A challenge for the system: educating and retaining effective teachers for diverse classrooms

Increasing diversity in the classroom is taking place against the background of a changing role for teachers. Teachers Matter (OECD , 2005) breaks this down to different levels and provides insight into how teacher roles that have been changing over time, on the:

• Individual student level: respond to individual learning needs, identify strengths and weaknesses of their students, and adapt their curricula and teaching in response to the increasing use and reliance
• on standardised tests. 
• Classroom level: deal with multicultural learning environments and apply cultural knowledge of different groups of students.
• School level: develop and exercise management and leadership skills, become more interactive and collaborate with other teachers in order to plan and monitor school-level progress.
• More broadly: taking the initiative to engage parents and the rest of the community in their practices and classrooms.

Although most teachers perform some of the roles outlined above, there is a growing expectation that more and more of their classroom time will focus on practices and exercises consistent with these new roles. Viewing students as active participants in the learning process and personalising teaching and assessment to better suit individual (and multicultural) student needs require time and space to engage in these practices, as well as the support and training to learn them. Yet teachers seem to view these changes positively, reporting
that they prefer a “constructivist” view of teaching (in which students are active participants in the process of acquiring knowledge) to a “direct transmission” view of student learning (which implies that a teachers’ role
is to communicate knowledge in a clear and structured way, to give students clear and resolvable problems, and to ensure calm and concentration in the classroom) (OECD , 2009b). This suggests that teachers are, at least in theory, prepared and able to offer the kinds of personalised instructional capacities that active learners require.

However, reporting on a teaching belief is not the same thing as reporting on a teaching practice. Indeed, when teachers report on their teaching practices, i.e. what they actually do in the classroom, they report using practices that are more consistent with a direct transmission approach (e.g. explicitly stating learning goals, summarising earlier lessons and reviewing homework) than practices that would be more consistent with a constructivist view of teaching (working in small groups, encouraging student self-evaluation and student participation in classroom planning, making a product or debating arguments) (OECD , 2009b).

There is thus a disconnect between teachers’ preferred beliefs and their expressed practices. Although the data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS ) do not allow us to explore this link further, it is likely that one of the contributing factors is the time and focused attention required to engage in constructivist activities. There is also another, more subtle force likely to be at work however: the difficulty of changing behaviour once one has been trained or exposed to one type of model. Most teachers and teacher educators have had a lifetime of exposure to structured practices in teaching, as students, student teachers and teachers. In making teaching with constructivist patterns a part of the everyday routine, there is
thus a need to break with previous learning, modelling and behaviour.

Breaking patterns and changing behaviour requires ongoing training and preparation on the teachers’ part as well as support and capacity building from school authorities. How well are teacher’s development needs being met in this domain? TALIS reveals that approximately 55% of teachers feel that they need more professional development than they have received in the previous 18 months (OECD , 2009b). When asked why they did not take part in development activities, the most commonly cited reasons were “conflict with work schedule” (47%) and “no suitable professional development” (42%).

There is thus much room for improvement both in terms of better targeting types of professional development that reflect teachers’ needs, and in terms of seeking ways to provide more flexible timing and delivery of training opportunities.

In order to address these issues, a key element is strengthening the evaluation, feedback and appraisal in the system to better identify strengths and weaknesses in teaching practice. Given that over 75% of teachers participating in TALIS reported that their appraisal and feedback was helpful in developing their work as teachers and that 63% also agreed that the appraisal and feedback they receive was a fair and just assessment of their work, there is room to use this process to effectively address training and development
needs. Overall, there is a need for more research in this area. Despite work on teacher perception and the demographic shifts affecting classroom composition, we do not yet have clear answers to essential questions such as: what are the best ways to prepare teachers to deal with highly diverse classrooms while at the same time improving students’ learning achievements? And, what education and training programmes for teachers have been demonstrated to be most effective?
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