High-achieving nations treat their teachers as professionals. Professor Christopher Bezzina argues that true investment in our teachers has so far eluded the school improvement discussion

In the article entitled We should seriously consider increasing number of school days (TMIS, 3 July), Labour education spokesman Evarist Bartolo argues that “there should be coordination and convergence between the moments of negotiating working conditions and planning and implementing changes in the system. Education authorities often indulge in poetry and dreaming when it comes to educational reforms but then become very prosaic when it comes to working conditions for teachers …”. This is so true.

The crux of the matter is not extending the number of school days and hence school hours. Things could very much remain the same. What is critical is how teachers engage with each other and with their students. The central theme of our discussion should be investing in teachers to identify new learning opportunities for them. In this way we embrace the notion of schools as communities of learning. This implies that we start respecting teachers for what they truly are – professionals.

This article aims to show what other countries are doing to invest in their teachers. The evidence shows a strong correlation between investment in teacher learning and student achievement and hopefully this article will identify what has mainly been missing in our discussions on reforms and collective agreements.

Our nation’s belief that “all children [can] succeed” is built on the premise that with the right human, financial and physical investment and appropriate restructuring, this can happen. However, at the heart of this reform is that all children can learn if we believe that all teachers can learn.

I have always believed that we need to invest in our teachers, we need to nurture professional learning communities for teachers to remain enthusiastic and committed to the profession they feel so strongly about; we need to provide meaningful, challenging and engaging opportunities that respect the intelligence and goodwill of teachers.

The government’s commitment to participate in various international studies has helped us to appreciate, amongst other things, that all around the world, nations seeking to improve their education systems are investing in teacher learning as a major engine for academic success. The highest achieving countries on international measures such as PISA and TIMSS have been particularly intent on developing teachers’ expertise both before they enter the profession and throughout their careers.

I have had the opportunity to be involved in a number of studies through which we examined the professional development opportunities provided for teachers in several of these high-achieving nations, including Finland, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Australia. We have found that their learning systems have many features in common, including:

Time for professional learning and collaboration built into teachers’ working hours.

Ongoing professional development activities that are embedded in teachers’ contexts and focused on the content to be taught.

Extensive opportunities for both formal and informal in-service development.

Supportive induction programmes for new teachers.

School governance that involves teachers in decisions about curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment and professional development.

Let us review a number of approaches common in high-achieving nations and what directions Maltese policy needs to adopt to improve teacher learning and thus student achievement. In this context, negotiations between government and the Malta Union of Teachers cannot merely pay lip-service to this dimension that is not only critical to an educator’s development but is also critical to reaching our educational goals.

Time for Professional

Learning and Collaboration

One of the key structural supports for teachers engaging in professional learning is the allocation of time in the working day and week to participate in such activities. More than 85 per cent of schools in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland provide time for professional development in their teachers’ workday or week.

Furthermore, in most European and Asian countries, less than half of the teacher’s working time is spent teaching students. The rest, generally about 15 to 20 hours per week, is spent on tasks related to teaching, such as working with colleagues on preparing and analysing lessons, developing and evaluating assessment, observing other classrooms and meeting with students and parents. Teachers do most of their planning in collegial settings, in the context of subject-matter departments, grade-level teams or large teacher rooms where their desks are located to facilitate collective work.

In South Korea, much like Japan and Singapore, only about 35 per cent of a teacher’s working time is spent teaching students. Teachers work in a shared office space during out-of-class time; the students stay in a fixed classroom while the teachers rotate to teach them different subjects. The common office space facilitates the sharing of instructional resources and ideas, which is especially helpful for new teachers. These practices are also found in European countries. In Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the Flemish Community of Belgium, schools provide substantial time for regular collaboration among teachers on issues of teaching and learning, and assessment and curriculum development, among others. Teachers in Finnish schools, for example, meet one afternoon each week to jointly plan and develop the curriculum, and schools in the same municipality are encouraged to work together to share materials.

By contrast, Maltese secondary school teachers generally have 45 minutes each week for departmental planning. At primary level, most teachers avail themselves of 90 minutes for planning purposes (when this is possible).

Maltese teachers, on paper, teach 900 hours per year (not excluding the time spent on school-wide activities, outside visits, talks, etc.). Maltese teachers spend practically over 90 per cent of their working time with students, compared with 60 per cent on average for teachers in other countries. Thus, Maltese teachers have much less time to plan and learn together.

Job-embedded professional development

Since the late 1980s I have been arguing for professional development that is built into teachers’ working time. In such a context, teachers can engage in ongoing debate on particular issues over structured time. It also supports the kind of context-specific learning and action research that is effective in catalysing change.

For example, in England, Hungary and Ontario, Canada, opportunities have been created for teachers to engage in school-focused research and development. Schools in these places provide teachers with time and support for studying and evaluating their own teaching strategies and school programmes and for sharing their findings, both with their colleagues and through conferences and publications.

A highly developed practise in Japan and China, one that is now spreading to other nations, is the research lesson (or lesson study), in which groups of between four and six teachers observe each other’s classrooms and work together to refine individual lessons, expediting the spread of best practices throughout the school. Every teacher periodically prepares a ‘best’ lesson that demonstrates strategies to achieve a specific goal – for example, students becoming active problem-solvers. A group of teachers observe while the lesson is taught, usually documenting the lesson in a number of ways, including videotape, audiotape and narrative or checklist observations that focus on areas of interest to the instructing teacher (for example, how many students volunteered their own ideas).

