Global Teaching InSights: Findings from the OECD’s Video Study of Teaching

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Teachers at the intersection of societal aspirations, policy priorities, and everyday realities: Exploring classroom practice across contexts

Proposal

Around the world, researchers, policy-makers, parents and children all agree that teachers matter for student outcomes. However, we are only beginning to understand what makes a difference in terms of quality teaching. By directly observing teaching in the classroom, the “OECD Global Teaching InSights: A video study of teaching” looked into classroom management, social-emotional support and instructional practices in the classroom, as well as students’ opportunities to learn the content specified in the curricula and how all of these aspects of teaching related to student learning and student non-cognitive outcomes.

The presentation at CIES 2022 will provide an overall picture of the findings on teaching quality as well as highlight the potential research use of the study for researchers interested in investigating teaching and learning across countries, video analysis, mathematics education, and comparative studies.

The Study has a unique methodology. To obtain direct evidence from the classroom, about 700 teachers and 17 500 students from eight countries and economies were videotaped in two lessons from the unit of quadratic equations in secondary school Mathematics. The teaching materials were also collected, and both were coded following common and standardised protocols. Before and after the unit, teachers and students filled out questionnaires on their beliefs, practices and perspectives, and students also took tests to measure their learning gains.

Classrooms tended to be well managed and organised. The average classroom had very well-organised and efficient routines in place, teachers sometimes or frequently engaged in monitoring student behaviour, and disruptions were handled them quickly and effectively. Whole class instruction (frontal teaching) was observed in over 88% of lesson segments, while student collaboration – whether in pairs or in small groups of three or more students – occurred in less than 22% of lesson segments across participating countries/economies.

Students received some social-emotional support. Classrooms were respectful, with few negative interactions such as threats or degrading comments, but nine out of ten classrooms observed were not frequently warm and encouraging. When faced with students’ errors, teachers in most participating countries/economies tended to ignore or treat them superficially, thus students had fewer opportunities to develop persistence.

The instruction was of reasonable quality although large variation was observed within and across countries/economies. Regarding the detail and depth of classroom discourse, students were regularly asked to recall information and state answers, or to summarise and apply rules and procedures, but lengthier, deeper explanations were observed in less than 25% of lessons with the exception of Shanghai (China) and K-S-T (Japan). Feedback interactions between students and teachers were brief and focused on the accuracy of answers and procedures.

Finally, students had frequent opportunities to develop mathematical fluency through repetitive practice. However, while there were exceptions, teaching materials and classroom interactions did not require students to engage frequently in cognitively demanding activities (e.g., using multiple approaches to solve problems, articulating the rationale for mathematical procedures and processes). Also, students had limited opportunities to connect the mathematics to real world contexts or to explore patterns in the mathematics.

Author

• Anna . Pons, OECD