The extracts below are taken from an article by Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Special Adviser on Education Policy to the OECD Secretary General, TES Fri 8 Mar 2013. The section titles are mine.
The No-Brainer
OECD data shows that the quality of a
school system cannot exceed the quality of its individual teachers, so
the focus on teaching and its impact on learning is key to school success.
The Importance of a Continuous Professional Learning Culture
Teachers' participation in professional development goes
hand in hand with their mastery of a wider repertoire of pedagogical
practices. There is a close relationship between professional development
and a positive school climate, cooperation between teachers and teacher
job satisfaction. Analysis shows that effective professional
development needs to be ongoing and include adequate feedback, appraisal
and follow-up.
The Importance to the system of experts and of sharing expertise
The best teachers and schools need to
provide the expertise and resources for all teachers to update their
knowledge, skills and approaches in light of new teaching techniques,
circumstances and research. Teachers should help one another to develop
effective improvement strategies.
The Argument for Teaching Schools and for every school being a Teaching School
Knowledge about strong educational practices tends to stick where it is
and rarely spreads without effective strategies and powerful incentives
for knowledge mobilisation and knowledge management. That means you will
have to think much harder about how you will actually shift knowledge
around pockets of innovation and attract the most talented teachers to
the most challenging classrooms and get the strongest principals into
the toughest academies.
It is certainly not impossible. Schools in
Denmark, Finland, Japan, Norway, Shanghai and Sweden have a good
history of teamwork and cooperation. They often form networks and share
resources and work together to create innovative practice.
The Pay-Off
Pisa data show that if you have a school system
in which knowledge is shared effectively and you are in a school with
significant autonomy, your pupils are likely to perform better than pupils in a school with limited autonomy. But if you are in a
system without a culture of peer-learning and accountability, autonomy
can work against you.
Link to original article
