Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians
http://ncee.org/2016/12/national-declaration-on-the-educational-goals-for-young-australians/
2-3
A report on Canada’s approach to school funding
http://ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Alb-non-AV-9-Herman-2013-Canadas-Approach-to-School-Funding.pdf
2-4
Harvard University Visiting Professor Pasi Sahlberg discusses Finland’s approach to curriculum and assessment.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-pasi-sahlberg-on-curriculum/
2-5
China National Plan for Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020)
http://ncee.org/2016/12/china-education-plan-2010-2020/
3-1
Harvard University Visiting Professor Pasi Sahlberg discusses the process in Finland for recruiting and selecting teachers.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-pasi-sahlberg-on-teacher-recruitment/
3-2
Melbourne Graduate School of Education Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning Larissa McLean Davies describes how teacher candidates are recruited and selected to enter the Master of Teaching program.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-interview-with-larissa-mclean-davies-part-3/
3-3
Ontario College of Teachers Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession
http://ncee.org/2016/12/ontario-standards-of-practice/
3-4
Alberta Education Teaching Quality Standards
http://ncee.org/2016/12/alberta-teaching-quality-standards/
3-5
The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
http://ncee.org/2016/12/australian-professional-standard-for-teachers/
3-6
University of Helsinki Director of Elementary Teacher Education Anu Laine discusses the role of research in teacher education.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-anu-laine-part-1/
3-7
Teacher Training Schools in Finland
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-finnish-teacher-training-school/
3-8
Viikki Teacher Training School Teacher Sirkku Myllyntausta describes her role as a teacher and researcher
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-sirkku-myllyntausta/
3-9
NSW Department of Education and Communities’
Great Teaching, Inspired Learning
policy for building teaching quality
http://ncee.org/2016/12/great-teaching-inspired-learning/
3-10
Melbourne Graduate School of Education Dean Field Rickards describes the clinical teaching framework and academic supports in the Master of Teaching program.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-field-rickards/
3-11
Ontario policymakers, a teacher, and a university professor discuss policy changes, diversity, and action-oriented pedagogy in initial teacher education in the province
http://ncee.org/2017/01/audio-initial-teacher-education/
3-12
Singapore National Institute of Education’s TE21—Teacher Education Model for the 21st Century
http://ncee.org/2016/12/teacher-education-model-for-the-21st-century/
3-13
Video of a day in the life of a Singaporean teacher
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-day-in-the-life-of-a-singaporean-teacher/
3-14
Victorian Institute of Teaching Director of Special Projects Fran Cosgrove describes the cycle of teacher inquiry that supports teacher mentorship and registration.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-fran-cosgrove-on-mentorship/
3-15
NSW Secretary of the Department of Education and Communities, Michele Bruniges, discusses NSW’s policies and approach to building teacher quality.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-michele-bruniges-on-teacher-quality/
4-1
Austral Public School Assistant Principal Daniel McKay discusses how teacher professional learning is supported in his school.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-daniel-mckay/
4-2
Raffles Girls School Director of the Center for Pedagogical Research and Learning Mary George Cheriyan describes “professional learning space” and the “create, implement, review” cycle for educators.
http://ncee.org/2017/01/video-mary-george-cheriyan-on-professional-learning/
4-3
Kranji Secondary School Principal Tan Hwee Pin describes the time her teachers have for professional learning during the school day.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-tan-hwee-pin-part-1/
4-4
Alberta Teachers’ Association Framework for Professional Development in Alberta
http://ncee.org/2016/12/a-framework-for-professional-development-in-alberta/
4-5
Victoria’s Teacher Learning Network Executive Officer Michael Victory discusses TLN’s approach to professional learning in leadership, classroom management, IT, teaching practices, and early childhood.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-michael-victory-part-1/
4-6
Qibao Middle School Teaching Contest Evaluation Form
http://ncee.org/2016/12/qilun-primary-teacher-annual-evaluation/
4-7
Helsinki assessment of teacher personal performance
http://ncee.org/2016/12/finland-teacher-evaluation-form/
4-8
NSW Teacher Performance and Development Framework
http://ncee.org/2016/12/nsw-performance-and-development-framework/
4-9
NSW Principals Estelle Southall and Annette Udall discuss the differentiation and personalization of teachers’ professional learning in schools.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-estelle-southall-and-annette-udall-part-1/
4-10
Singapore Ministry of Education Teacher Growth Model fact sheet
http://ncee.org/2016/12/teacher-growth-model-tgm/
4-11
Kranji Secondary School Senior Teacher Rosmiliah Bte Kasmin describes how teacher evaluation supports professional growth in Singapore.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-rosmiliah-bte-kasmin/
4-12
Qilun Primary School student evaluation of teachers survey
http://ncee.org/2016/12/qilun-primary-students-evaluation-of-teachers-survey/
5-1
Description of the Singapore National Institute of Education teaching and learning e-portfolio
http://ncee.org/2016/12/teaching-and-learning-e-portfolio/
5-2
Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership Chair Tony Mackay describes the various planks of AITSL’s platform for high-quality teaching and leadership, system-wide.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-tony-mackay-part-4/
5-3
Overview of the Ontario Teacher Learning and Leadership Program
http://ncee.org/2016/12/teacher-learning-and-leadership-program-overview/
5-4
Quick facts regarding Ontario’s Leadership Strategy
http://ncee.org/2016/12/ontario-leadership-strategy-quick-facts/
5-5
The Australian Professional Standard for Principals
http://ncee.org/2016/12/australian-professional-standard-for-principals/
5-6
Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Director Bruce Armstrong discusses government investment in developing high-quality teaching and school leadership across the system.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-bruce-armstrong-part-1/
5-7
University of Melbourne Director of Education Research John Hattie describes his efforts to help school leaders analyze the impact on students of teachers’ effectiveness in meeting standards.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-john-hattie/
6-1
University of Helsinki Director of Elementary Teacher Education Anu Laine describes the extra resources available for teachers of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-anu-laine-part-2/
6-2
Alberta Education guide to K–12 education funding in Alberta
http://ncee.org/2017/01/education-funding-in-alberta/
6-3
Ontario government guide to the grants for student needs in Ontario
http://ncee.org/2016/12/ontario-guide-to-funding-for-student-needs/
6-4
A review of funding for schools in Australia
http://ncee.org/2016/12/review-of-funding-for-schools-gonski/
6-5
University of Alberta Vice-Dean Randy Wimmer describes the community-based aboriginal teacher-education program he initiated, and the challenges of bringing large numbers of teacher candidates into diverse professional contexts.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/audio-randy-wimmer/
6-6
Ontario Ministry of Education Director of Student Success Rob Andrews describes the province’s strategy for supporting students experiencing persistent achievement challenges.
http://ncee.org/2017/01/audio-rob-andrews-part-1/
7-1
Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership Chair Tony Mackay discusses improvement and innovation as a networked ecosystem that constructs new knowledge about teaching and learning.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/video-tony-mackay-part-3/
7-2
Training requirements for Shanghai teachers in the role of
banzhuren.
http://ncee.org/2016/12/training-of-banzhuren/
p. 159
Video illustrations of professional practice under the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
http://aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/illustrations-of-practice/find-by-career-stage
p. 184
Ontario Teachers’ Federation profiles the Ontario Teacher Learning and Leadership Program
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DCiHTSaZu8&feature=youtube
1TEACHING POLICY AROUND THE WORLD
Three teachers huddle around a laptop (Link 1-1) in the school library at Kranji Secondary School in Singapore. Rosmiliah, a senior teacher, and her two colleagues are engaged in an intense discussion of geographic information systems (GIS) and how to incorporate them into their teaching of geography. The trio constitutes just one of many teacher groups working on year-long projects to create new and innovative learning resources.
Along with each of their colleagues, these teachers will share their research findings at an annual learning festival attended by academics, teacher educators, and other practitioners, with awards given for the best projects. Rosmiliah laughs as she explains that none of the teachers was initially familiar with GIS, but by working together, they had incorporated it into a field research project with students, who found the new lessons fun and engaging. She explains:
Being a teacher, if you just keep on doing the same things every time without knowing what others are doing, or different ways to do it, you may be a bit boring—students may not find your lessons engaging. . . Teaching is alive . . . so the teacher is always learning as well.