Afterwards, the teachers – sometimes with outside educators – discuss the lesson’s strengths and limitations, ask questions, and make suggestions for improvement. Sometimes the revised lesson is given by another teacher a few days later and observed.

The research lessons enable teachers to refine individual lessons, consult with other teachers and receive feedback based on colleagues’ observations of their classroom practice, reflect on their own practice, learn new content and approaches and build a culture that emphasises continual improvement and collaboration.

This is an area with which we are familiar, one we especially uphold during our pre-service days through microteaching. Many of us, especially those of my generation and older, recall the microteaching sessions we had. This learning opportunity needs to be revisited, especially during the induction phase, as part of the proposed Performance Management and Professional Development Plan that will be piloted in the forthcoming scholastic year.

Formal professional development

Many high-achieving nations also organise extensive professional development (PD) that draws on expertise beyond the school. Some mandate the number of formal PD hours in which teachers must participate beyond the many hours spent in collegial planning and inquiry.

In Sweden, for example, 104 hours or 15 days a year (approximately six per cent of teachers’ total working time) are allocated for teachers’ in-service training. A few countries have established national training programmes. For example, since 2000, the Australian government has been sponsoring the Quality Teacher Programme, a large-scale effort that provides funding to update and improve teachers’ skills and understanding in such priority areas as literacy and numeracy and to enhance the status of teaching in both government and non-governmental schools.

England instituted a national PD programme as part of its National Literacy Strategy and National Numeracy Strategy. The programme provides training in PD best practices accompanied by resources to support implementation of the national curriculum frameworks, including high-quality teaching materials, resource documents and videos depicting good practice. A cascade model of training similar to the trainer-of-trainers model is structured around these resources to help teachers learn and use productive practices. National Literacy and National Numeracy centres provide leadership and training for teacher-training institutions and consultants, who train school leaders, coordinators, lead maths teachers and expert literacy teachers; these people in turn support and train others teachers.

In 2004, England began funding and supporting 1,500 groups of six schools each in an effort to enable schools and local education agencies to learn best practices from one another. The percentage of students meeting the target literacy standards has risen from 63 per cent to 75 per cent in just three years. Similar initiatives are being undertaken in Malta, and we hope that they will have the same impact on our literacy standards.

Teacher induction

Induction programmes for newly qualified teachers (NQTs) are mandatory in many countries such as Australia, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Switzerland and, more recently, Malta. Most of these programmes include release time for NQTs, mentor teachers who participate in the induction activities and training for the mentor teachers.

The model in New Zealand is typical of a number of countries. The New Zealand Ministry of Education funds 20 per cent release time for NQTs and 10 per cent release time for second-year teachers, and it requires schools to have locally-created programmes to develop NQT skills. New teachers use most of the release time to attend professional development activities, meet with mentor teachers and perform such teacher duties as writing lesson plans. Induction programmes support such activities as observing other teachers in their own school and at other schools, working in a classroom with a mentor teacher, attending meetings for NQTs and attending courses.

A number of countries (including Israel, France, Norway, Switzerland and England) require formal training for mentor teachers. Principals in Norway assign an experienced, highly qualified mentor to each NQT. The teacher education institution then trains the mentor and takes part in the induction process. In some Swiss states, the new teachers in each district meet in reflective practise groups twice a month with an experienced teacher who is trained to facilitate their discussions of common problems.

NQTs in Malta are currently supported through a mix of sessions organised by the Quality Assurance Department and those organised and led by the respective Colleges. Assistant heads and heads of department have been receiving training in order to provide ongoing support for the NQTs.

School-based decision-making

A policy condition associated with increased teacher collaboration in many high-achieving nations is a greater devolution of authority to the school site. The content of professional learning is determined to a large extent by school or local needs that are empowered to take decisions.

In Finland, teachers and other staff members are routinely involved in decision-making. Teams work together to develop syllabi, select textbooks, develop curricula and assessments, decide on course offerings and budgets and plan and schedule professional development.

Such deliberations are, in themselves, a form of professional development as teachers study issues and share their ideas. Teachers also need a safe environment for them not only to critically review but also to rehearse successful practices. Lawyers rehearse their closing arguments, inviting peer review and expecting the fifth rehearsal to be superior to the first. Surgeons, pilots, pianists and actors all expect to benefit from practice. Educators should not expect of themselves an initial perfection that eludes every other profession.

Professional development policies and practices in high-achieving nations have established a development continuum that sees teacher learning as an iterative process that involves group interactions as well as self-reflection. Engaging teachers in conversations about their practice, encouraging them to try out new approaches and giving them ongoing opportunities to reflect on their efforts are essential in supporting teacher learning. Many of the countries that have established strong systems for high-quality teaching have built these infrastructures in the last two decades through purposeful policy.

It is evidently clear that, in this respect, in Malta we need to work more closely with the teachers’ union to address policies and practices, attitudes and actions that will take the profession forward. Through a concerted effort by all, and a genuine and united commitment about what matters, we can nurture learning communities that are committed to all children succeeding.

Christopher Bezzina spearheads the Programme in Educational Leadership within the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta