How Teaching Quality Is Defined Around the World

• In Event: Investigating Teacher Quality Around the World: A Teacher-Education Perspective

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: Drawn from a recent international study of how systems develop teaching quality, this paper describes and compares the goals and criteria used to develop and evaluate teaching quality in a number of jurisdictions around the world: Australia (with a focus on New South Wales and Victoria), Canada (with a focus on Ontario and Alberta), China (with a focus on Shanghai), Finland, Singapore, and the United States. Commonalities and distinctions will be illuminated about the standards that have been developed to guide pre-service and in-service professional learning and appraisal.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: The study is informed by a comparative international framework that recognizes the contextual nature of education policy and practice and acknowledges the historical, social, economic, and political sources of educational system designs. That contextually informed framework will be brought to bear on the analysis of the standards and tools for evaluating teaching that jurisdictions have developed.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: The research method is a set of nested case studies of jurisdictions and their policies and practices conducted by researchers from the US in partnership with scholars in each jurisdiction.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: The study draws upon data from policy documents (articulations of state or national standards and criteria for teacher preparation and evaluation; protocols, tools, and processes for articulating and assessing candidate competencies); as well as interviews with teachers, teacher candidates, teacher preparation faculty, school administrators, education organization leaders, and policymakers.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions: The results show many commonalities in conceptions of teaching quality and ways of looking at teaching, but also some noticeable distinctions on the extent to which elements like content knowledge and approaches to teaching content; responsibility for students’ social, emotional, and moral development; and specific teaching strategies and goals are emphasized and examined, and in the ways that the jurisdictions seek to develop these capacities.

Scholarly significance of the study or work: Comparative studies can inform the efforts of governments, professional associations, and researchers around the world who are working to understand and develop thoughtful and effective teaching. Understanding how different jurisdictions conceptualize and assess teaching is useful information to inform these efforts.

Author

• Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute