Enhance Teacher Quality Research Articles

The political economy of teacher management reform in Indonesia

Indonesia faces serious problems in the number, cost, quality and distribution of teachers. In recent years, its central government has introduced a range of reforms to address these problems but they have produced modest results. This paper suggests that this outcome reflects the way in which predatory political and bureaucratic elites have used the school system for decades to accumulate resources, distribute patronage, mobilize political support, and exercise political control rather than promote improved learning outcomes. Efforts to reduce teacher numbers, enhance teacher quality, and improve teacher distribution have accordingly constituted an assault on the interests of these elites, provoking powerful, if often subterranean, resistance. Broadly, reform has only occurred where the central government has employed policy instruments that have disciplined local governments and maintained a commitment to these instruments in the face of resistance. The paper concludes by assessing the implications for Indonesian education.

Community-based teacher professional development in remote areas in Indonesia

The Indonesian government has been struggling to improve the quality of teachers in its public and private schools. Several programmes of teacher education and teacher certification have been designed to enhance teacher quality. However, the programmes do not yet develop effective teachers. Supporting the government programmes, the Tanoto Foundation has facilitated teacher professional development programme since 2010, specifically in elementary schools in the provinces of Riau, Jambi, and North Sumatra. This paper first describes how the Tanoto Foundation has designed and implemented its teacher quality improvement programme for in-service teachers in remote schools in Indonesia and then uses this context to examine to what extent teachers benefited from these programmes. Reported findings broaden our understanding of how teachers can improve their quality via privately sponsored programmes.

ロール・プレイングを活かした物語作りの意味 : 教員(保育者)養成における専門性を高めるために

ロール・プレイングを活かした物語作りの意味 : 教員(保育者)養成における専門性を高めるために

Redefining what it means to be a teacher through professional standards: implications for continuing teacher education

This article connects with an international debate around the place of professional standards in educational policy targeted at enhancing teacher quality, with associated implications for continuing teacher education. Scotland provides a fertile context for discussion, having developed sets of professional standards in response to a recent national review of career-long teacher education. That review called for a reprofessionalisation of the teaching profession and the revision of the standards was an element of this process. Scotland is utilised as a lens through which one country’s response to international trends is viewed, with a focus on ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘practitioner enquiry’ as policy endorsed sets of practices. The analysis demonstrates the complex and contested nature of these terms and the tensions posed between the need to meet professional standards as part of teacher education and aspirational dimensions of the current policy project of reprofessionalisation. The article concludes by considering the implications for continuing teacher education.

Spatialised metaphors of practice: how teacher educators engage with professional standards for teachers

ABSTRACTPre-service teacher educators, both nationally and internationally, must negotiate a plethora of expectations including using Professional Standards to enhance teacher quality. In Australia, the recent Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) report highlighted weak application of Standards in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). However, recent reports suggest that many education stakeholders feel positive about the implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs). This study responds to these differing viewpoints by exploring how teacher educators in a large metropolitan university in Australia account for the use of Standards in their work. Discourse analysis techniques in conjunction with socio-spatial theory make visible particular metaphors of practice as teacher educators negotiate the real-and-imagined spaces of regulated teacher education programmes. The findings highlight the importance of investigating the utility of Standards in the lived experiences of teacher educators, as they are responsible for preparing quality, classroom ready graduates.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHERS’ IN-SERVICE TRAINING AND TEACHING PROFESSIONALISM: SUITABILITY ASPECTS

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the suitability of the important aspects of teachers’ in-service training including planning, content, presenters, days and duration and the location. In addition, the study also evaluates the relationship between the development of professionalism in teaching with suitable aspects of in-service training. Quantitative method was used in the form of questionnaire to collect the data. This study was conducted in 6 secondary schools in the district of Petaling Utama in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A total of 174 teachers were selected purposively as respondents. The data were analyzed quantitatively using the SPSS version 21 software. Descriptive statistics were used (mean, frequency and percentage), as well as inferential statistics (Pearson Correlation test). The study indicated a significant correlation between the aspects of planning, content and course presenter with higher levels of professionalism in teaching. The findings suggest that school management should align in-service training with actual teacher needs. The Ministry of Education is also expected to manipulate the aspects of planning, content and course presenters within the in-service training to promote teacher professionalism. It is hoped that this study may be used as guidance in developing suitable inservice training to enhance teacher quality.