In addition to these professional learning community groups, all teachers at Kranji take part in the school-wide “Learn and Grow” professional development workshops held fortnightly, in which the senior teachers introduce and model specific pedagogical strategies in “Skillful Teacher” workshops. In their 15 hours per week of nonteaching time, teachers plan together and may engage in lesson study or action research within their departments. Beginners receive regular mentoring from senior teachers like Rosmiliah. As teachers gain experience, they have opportunities to expand their skills and climb a career ladder that makes their expertise available to others. This includes teachers in a dozen other schools that learn together in a network, or cluster, and those who attend sessions facilitated by master teachers at the Singapore Teachers Academy.
This rich learning environment for teachers is not the work of a single innovative school or principal: Kranji is much like any other neighborhood school in Singapore. The opportunities for teachers to collaborate and engage in professional learning are embedded systemically in Singapore’s education policy.
Although Singapore is well known internationally for its strong investment and thoughtful designs for education, it is not alone. A growing body of research has found that high-performing countries have in common a set of strategies for developing, supporting, and sustaining the ongoing learning and development of their teachers and school leaders (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Lee, Lee, & Low, 2013; Tucker, 2011). These countries not only train individual educators well, but also they deliberately organize the sharing of expertise among teachers and administrators within and across schools so that the system as a whole becomes ever more effective. And they not only cultivate innovative practices but also they incorporate them into the system as a whole, rather than leaving them as exceptions at the margins.
This book describes how this seemingly magical work is done: how a number of high-performing education systems create a coherent set of policies designed to ensure quality teaching in all communities—and how the results of these policies are manifested in practice. Across three continents and five countries, we examined seven jurisdictions that have worked to develop comprehensive teaching policy systems: Singapore and Finland, the states of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, the provinces of Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and the province of Shanghai in China.
Serving increasingly diverse student populations while seeking to meet more challenging learning standards geared to 21st-century expectations, each of these jurisdictions has focused intently on how to develop and support higher-quality teaching across all of its schools. This book describes how governments in these places have carefully developed, planned, and implemented what we call a teaching and learning system and the lessons that can be learned from these systems.
What Kinds of Policies Affect Teaching?
Creating such a system does not actually require magic. It requires purposeful policies in a number of areas that shape the teaching force and the work of teachers:
Recruitment:
identifying and selecting individuals with the right blend of academic abilities and personal attributes to become effective teachers
Teacher preparation:
providing candidates with deep content knowledge and understanding of pedagogy, together with the clinical learning that translates these into quality teaching
Induction and mentoring:
ensuring that early-career teachers have the opportunity to observe, plan with, and learn from experienced teachers as they enter the profession
Professional learning:
ensuring ongoing learning opportunities for teachers to continually develop and improve their practice and to share their expertise
Teacher feedback and appraisal:
creating systems for providing feedback to teachers about their practice and for furthering teachers’ ongoing development as professionals
Career and leadership development:
providing pathways for teachers that support individual growth and the development of strong educational leaders
These policy areas are mutually supportive. Recruitment strategies that select capable individuals well suited to teaching may help initial teacher education programs produce high-quality teacher graduates, even as high-quality preparation serves as a magnet for talented candidates. Induction and mentoring practices that effectively aid teachers’ transition to the classroom are known to support retention in the profession, helping teachers gain in experience and effectiveness (Darling-Hammond, 1998; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Opportunities for veteran teachers to offer mentoring can also enhance their career satisfaction and retention as well as their ongoing learning and growing expertise. Effective feedback can inform professional learning, highlighting areas for development that support quality teaching. As teaching becomes a public activity—with educators sharing and receiving feedback on their practice—the profession as a whole is strengthened.
Beyond these areas of teacher policy, it is important to understand how other educational policies inform and enable quality teaching and learning to take place.
School curriculum, assessments, and accountability
systems shape what teachers are expected to teach and how students are expected to show their learning—which can greatly influence instruction.
School funding strategies
shape the resources and supports teachers have available to do their work and the degree to which teachers themselves are equitably distributed.
School organization and scheduling
influence the time teachers have available to collaborate and learn from each other.
These elements play out within a social and political context that shapes school conditions, supports for children and families, and the design and implementation of policies. We illustrate how these components interact in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1Policies in a Teaching and Learning System
Responding to different educational challenges, countries and provinces differ in their relative emphasis on elements of the policy system and the manner in which policies are implemented. For example, as we show in subsequent chapters, Finland has placed particular emphasis on effective recruitment strategies and strong teacher preparation; in Singapore, collaborative professional learning and well-developed career pathways are key levers; in Shanghai, intensive mentoring of beginners and development of all teachers’ practice is facilitated by school designs that provide significant time for collaboration and learning. Though the emphasis and balance of policies may vary, none of these functions is neglected in well-functioning policy environments.
