On-the-Job Improvements in Teacher Competence: Policy Options and Their Effects on Teaching and Learning in Thailand

Abstract

On-the-job teacher learning is vital to the success of reforms aimed at improving the quality of primary education in the developing world. In this study, we consider two policy options for improving the competence of the incumbent teacher: providing in-service training and encouraging regular classroom supervision. The results, based on a nationwide sample of small rural primary schools in Thailand, indicate that a teacher’s experience in in-service training courses predicts neither instructional quality nor student achievement. In sharp contrast, intensity of internal supervision significantly predicts both instructional quality and student achievement, after controlling for a variety of covariates measured at the school, teacher, and classroom levels. The supervision effect, similar in magnitude to the preservice education effect, is quite large. Intensive fieldwork in carefully selected rural schools suggests that, for effective principals, teacher supervision is a critical component in a larger strategy designed to create and sustain an “ethos of improvement” in academic teaching and learning