Quality teaching in rural Sub-Saharan Africa: Different perspectives, values and capabilities

Over the last decade vast sums have been invested in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance teacher quality. Yet improvements in quality – when interpreted as enhanced pupil attainment – are disappointing. This paper shows how Amartya Sen's capability approach can help answer the call for a renewed focus on, and reconceptualisation of, quality teaching by considering the pursuit of valued goals in teachers’ work.It is increasingly understood that what teachers do, matters. Drawing on a recently completed PhD, this paper examines the professional capabilities of two women teachers from a rural Nigerian school. These teachers provide a focus for exploring the relationship between official representations of teachers’ work and the professional lives teachers create and experience. Official perspectives were extrapolated from policy documents around teachers’ work, teachers’ perspectives were drawn from an ethnography of rural teachers’ lives carried out between 2007 and 2011. A list of professional capabilities was developed from each perspective to represent what was valued in teachers’ work, and the study developed an analytical framework for evaluating teachers’ professional capability from each perspective.This paper draws out some highlights of this analysis and proposes a new cyclical model of professional capability for quality teaching.

Current Ethical Issues in Teacher Education: A Critical Analysis on Pre-Service and In-service Emerging Teachers

The paper intends to examine the current professional ethics, its problems and teacher taught relationship in the field of teacher education as well as how they described negotiated relationship boundaries. This study conducted in a B. Ed college under Indra Prasta University that Ram Chandra Institute of Education and Technology and in-service students of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), and designed to document examples of ethical dilemmas faced by pre-service and practicing teachers. Also aim to explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions on ethical education and to examine the B. Ed course curriculum for ethics subjects across the one-year and two year degree course. Results highlight a need for teacher training courses to include ethical philosophy subject, at the same time a code of ethics for teaching profession. This re presents a sustainable way to support professional practice and enhance teacher quality, by preparing and equipping teachers with techniques to explore and teach complex ethical issues in the classroom and ultimately it will help the teacher to create a conducive environment within the institution which is needed for best learning.

Same Contract, Different Day? An Analysis of Teacher Bargaining Agreements in Louisville since 1979

Background/Context Recent political efforts to minimize the influence of teacher unions have called new attention to collective bargaining in American education. Such attention has only heightened a longstanding controversy within the realms of both research and practice. A renewed scholarly literature has systematically considered the relationship between teacher unionization and educational outcomes. The current paper provides additional context for such work by considering teacher contracts over time. Purpose/Objective/Research Question In this study we examine the ways in which the collective bargaining agreements in a large, Midwestern American school district have changed during more than 30 years of policymaking. Research Design The paper presents an historical content analysis/case study of every contract in Louisville, Kentucky since 1979. We focus on several areas of current interest to researchers studying teacher quality. These include salary schedules, transfer and assignment policies, teacher evaluation, dismissal, and working conditions. To fix our analysis within a theoretical framework, we consider an interpretation of our evidence suggested by the perspective of New Institutionalism. Conclusions/Recommendations We show that these contracts have changed very little in more than three decades, and most key provisions are identical. The time period we examine covers important educational reforms at the state and federal levels, as well as a number of popular movements such as efforts to reduce class size and enhance teacher quality through new evaluation schemes and tenure reform. If confirmed in other districts, our evidence would suggest limited potential for policy change to be reflected in individual bargaining agreements.

Raising the Bar: Ethics Education for Quality Teachers

Since the 1970s an 'ethics boom' has occurred to counter the disappearance of ethics education from tertiary institutions. This 'boom' appears to be absent from teacher education programs in Australia and the United States. Given persistent calls to enhance teacher quality this is problematic because quality teaching is inexorably linked to teachers' beliefs, values and professional ethics. This case study, conducted in a regional Australian university, was designed to document examples of ethical dilemmas faced by pre- service and practising teachers, to explore pre-service teachers' perceptions of ethics education and to examine the BEd course curriculum for ethics subjects across the four-year degree course. Results highlight a need for teacher training courses to include ethical philosophy units. This represents a sustainable way to support professional practice and enhance teacher quality, by preparing and equipping teachers with techniques to explore and teach complex ethical issues in the classroom. Quality teachers are considered to be those individuals whose pedagogy is grounded in values and beliefs that lead to caring, positive teacher-student relationships, embedded in trust and high standards of professional ethics. In a context of focused attention upon professional ethics and values education, this case study was conducted to: a) explore professional ethical dilemmas encountered by pre-service and practising teachers, b) explore pre-service teachers' perceptions of the ethics education delivered during their bachelor of education course and c) examine the ethics content of a bachelor of education degree at an Australian university.

Responding to Teacher Quality and Accountability Mandates: The Perspective of School Administrators and Classroom Teachers

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools and subject areas; and (4) retaining qualified teachers over time. This paper draws on interview and focus-group data from multilevel case studies of teacher policy to better understand how principals and teachers function in the current teacher policy context. It is part of a broader research effort to explore practitioner perspectives on the array of policies and practices aimed at enhancing teacher quality across all levels of the education system in three states: Maryland, Connecticut, and New York. In the article, we consider the implications of our findings for salient policy concerns, including the highly qualified teacher provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The Teacher Educator's Role in Enhancing Teacher Quality

Common sense suggests a good teacher matters. Personal experiences with inspirational and challenging teachers reinforce this notion. Research has also shown some teachers have a more significant impact on student achievement than others (McAffrey, D.R., Lockwood, J.R., Koretz, D.L., & Hamilton, L.S., 2003; Rivkin, Haushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004). Teacher quality is seen as a key policy lever to narrow achievement gaps that exist along racial and economic lines. Ensuring the quality profile of the teacher workforce is crucial to extend the democratic mission of public schooling to an unprecedented number of students who are more diverse than at any point in US history. Two recent publications, timed to go with the 2008 legislative sessions, underscore the importance of the teacher quality movement as part of the larger educational reform conversation. Education Week's Quality Counts 2008: Tapping into Teaching issue (Education Week, Jan. 10, 2008) and the National Council for Teacher Quality's (NCTQ) state-by-state Teacher Policy Yearbook (NCTQ, 2007) evaluate state policies and performance in enhancing teacher quality. These reports, aimed at policy makers, describe the teaching profession from 30,000 above ground. To those whose daily work is preparing quality teachers, the terms of the debate feel distant and removed. And, they are. Teacher preparation, particularly university-based teacher preparation, is seen as part of the problem and to be circumvented. Key players shaping the policy debate and funding initiatives are working from outside Schools of Education, and often outside universities altogether. In effect teacher educators have been marginalized and are taking part in their own marginalization. The activity and urgency around teacher quality challenge us to ask this central question: What is the teacher educator's role in enhancing teacher quality? We argue that a more systemic framing is needed, one that examines teacher quality from 30,000 above and on the ground. First, we review definitions and arguments that have framed the movement thus far. DEFINING TEACHER QUALITY Defining teacher quality has been both problematic and elusive. Three terms heard in the discussions are highly qualified teacher, effective teacher, and good teacher. These focus on teacher characteristics or qualifications, teaching outcomes, and teaching practices, respectively. None adequately captures the complexity of a system that supports teacher quality. Legislatively, the federal law, No Child Left Behind (2001) defines highly qualified teacher as having the following qualifications: a bachelor's degree, a state teaching certification or a passing score on the state teacher licensing examination, and subject matter knowledge (Hess & Petrilli, 2006). Critiques of this definition emphasize the overly narrow focus on content preparation, the imprecision of measures for each qualification, and the variability across states to define when a teacher has met criteria. For example, given the wide variation in states' licensure requirements and pathways to certification, holding a state teaching license, though relatively easy to measure from state databases, does not say much about a teacher's knowledge or practice. Overall, the federal definition of highly qualified teacher sets a minimum base for teacher knowledge and focuses on input measures. The term effective teacher generally refers to teachers' ability to foster student achievement. There is a long tradition of research on teacher effectiveness, dating back to the 1960s and 70s (Shulman, 1986). Much of this research examined specific teaching practices (e.g., teachers' questioning strategies) and correlated them with student learning gains. More recent and sophisticated extensions of this line of research include work done by Just for the Kids (http://www .just4kids.org/en/) or by Marzano and colleagues at the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (Marzano, R. …

What Is the Problem? The Challenge of Providing Effective Teachers for All Children

Richard Murnane and Jennifer Steele argue that if the United States is to equip its young people with the skills essential in the new economy, high-quality teachers are more important than ever. In recent years, the demand for effective teachers has increased as enrollments have risen, class sizes have fallen, and a large share of the teacher workforce has begun to retire. Women and minorities have more career options than ever before, making it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the many effective teachers who are needed. Moreover, schools are limited in their ability to identify and reward the most effective teachers. Perhaps the most urgent problem facing American education, say Murnane and Steele, is the unequal distribution of high-quality teachers. Poor children and children of color are disproportionately assigned to teachers with the least preparation and the weakest academic backgrounds. Teacher turnover is high in schools that serve large shares of poor or nonwhite students because the work is difficult, and the teachers who undertake it are often the least equipped to succeed. Murnane and Steele point out that in response to these challenges, policymakers have proposed a variety of policy instruments to increase the supply of effective teachers and distribute those teachers more equitably across schools. Such proposals include across-the-board pay increases, more flexible pay structures such as pay-for-performance, and reduced restrictions on who is allowed to teach. Several of these proposals are already being implemented, but their effectiveness remains largely unknown. To measure how well these policies attract effective teachers to the profession and to the schools that need them most, rigorous evaluations are essential. Murnane and Steele also note that policymakers may benefit from looking beyond U.S. borders to understand how teacher labor markets work in other countries. Although policies rooted in one nation's culture cannot be easily and quickly transplanted into another, it is important to understand what challenges other countries face, what policies they are using, and how well those policies are working to enhance teacher quality and improve student achievement.

The Challenges of Staffing Urban Schools with Effective Teachers

Brian Jacob examines challenges faced by urban districts in staffing their schools with effective teachers. He emphasizes that the problem is far from uniform. Teacher shortages are more severe in certain subjects and grades than others, and differ dramatically from one school to another. The Chicago public schools, for example, regularly receive roughly ten applicants for each teaching position. But many applicants are interested in specific schools, and district officials struggle to find candidates for highly impoverished schools. Urban districts' difficulty in attracting and hiring teachers, says Jacob, means that urban teachers are less highly qualified than their suburban counterparts with respect to characteristics such as experience, educational background, and teaching certification. But they may not thus be less effective teachers. Jacob cites recent studies that have found that many teacher characteristics bear surprisingly little relationship to student outcomes. Policies to enhance teacher quality must thus be evaluated in terms of their effect on student achievement, not in terms of conventional teacher characteristics. Jacob then discusses how supply and demand contribute to urban teacher shortages. Supply factors involve wages, working conditions, and geographic proximity between teacher candidates and schools. Urban districts have tried various strategies to increase the supply of teacher candidates (including salary increases and targeted bonuses) and to improve retention rates (including mentoring programs). But there is little rigorous research evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies. Demand also has a role in urban teacher shortages. Administrators in urban schools may not recognize or value high-quality teachers. Human resource departments restrict district officials from making job offers until late in the hiring season, after many candidates have accepted positions elsewhere. Jacob argues that urban districts must improve hiring practices and also reevaluate policies for teacher tenure so that ineffective teachers can be dismissed.

Equity and Effectiveness: Challenge and Promise in a Tale of Two Schools and a Partnership

This article addresses the question of what is entailed in enhancing teacher quality and student achievement through university-school partnership. It compares two different secondary schools working in partnership with Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. University Park Campus School (UPCS) is a small, neighborhood-based school that spans grades 7–12 and serves 215 students. South High School is a large comprehensive high school, with grades 9–12, and 1500 students. UPCS has attained an exceptional level of effectiveness, as reflected in student achievement; all students have passed the statewide test on their first try, with most scoring in the top two performance categories (“proficient” and “advanced”), and qualified for postsecondary education. In contrast, South High, committed to a major restructuring initiative, marks improvement more slowly and incrementally. While scale looms large as a factor in explaining the effectiveness of each school (an instrumental factor), the story of the differences between the two schools is more complex. The comparison focuses on the most salient dimensions in an effort to understand critical cultural dimensions of effectiveness.

A Systemic Approach to Enhancing Teacher Quality

All those responsible for the preparation of teachers agree that having a highly qualified teacher in every classroom is essential to student academic achievement. The research of the past decade by William Sanders and others clearly demonstrates the significance of the teacher in fostering student growth and academic achievement. What researchers and practitioners are having difficulty agreeing on is the essential characteristics of the teachers who create value-added learning and the ways in which professional development experiences need to be structured in order to foster and develop those critical teacher characteristics. The Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership represents one state's approach to better understand the relationship between teacher behaviors and student achievement and how a wide variety of stakeholders are collaborating to create a more vital educational system for P-12 students.

Factors affecting the impact of professional development programs on teachers' knowledge, practice, student outcomes & efficacy.

This report examines effects of structural and process features of professional development programs on teachers' knowledge, practice and efficacy. It is based on four recent (2002-2003) studies undertaken through the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme, designed to enhance teacher quality. The total data set for the survey study includes 3,250 teachers who had participated in eighty individual professional development1 activities within these studies. Teachers were surveyed at least three months after participating in an activity, which provided them with the opportunity to gauge the impact of programs on their practice. To investigate factors affecting impact, a theoretical model was developed based on recent research into the characteristics of effective professional development and tested using blockwise regression analysis. The model included contextual factors (e.g., school support), structural features of programs (e.g. ,length), process features (e.g., emphasis on content; active learning; examination of student work; feedback; follow-up), a mediating variable (level of professional community generated), and four outcome measures (knowledge; practice; student learning and efficacy). Consistent significant direct effects were found across the four studies for the impact of content focus, active learning, and follow-up on knowledge and professional community. Feedback was rarely incorporated into program design. Impact on efficacy was strongly related to the perceived impact of activities on teachers' practice and student learning outcomes.

School-Based Supervision at a Private Turkish School: A Model for Improving Teacher Evaluation

All aspects of work, and even play, require an allusive entity called supervision. Supervision models vary from loosely organized structures to strict activity overview. The ‘instructional supervisory role’ may be performed by one or several individuals from within or without the school, all working to assist school personnel improve their performance (for example, employees from the National Inspection System). As in other countries, Turkey has private and state schools. Both are subject to regular inspection by a centralized National Inspection System. However, in order to overcome shortfalls of the National Inspection System, private schools have had to establish internal teacher evaluation programs. The purpose of this paper is to assess current school-based supervision practices in one private school. It is intended to provide a school-based supervision model through which private secondary schools may improve their performance, accountability, and enhance teacher quality.

State Actions to Improve the Teaching Profession: What Are the Implications for Teacher Training?

Palaich describes the complexity asso ciated with enhancing teacher quality and teacher development. No single reform plan, argues the author, will suffice. The first steps toward enhancing teacher quality include the precise iden tification of the school conditions that must be changed to enable teacher growth and the delineation of goals that teacher incentive systems are structured to achieve. Those goals are identified as: (a) improving teaching and learning, (b) improving the school as an organization, (c) changing certain characteristics of the teacher work force, and (d) strengthen ing community confidence in the school.