National priorities and international evidence
“... ensuring that teachers are capable of improving student learning - and that school leaders are able to help them do so - is perhaps the most significant step [policy makers] can take to raise student achievement.” (Darling-Hammond&Rothman et al, 2011, p.1).
The effectiveness of teacher preparation and professional learning has been identified as one of the cornerstones of a good education system and of high quality student learning. For many countries it has become the priority for developing a high quality education system. A summary of studies of school and student achievement factors points out:
“In brief: better-funded school districts, schools within those districts, and classrooms within those schools seem to be able to attract teachers with higher levels of education, more experience, and higher scores on competency tests; and these teachers, in turn, help to generate better achievement scores among students.” (Biddle&Berliner, 2002, p.23),
A growing body of international evidence (CERI, 2011; Darling-Hammond&Rothman et al., 2011;
Mourshed et al., 2010) has identified the key issues for teacher quality as:
• the recruitment of qualified individuals into the profession;
• their preparation and induction;
• their professional learning and development;
• their evaluation and career development;
• their retention.
The Mourshed et al. study identified building the technical skills of teachers and principals, often through group or cascaded training, as one of the most effective six key interventions policy makers can use (Mourshed, eds. 2010, p.28).
ACTIONS ALREADY TAKEN OR ABOUT TO BE TAKEN
• Many of the issues related to teacher effectiveness set out above have been identified by those working with and within Kazakhstan.25 Currently, several actions are being undertaken, such as: a reform led by the MES working with NU to make changes in the pedagogical institutes’ programmes; a national system of professional development including the Centers of Excellence programme; ORLEU has become one organisation and has a national system of Continuing Professional Development (CPD); developments in teacher pay linked to the Centers of Excellence programme; and developments in NIS in the systems of attestation, pay and career progression.
MATTERS THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED
Some progress has been made but teacher development remains a central priority in improving the quality of education in Kazakhstan.
“It’s a system thing, not a single thing.” (Mourshed et al., 2010)
There needs to be a systemic approach to integrate the different elements of teacher preparation and development; this requires co-ordination and integration of these elements that need to be linked:
recruitment; preparation; induction; continuous learning; career development. Presently, this is not the case in Kazakhstan. The tables in Appendix N on Teacher Characteristics show that:
• over 50% of teachers have between 9 and 20 years of experience with the majority having over 20 years of experience;
• the majority have qualifications in the first and second category;
• the majority are over 30 years of age;
• 87.9% have completed higher education;
• the majority are female (80.2%).
Get it right at the start
There are serious issues regarding the recruitment and selection of high quality candidates for teaching in Kazakhstan. Motivation and commitment to teaching are key factors in preparing good teachers and at the moment there is no way of using these factors as selection criteria. Table 2 compares international best practice with the situation in Kazakhstan and other matters related to teacher effectiveness.
25 Examples include speeches by the Minister of Education and Science in Astana on May 24, 2011; on 31 January, 2013; on 26 March, 2013 and the UNESCO report.
Table 2 Comparing international best practice with the situation in Kazakhstan
International best practices Situation in Kazakhstan Entry into teacher education programme
is extremely selective and it focuses upon motivation, commitment and capability
Entry into teacher education programme is regulated by UNT
Screen candidates to ensure that their attitudes are in line with that which make teachers effective (Finland uses a two stage process: 1) first looks for top honours, and 2) then examines students’ understanding of teaching)
There is no screening of candidates
Requirement to earn at least a Master’s degree in education, including the primary grades
There is no requirement to earn a Master’s degree.
Primary teachers can graduate from VET.
Possibility to pursue part-time Master’s degree and Ph.D.
Master’s degree and Ph.D. students are perceived as overqualified specialists for school teaching No motivation to earn part-time Master’s or Ph.D.
Make teaching attractive and high status profession
Least attractive profession and not high status
Teacher annual salary (USD 41 000 in Finland; USD 37 000-90 000 in Ontario)
Average annual teacher salary - USD 3 360
Significant autonomy makes a difference, high trust in teacher’s judgment and assessment
Very little autonomy. Centrally prescribed curriculum and assessment.
Continuous feedback from the principal and other school faculty members
High control and regulation of teachers’ practice.
Highly desirable teaching conditions (teacher’s instruction hours are short, more time for planning, meeting with students and other teachers, bestows annual awards for excellent teachers, recognition of teacher research work, opportunity to do additional qualification programmes)
The teaching load (stavka in Russian) system pays teachers by the teaching hour and compensates them additionally for grading student notebooks and other pedagogical and non-pedagogical tasks. The current salary structure perpetuates the belief that teachers should be compensated for everything additionally, including for other pedagogical tasks. This applies to those in pedagogic institutes too.
Career ladder programme provides opportunities to grow professionally and take on leadership responsibilities, based on demonstration of competence.
There is a disjunction between the desired changes in pedagogy and schools and the preparation and development of teachers. The radical reform of initial teacher education needs to be undertaken urgently, not merely by adjusting curriculum, since it is causing other systems of teacher learning, e.g.
the continuous professional development system of ORLEU, to be engaged in constant compensation.
Even though developments are currently underway, there is still a need for:
• developing large scale faculty in the pedagogical institutes;
• collaborating more closely between university-based teacher educators and schools including the involvement of teachers in programme and curriculum development;
• piloting and planning changes on a realistic and integrated time scale;
• aligning the reforms in schools to the reform of teacher education
The growing gap between the desired innovation and the preparation and support of teachers is a priority problem that needs to be addressed. A UNICEF study (UNICEF, 2011b) of the region found that the disparity between the stagnant and the progressive has led to an innovation gap between pre-service education and in-service training over the last several years.” The change in initial teacher education needs to be a sympathetic and profound reform. The pedagogical institutes seem to be isolated and separate from other systems. There needs to be a programme for reforming and supporting teacher educators. This is true for all areas of education and there is a need to think of early years professionals as educators alongside the other educators in the system.
Importance of continual learning and professional development throughout the teacher’s career path
ORLEU has described how it is working towards a “new paradigm” of learning and practice.
This should be deeply understood and embedded. There is a need to plan for “mindset” change and growth, and to have a clear accompanying plan for how to accommodate change and work on an understanding of the desired changes in pedagogy and learning. Shulman (Shulman&Shulman, 2004) has argued that the features of accomplished teacher development, and thus of teacher learning, are:
vision, motivation, understanding, practice, reflection, and community.
This suggests that teacher learning needs to be:
• frequent, and the current system of professional development every three to five years seems unfit for purpose;
• based on a real needs assessment;
• close to practice, and this suggests much more school-based professional development and learning and the development of the conditions for teacher learning in schools;
• supported by conditions for teacher learning in schools, so that every school can be a learning school;
• based upon a clear view of teacher and pupil learning;
• supported by internal and external processes of learning.
The importance of leadership
• There needs to be an explicit focus on leadership at all levels of the school within the professional development programme. The opening statement (cited earlier) by Darling- Hammond & Rothman (Darling-Hammond&Rothman et al, 2011) underlines how important senior managers in schools are to effective reform and development preparation and leadership education.
The need to have a fit between learning, career development and other processes
Career development and attestation are also issues. All phases and aspects of teachers’ career development need to be linked to conditions to promote collaborative learning and development of practice. This requires an assessment of the reward, review and appraisal systems and for these systems to be connected to teacher growth and learning, creating a systemic synergy. Appendix M contains a description of the current attestation system.
The current system of attestation seems to run counter to these goals. Clear standards are needed that fit a distinct vision of the teacher, the school and professional learning to feed into policy. NIS is developing such standards and processes. Subject to these processes and standards being found helpful, they will be rolled out or at least evaluated. There are certain models of teacher promotion, e.g. payment by results, that would run counter to the aims since they contain a narrow view of student achievement – see the section on curriculum for a wider discussion of this. Payment by results will also undermine the work towards the wider aims of education for democracy and independence (Meyer&Benavot, 2013, p.12). Providing only financial reward runs counter to the desire to develop teachers as highly functioning professionals, with an emphasis on wide learning goals and outcomes in the curriculum. The characteristics of good teacher development as demonstrated in Table 2 need to be supported through the surrounding systems of reward and review. Appraisal systems need to be in place to examine teachers’ performance and this needs to be more complex than a payment by results system with very narrow measures of performance.