Every country faces differing circumstances and contexts for education. Moreover, implementation strategies necessarily vary, because each context poses different challenges that must be addressed in order to avoid the “slip between the cup and the lip” that can undermine policy intentions when initiatives make their way to schools. However, common elements and themes emerge in these settings that, taken with the proper analytical grain of salt, can yield important lessons for improving education policy and teaching quality across other nations and settings.
We know that the factors shaping teaching and student outcomes are complex, and so we have sought to avoid facile explanations or silver bullet solutions. Instead, building on our examination of hundreds of documents and in-country interviews at every level of these systems, coupled with in-depth observations in schools, we provide rich descriptions of the policies and their implementation in these educational systems. (See Appendix A for a description of the study’s methodology.) We further examine how these approaches contribute to well-developed teaching practices and in turn facilitate learning that prepares students for the growing complexity of 21st-century economies. Through this investigation, we aim to uncover lessons and principles that might inform the way policy makers and practitioners think about educational policy as it may apply to their own settings.
Why Study International Teaching Policy?
Research into educational performance around the globe increasingly points to the role of a strong teaching workforce in achieving a high-performing system. In a now well-known study of 25 education systems, researchers Barber and Mourshed (2007) found that these countries had several features in common. First, policies were designed to find people with the right skills and attributes to become teachers. Competitive salaries helped make the profession attractive to potential candidates, and high standards were set for entry into and graduation from initial teacher education programs. Together these helped raise the status of teaching, creating a virtuous cycle for ongoing recruitment.
Second, these systems developed teacher education programs that promoted the integration of theory with the building of practical skills, and they established policies for ongoing learning that helped teachers identify areas for growth, learn from each other, and improve their instructional practices. Coaching and professional learning opportunities helped support ongoing teacher development and instructional leadership.
Third, these systems created strategies to ensure that all students, not just some, had access to high-quality instruction. As the report notes:
Getting the right people to become teachers and developing them into effective instructors gives school systems the capacity they need to deliver the improved instruction that leads to improved outcomes. High-performing school systems go further than this and put in place processes which are designed to ensure that every child is able to benefit from this increased capacity. (Barber & Mourshed, 2007, p. 34)
These processes can include not only the equitable distribution of well-qualified educators and overall school funding but also the additional instructional, health, and welfare supports that enable students to benefit from quality teaching. Studies from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) find that allocating resources to better address students’ needs helps disrupt the usually strong relationship between students’ socioeconomic background and their achievement (OECD, 2013a, 2013b).
Although there is widespread agreement that attention to educator recruitment, preparation, and development matters, less is understood about how countries and states create and manage such systems in very different contexts and how they integrate their teaching policies with their approaches to curriculum, assessment, accountability, and school design—creating a comprehensive teaching and learning system. We take on these questions in this study.
Policy systems that support high-quality teaching practices are of intense importance in an era characterized by rapid knowledge expansion and change. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have shown that more new knowledge was created between 1999 and 2003 than in the entire history of the world preceding—and knowledge growth continues exponentially (Lyman & Varian, 2003). Technology knowledge is doubling every 11 months, and technology advances are continually automating routine functions that once created low-skilled jobs. Not only can computers check you in at the airport and check you out at the grocery store, they can also, together with robotics, clean houses, conduct surgery, and steer self-driving cars.
University of Oxford researchers estimated that 47% of more than 700 present-day occupations in the US economy are susceptible to being computerized (Frey & Osborne, 2013). And many of the fastest-growing (and highest-paying) jobs in today’s economy did not exist 10 years ago: mobile application developer, digital strategist, market research data miner, social media consultant, and sustainability expert (Casserly, 2012).
Students entering school today will leave to work in jobs that do not yet exist, using knowledge that has not yet been discovered and technologies that have not yet been invented, facing complex problems our generation has been unable to solve. As a consequence, the top skills demanded by employers are not merely following directions and counting change but the abilities to make sense out of complex information and events, think creatively to solve novel problems, work well with others, engage effectively in cross-cultural contexts, and manage many forms of media as well as quantitative data in sophisticated ways. Students today need much more than simply to recall a canon of received knowledge. They need to be able to find, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply knowledge to new ideas, answers, and solutions; communicate in multiple forms, use new technologies, and collaborate with others; and become able to learn on their own throughout life.
Meanwhile, growing international migration is creating increasingly diverse societies. Young people, especially, are also likely to engage in multiple online communities. Each of these brings people with different perspectives and cultures into closer proximity and contact. Such exchanges yield new ideas, innovations, and possibilities, as well as transforming traditional notions of community, citizenship, and democracy.
The kind of teaching required to support contemporary learning goals in this context is very different from what was required when the goal was merely to “cover the curriculum” and “get through the book,” enabling some students to succeed if they could and others to fail. In order to enable very diverse students to learn the higher-order skills once reserved for a tiny few, teachers need a range of new skills. They must understand content more deeply and flexibly; they must understand the science of learning—how children learn and develop in cultural contexts, generally and individually, within and across distinctive subject areas; they must understand how to support language acquisition and use for native and nonnative students; they must develop teaching strategies that foster analysis and reasoning; and they must continually incorporate appropriate technologies into their teaching practice.
“Chalk and talk” methods used to impart facts will need to give way to methods for engaging students in applied learning, facilitated by teachers. Teachers will be increasingly called on to collect and analyze a range of assessment data to ensure all students are learning and provide differentiated teaching to students of varying abilities in the same classroom. All of these expectations have implications for how teachers are trained, the supports that they receive early in their careers, and their ongoing professional learning to help them develop and maintain effective teaching practices.
Beyond teachers’ work in classrooms—and through the other places and modalities that will no doubt evolve—educators must learn how to redesign schools and education systems to support these goals. Governments must reconceptualize how they think about education, the role of schools, and what and how students are taught. It is therefore critical to pay attention not just to single policies but also to the ways in which policies interact and how they function as a policy system that together provides an enabling environment in which quality teaching and learning can occur and evolve to meet new demands. We take up all of these issues in this book.
With all of these factors in mind, we focus on teaching because it is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak—where the direct engagement between students and the content and processes of their learning occurs and can be most effectively leveraged. Teachers facilitate this process, and the strategic moves they make—in selecting and orchestrating materials, activities, examples, and supports—are the primary mediators of learning.
Why Study These Jurisdictions?
The jurisdictions we chose to study have made considerable investments in developing teaching and learning systems that include a coherent approach to supporting teaching quality. All of them have also demonstrated considerable success on international indicators of educational quality that emphasize the kinds of higher-order skills needed in contemporary societies, such as OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Further, most of these education systems include significant linguistic, cultural, and racial and ethnic diversity, and all of them have exhibited strong achievement and growing equity for students who are lower income, immigrants, and members of long-standing minority groups.
For example, the populations of Australia and Canada include large numbers of immigrants (28% and 21%, respectively) (ABS, 2015; Statistics Canada, 2013), far more than in the United States (approximately 13%). They are also working to reduce achievement gaps for their significant aboriginal or First Nations populations and those living in rural or remote communities. Singapore is a multiethnic nation within which the three largest groups—Chinese, Tamil, and Malay—define three national languages that are explicitly preserved while English is taught in school. All students are supported to become bilingual English speakers. Other immigrants with a wide array of additional languages are also supported to preserve their mother tongue whenever possible while learning English and one of the other national languages.
Shanghai’s Chinese population features many language dialects and groups of widely varying income and educational experiences, as is common throughout China. Roughly 20% of Shanghai’s student population in grades 1 through 9 is composed of children of migrant families, reflecting a national trend of mass rural migration to the industrial centers of the nation (OECD, 2011, p. 96). And Finland, commonly thought of as a homogeneous country, has a growing number of immigrants, speaking more than 60 languages, with the largest number of children from Bosnia, Britain, China, Estonia, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Serbia, Somalia, Sweden, Turkey, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam (Statistics Finland, 2014b). In some urban schools, the number of immigrants and children with a home language other than Finnish is close to 50% (Sahlberg, 2007, p. 149).
All of these jurisdictions have high rates of educational attainment, with high school graduation rates generally exceeding 85% and college-going rates climbing rapidly. Recognizing that many factors other than schools influence educational achievement and attainment, including nations’ investments in children’s welfare, we note that student achievement in all of these jurisdictions exceeds the OECD average in reading, mathematics, and science as measured by the PISA (see Table 1-1). The PISA tests go beyond recall and recognition of information, emphasizing the ability of students to apply knowledge to new circumstances—the kind of competencies of increasing relevance to 21st-century learners.
Table 1-1PISA 2012 Mean Scores and Rank
Jurisdiction
Mathematics
Reading
Science
Rank
Mean Score
Rank
Mean Score
Rank
Mean Score
Shanghai
1
613
1
570
1
580
Singapore
2
573
3
542
3
551
Finland
12
519
6
524
5
545
Canada
13
518
9
523
10
525
Alberta
517
525
539
Ontario
514
528
527
Australia
19
504
14
512
16
521
Victoria
501
517
518
New South Wales
509
513
526
OECD
494
496
501
United States
36
481
24
498
28
497
Source: OECD (2014c). Used with permission.
In addition, these jurisdictions produce proportionately greater numbers of high achievers, shown here in Figure 1-2 by the proportions of students scoring at levels 4, 5, and 6 on PISA, reflecting a greater ability to solve complex problems.
Figure 1-2PISA 2012 Proficiency Levels .
Source: OECD (2014c). Used with permission
Equally important is the extent to which each jurisdiction provides equality of educational opportunity. A growing focus on equity is linked to an increasing recognition that for countries to compete in the context of greater economic and social globalization, all students—not just some—must have the necessary skills to be successful in the modern workplace and society (Tucker, 2011).
One broad measure of equity is the relationship between socioeconomic status and achievement. A lower correlation signals greater equity, because socioeconomic status is less strongly related to student performance. As shown in Figure 1-3, our study jurisdictions are found primarily in the upper-right-hand quadrant, indicating both above average achievement and a greater-than-average equity quotient (measured by the impact of socioeconomic status on mathematics score).
Figure 1-3Relationship of Student Performance and Equity . .
Note: Percentage of variation of performance explained by the PISA index of economic, social, and cultural status
Source: OECD (2013a). Table II.2.1. Used with permission
In Finland, Canada, Singapore, and Australia, the proportion of variance in achievement explained by socioeconomic status of students was less than the OECD average (14.8%), whereas Shanghai’s measure of equity was just above that average (15.1%)1 (see Table 1-2). However, the performance of Shanghai’s students was so high that the proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students scoring at the upper levels on PISA was still significantly higher than that of the entire population of most other jurisdictions. Put another way, the mean score of Shanghai’s socioeconomically disadvantaged schools alone would still place it among the top five jurisdictions in the world (OECD, 2013a, p. 257).
Table 1-2PISA 2012 Variation in Score Attributable to Socioeconomic Status
Jurisdiction
Proportion of Variance in Achievement Explained by Student Socioeconomic Status (%)
Finland
9.4
Canada
9.4
Alberta
8.9
Ontario
9.6
Australia
12.3
New South Wales
12.8
Victoria
9.0
Singapore
14.4
OECD
14.8
Shanghai
15.1
Source: OECD (2013a). Used with permission.
We recognize that this relationship can be affected not only by the educational opportunities children experience but also by the extent to which there are wide economic disparities across households in a given jurisdiction: The greater the disparities in children’s living conditions, the greater the effect of these disparities are expected to be, so educational access is a function of how schools provide educational opportunities and how children are supported by the society at large to take advantage of those opportunities.
What We Found
Although each country and province has a different history, culture, and context for education, we found many commonalities in how they approach policy making in support of quality teaching. A key goal in all of the jurisdictions was to develop a strong teaching profession, including a commitment to “invest in knowledgeable practitioners who can make sound decisions about how to shape education for the specific clients they serve” (Darling-Hammond, 2009, p. 46).
A professional approach suggests that policy is directed toward the development of a teacher workforce that is highly educated and empowered to make decisions about teaching for the best interests of their students, based on knowledge accumulated from their training and from what they learn about the wisdom of practice from their in-service experiences and sharing of expertise with colleagues. It also suggests that teachers are accountable not only to students and parents but also to each other as professionals to maintain professional standards. Our findings reflect several themes common across these jurisdictions:
A high social regard for teaching:
