Professionalizing teachers: the wider policy context

Péter Radó

DirectorCenter for Educational Policy Analysis, Hungary

OPEK

Questions to be addressed

• Who determines expectations towards teachers?

• What are the expectations towards teachers?

• What makes a teacher a learner?

• What makes a school a learning organization?

• How can policy promote individual and organizational learning?

Who determines expectations? • Expectations of the employers (teachers as employees on the

labor market) – does not work:• Teachers are public employees, narrow HR management competencies

of directors• Insufficient information on the quality of the work of teachers

•Anticipation of changes within and outside education systems• Education systems are isolated, mechanisms of building on anticipated

changes in the economic, technological and social emvironment of schools are weak• Weak flexibility for adjusting to the changes in the environment (school

autonomy, empowerment)•International references

• Access to information produced by research and evaluation elsewhere• Vision substitutes (country models or the international mainstream)

Consequence: educational policy is captured by academic experts and the interest of the (initial and INSET) training providers

Expectations towards teachers: a sample list• Ability to interpret national and organizational goals• Ability to use the whole repertoire of differentiated teaching

(formative assessment, multiple ways of organizing learning in the classroom, etc.)• Awareness of own biases and stereotyped expectations, inclusive behavior and teaching• Ability to construct the content of learning in a multicultural

manner• Ability to compensate for personal and socio-cultural disadvantages• Ability to use ICT and to incorporate them into teaching strategies• Ability to cross subject and educational level borders• Ability to co-operate with others within and outside of the

school

Making the teachers learnersThe conditions of successful learning:• Motivation to learn

• Are teachers convinced about the validity and relevance of expectations?• Is success made visible?• Is learning an additional burden?

• Individual return of learning• Salary differentiation – what might be the basis for differentiation?

• Access to information• Information on performance• Information on learning opportunities• Information that support formal, informal and non-formal learning

• Access to learning opportunities• Supply driven and demand driven training systems• Capacity building policies of schools

• The culture of learning – the learning friendly environmentConclusion: bigger emphasis on the organizational environment, i.e. on schools

Making the schools learning organizations

Learning organization: „an organization and individuals within it with the capacity to create results that matter” (P.M. Senge) = schools that are able to improve students’ learning

• Leadership and management – „Schools are not manageable professional bureaucracies” (H. Mintzberg)

• Self-evaluation and internal school development cycles with strong focus on students’ learning („PDCA”)

• Connecting organizational processes with internal development (co-operation instead of rituals, quality management)

• Connecting individual capacity building with organizational goals

• Teachers treated as accountable professional and not as „missioners” – human resource management

What can educational policy do?The external conditions of school level change:• Setting easily interpreted goals (curriculum targets, measurable

achievement standards, promoting the chain of interpretation)• Regulation that incite and enforce the self-development effort

of schools• Empowerment, professional, organizational and financial autonomy of schools• Deregulation, resistance to „problem solving” by regulation

• Appropriate professional support services• Targeting schools and not individual teachers, adjusting supply to demand• Targeting students’ learning, not only teaching

• Accountability system: external measurement and evaluation of the extent to which goals are met, information feed-back

• Targeted developmental intervention in underachieving schools