Teacher quality is not that glossy a picture!
Orlando Chaves
Universidad del Valle
In Colombia, the legal
framework for teaching is constituted by
the Constitución Política (1991), the Ley
General de Educación (Ley 115 de 1994), the Ley de Educación Superior (Ley 30
de 1992), the Decreto 0709 (issued 17 April 1996, setting the rules for the
programs for teacher education and establishing the conditions for their
professional betterment), the Decreto 3012, (issued 19 December 1997, ruling
the organization and work of the Escuelas Normales Superiores), and the Decreto
272, (issued 11 February 1998, establishing the requirements for creation and
work of the undergraduate and graduate education programs in all colleges, and
the titles, among other aspects). The
corresponding teacher profile ascertains that, at the moment of graduating,
teachers should master:
·
Education
and teaching problems that will be object of their intervention
·
The
theories that explain and help teachers understand critically those problems,
as well as those theories that allow them comprehend their students and
themselves.
·
The
knowledge with which they will be educating others and the didactic competences
inherent in the education activity.
·
The
sources of reality and criteria that contextualize the teaching profession in
the local, national and international situation, with a good mastery of history
and logic, linked with the comprehension and construction of pedagogic
theories, which constitute the knowledge that supports their profession and
grants their intellectual identity.
·
All
the criteria and norms that control their profession and their ethic and
responsible practice.
The teachers’
profiles for the teachers in all Ibero-American countries (OEI, 2004) go quite
alike.
alike.
According to the
NCES
Teacher quality is a complex phenomenon, and there is
little consensus on what it is or how to measure it. For example, definitions range from those
that focus on what should be taught and how knowledge should be imparted to the
kinds of knowledge and training teachers should possess. There are, however,
two broad elements that most observers agree characterize teacher quality: (1)
teacher preparation and qualifications, and (2) teaching practices. (2009, p.
3).
Some of the
usual aspects considered in the usual profiles and literature about teacher
quality are: (1) Knowledge: a teacher must know the subject matter he
teaches; this knowledge should be updated and deepened to an epistemological
level and should include a historical perspective; this knowledge should also
include the possibility of inter- and trans-disciplinarity. As well, a teacher must know how to teach;
this includes knowledge about pedagogy, didactics, methods, methodology, use
and design of resources and materials. Besides
that, a teacher must know the norms that rule his job. Let’s concede, knowledge
is a must for teachers; you cannot teach something you don’t know well. However, you never know everything about any
subject, especially in these ever faster changing times. The teaching practice as daily in most
institutions is hard and it does not leave much time for things like
epistemology, no matter how desirable they can be. (2) Passion, vocation, professionalism,
professional identity, positive attitude, whatever the term for the attitudinal
component that complements the cognitive or knowledge element. Of
course, it is better if a teacher is engaged; however, you cannot be like that
all the time: if you’re sick, tired, disappointed, or simply too busy your
attitude will change. (3) Effectiveness
in terms of the students’ learning measured as their success in exams. We have to admit that the students must learn
from the teacher; nevertheless, we must also acknowledge that, first, learning
is more up to the student than to the teacher, and, second, learning is not
completely the product of teaching alone; it also takes conditions –work,
school, teachers’, students’ and parents’ conditions- like salary, time, tools,
students’ willingness, family/parents support, institutional support, sound
policies… In short, these real teaching-learning conditions are something that
those lists of teachers’ quality aspects almost never take into account. Let’s see some real teachers and let’s
consider quality in their cases.
In a Colombian
rural school, a primary school teacher, 60, 2 years away from retirement tries
hard to teach English as a foreign language. This normalista,
ranked 14 in the ‘escalafón’ after a career of over 30 years, is now
short-sighted and suffers from arteriosclerosis, which makes it difficult for
her to move around. She doesn’t speak
English, but she has to teach it; it’s in the law. She was trained to teach all subjects for kids
in the primary level. She is not a
‘licenciada’ in English, but she has had to teach English since recently; it’s
the law. So, she teaches one hour of
English per week to her third grade class of 38 girls and boys of strata 1 and
2 in a public school in the ‘laderas’ of Cali. She teaches lists of words regarding topics
like colors, parts of the body, parts of the house, animals, fruits, and the
like. She translates and uses
“figurative” pronunciation (writing in parentheses the way the word is
pronounced, no phonetic symbols). She
does what she can; quality, however, cannot be adequate enough and she herself
is aware of this fact. That is her
practice, driven by law imposition, pedagogical theory aside. In the light of
theory, on the one side, many studies have shown the close link between teacher
quality and students’ achievement (Hanushek, et al, 1998; Darling-Hammond,
2000; Goe, 2007, 2008). On the opposite side, other studies establish
a weak connection between teacher characteristics and students’ achievement
(Goldhaber, et al, 1999; Rivkin, et al, 2005; Buddin & Zammaro, 2009). In the middle, there are studies like the ones
by Goldhaber, et al, (1999) which include other factors altogether with the
teacher quality: school level, class size, time of exposure to the target
language, didactic aids, among many other. Teacher quality is a complex thing, hard to be
measured. In the case of the primary
teacher portrayed here, it is evident that she cannot offer much to her
students due to her own lacks. However,
it is not her fault to be forced by the law to teach something she is not
prepared for, especially if the state does not offer conditions to her to
adequately comply with the rule that makes it compulsory for her to teach a
foreign language she does not master. Certainly,
any of us, teachers, will lack quality if we have to teach a subject we don’t
know. Conditions beyond the reach of the teacher
himself can deeply affect his quality. In this particular case, the legal frame
happens to be a component of teaching quality.
In a second
case, in a Colombian city, an English teacher who is (still)
“grammar-translation” centered works in a public secondary school. He is in his early fifties and has been
teaching for over twenty years. He
started teaching almost immediately after graduating at the age of
twenty-seven. He initially taught in
private schools and in some language institutes. He is now a tenure teacher in a public school.
He has been in this high school for more
than ten years. He teaches the “higher”
grades (9, 10, and 11) while other colleagues take the “lower” grades (6, 7,
and 8). He has a steady view (that he
was taught at college) about what has to be taught: language is grammar-based. Thus, the central content for him is verbal
tenses. Syllabi roughly go like this: to
be and present (affirmative, interrogative and negative) for sixth grade, past
and future (affirmative, interrogative and negative) for seventh, continuous
tenses (affirmative, interrogative and negative) for eight, perfect tenses
(affirmative, interrogative and negative) for ninth, conditional and passive
voice for tenth and eleventh. He is
ranked in category 13, the one before the top, and enjoys stability and a good
salary. He climbed the rank
(‘escalafon’) ladder with many teacher training courses in areas other than
English for the simple reasons that, first, it was not compulsory and, second,
English trainers was not common in those times. He cut contact with his college soon after
graduating and that college still has no tracking policies regarding graduated
students. So he just kept the linguistic
and teaching perspectives he learnt when he studied at college. He did not update, right; but it was not only
his own fault; there were not many chances to do it. Quality considered, it might be plainly said
that his is not the best for current times. Quality has also to do with the professional
life cycle (Fessler, 1985; Steffy, 1989, 2001;
Huberman, 1989, 2001; Woodward, 2010), with experience (Nye, et al, 2004;
Clotfelter, et al, March 2007, October 2007; Harris and Sass, 2007), and with
content-area knowledge (Hill, et al, 2005; Harris and Sass, 2007; Goldhaber and
Brewer, 1999; Clotfelter, et al, March 2007, October 2007). It can be said that what is considered
appropriate now won’t be so in the future, especially in these ever faster
changing times. In the case of this
secondary school English teacher, his teaching and linguistic views have worn
outdated, you can say that again, but they have been accepted in all the
schools he has worked in and they are accepted in the school he is currently
teaching, too! This tells us that
teacher quality must be seen not only as a purely personal issue; institutional
factors affect it deeply, as well.
Let’s see a
third case, that of a tertiary level professor in a foreign languages B.A. /
B.Ed. program, also in Colombia. He
graduated to be a foreign languages teacher and he took “extra” language
courses after graduating, since he realized he didn’t have the necessary
proficiency to be admitted into an elite institution. However, he couldn’t get into any of them,
because they required experience he didn’t have yet. He attended an Education Ministry’s call
(‘concurso’) for public teachers and was appointed in a rural school. He had to work with “Escuela Nueva” despite
not having been trained to teach in the primary level. After a couple of years, his petition of being
appointed to an urban school was accepted. He worked for a few years in the public school
until the Secretary of Education tried to move him back to the rural area in
order to accommodate in his place a friend of his, a philosophy teacher. Well, it was a small town and corrupt politics
is also well rooted in local education administration… So, he quit in protest. He founded a private institute and worked in
it for several years. During these years
he also taught as a part time teacher in several universities. Eventually, he became a tenure teacher in one
of them. He has taught not only English
as a foreign language but also course of Applied Linguistics, Didactics,
Pedagogy, Research, Linguistics, Practicum, and some other subjects of the
trade. Of course, he learnt a lot from
every course he taught. He pursued
graduate studies in his area, as well. Clearly,
this is the story of a teacher of whom you can predicate good quality, which
can be certified by his publications, research and teaching career. Unlike the primary and secondary teachers
mentioned above, this teacher has moved from tough situations opposing his
development to a context that clearly favors and fosters his professional
growth. It might be said that adversity
played some role in taking the best out of him. The fact is he brags of having a sound picture
of the whole scholastic system, due to his experience in all the education
levels both in rural and urban areas, in the private and public sectors (which
is true). He evolved from a grammar-translation
method to TPR to whole language to a functional-communicative approach with an
eclectic methodology of tasks-projects and collaborative and autonomous
learning with meta-cognitive components…
The fact is also that he is in a
professional milieu in which quality is a daily parameter, a must.
In conclusion, when speaking
of teacher quality, just picturing beautiful images of what we should be is not
adequate or fair. Even the
highly-qualified teacher rules have generally been criticized for having few
effects overall on teacher practices (Keller, 2007). A sound comprehension of the real teaching and
learning conditions in real schools with real students is necessary to
establish a sensible and fair theory of what teacher quality means and what
should and can be done to really improve it. The three illustrative cases depicted above
describe real teachers in genuine situations like teacher qualifications,,
experience, tenure, legal framework, school climate, students demographics,
class size, among others that constitute actual factors affecting teacher, and
teaching quality. Idealism and
romanticism in theory about teacher quality should be toned down with a good
dosage of realism if we are to really understand teachers´ beliefs and
practices and further intervene in them.
References
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(2009). Teacher Qualifications and Student Achievement in Urban Elementary
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