This is the ninth part in a series I’ve been writing over the past two weeks about the report, How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, which is an analysis of the world’s school systems to find out why some schools succeed and others do not.
Today, my focus is on the section of the report that explains how top-performing school systems develop teachers into effective instructors by using four approaches: 1) building practical skills during the initial training, 2) placing coaches in schools to support teachers, 3) selecting and developing effective instructional leaders, and 4) enabling teachers to learn from each other.
1) Building practical skills during the initial training:
Several high-performing and improving systems have moved their initial period of training from the lecture theater to the classroom.
In Japan, teachers spend up to two days a week in one-on-one coaching in their classrooms during their first year of training.
2) Placing coaches in schools to support teachers:
Expert teachers are sent into the classroom to observe and provide one-on-one coaching in terms of feedback, modelling better instruction, and in helping teachers to reflect upon their own practice.
3) Selecting and developing effective instructional leaders:
Coaching is effective as an intervention, but it can become even more so once schools have developed the culture of coaching and development that will sustain it. To achieve this goal, certain school systems have ensured that their school leaders are also ‘instructional leaders’. They have put in place mechanisms for selecting the best teachers to become principals, and then train them to become instructional leaders who then spend a good portion of their time coaching and mentoring their teachers. Principals in small schools in most of the top systems spent 80 percent of the school day focused on improving instruction and demonstrating a set of behaviors which build the capacity and motivation of their teachers to constantly improve their own instruction.
The research on school leadership suggests that “school leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on learning.”
4) Enabling teacher to learn from each other:
Teachers in most schools work alone. In a number of the top systems, particularly those in Japan and Finland, teachers work together, plan their lessons jointly, observe each others’ lessons, and help each other improve. These systems create a culture in their schools in which collaborative planning, reflection on instruction, and peer coaching are the norm and constant features of school life. This enables teachers to develop continuously.
Japan: The learning culture in its schools is centered on ‘lesson study’ (kenkyuu jugyou). Groups of teachers work together to refine individual lessons, jointly planning, executing and then evaluating different instructional strategies for achieving a specific learning objective. Groups of teachers visit each others classrooms to observe and understand the practice of other teachers. There is a strong emphasis on making sure that best practices are shared throughout the school: “When a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy.”