World Teachers’ Day is an opportunity to recognize and examine the pivotal role that teachers’ decision-making plays in improving learning. Copyright: Khasar Sandag/World Bank
Too often, education programs fail because we don’t understand the teachers who implement them. The theme for World Teachers’ Day 2024 is "Valuing teacher voices: Towards a new social contract for education." This provides us the opportunity to recognize and examine the pivotal role that teachers’ decision-making plays in improving learning. It is also an important moment for the sector to reflect on the support teachers need, and to consider how we can incorporate their perspectives into intervention design and education policy.
A theory of pedagogical change
A theory of change (ToC) is a tool used to show the logical chain of events and interactions that are required to achieve outcomes. Thankfully the education field has shifted to focusing on student learning as the ultimate outcome. This is an improvement on ToCs from previous eras, when we were not as clear about where student learning fit.
However, ToCs are often still too light on unpacking what is happening in the classroom, assuming that policy shifts and decisions at the system level will be sufficient to improve learning. Systems change is critical, but it is insufficient to get kids learning, particularly in contexts where the magnitude of the learning crisis is particularly severe.
Theories of change are even lighter about how pedagogical improvement happens, and limited attention is paid to the importance of teachers’ decision-making. Far too many recent learning improvement initiatives have been set up to fail, because they launched without a compelling and classroom-based understanding of what decisions need to be made to improve instruction.
We propose a theory of pedagogical change. This means paying explicit attention to the thinking of individual teachers and how they decide what to do every day, and whether to shift their daily instructional practices, in line with government policy, new programs, or donor funded initiatives. While there has been increasing emphasis in the sector on demonstrating the evidence behind interventions, we are likely missing substantial impacts on learning because we do not sufficiently understand what this change looks like from teachers’ perspectives.
Incorporating teacher beliefs into program design
Teachers’ beliefs are rarely incorporated into program design: a study of 45 impact evaluations of teacher-focused interventions found that only eight had data on teacher beliefs. What if we started with asking teachers why they use the methods that they do, what evaluation criteria they use to decide how to teach, whether the ideas in the new program are likely to work (and/or why not), and what might encourage them to consider applying the new method? Obviously, research needs to deal with social desirability bias, but the insights from this evidence could result in a new theory of pedagogical change, based on the lived realities of what teachers are facing.
Making pedagogical change clear, doable, and rewarding
The World Bank’s recent book, Making Teacher Policy Work, examines the three characteristics needed for successful teacher programs – are they clear, doable and rewarding? Not only should education donors and implementers be asking these questions during program design, but we should ask teachers at the local level to investigate these issues themselves in the context of a new program.
- Clear: Pedagogical change can be made clear by having leaders be explicit about what the change entails, as well as giving teachers feedback on their actual attempts to implement and guidance on how to improve.
- Doable: Pedagogical change may feel more doable when the initial steps are easy, the materials are attractive and usable, when teachers see peers in contexts like theirs implement the change and they realize that it is possible to do, and when the new method is easier to implement than the normal practice and takes less time to prepare.
- Rewarding: Pedagogical change can be made more rewarding by considering the “why” barrier for teacher uptake – for example, by encouraging teachers to connect with other professionals about the importance of the change, or when the new method is endorsed and expected by national leadership and local leadership, or if it helps their career or gets them paid more.
Supporting pedagogical change through ongoing teacher support
Instructional practices are difficult to change, meaningfully, over the long run, and in line with what many governments and partners hope for. This is because teachers are rational and have long since decided that the vast majority of reforms will come and go and it is more logical to ride out the temporary wave of the new program.
Teachers spend the vast majority of their time working in their classrooms alone. Having frequent touchpoints with others in the education system that can support the uptake of new practices is therefore essential to supporting pedagogical change.
There is already a strong evidence base on the features of effective in-service training and the importance of ongoing teacher support and coaching. The format and delivery of support touchpoints can vary, ranging from training and coaching opportunities delivered in-person by external experts to peer-based learning circles within schools. These touchpoints will have larger or smaller potential impacts depending on the openness of the teacher to the feedback, the relationship of the discussion to the actual pedagogical practice, and the message that the interaction gives to the teacher about the importance of the new instructional intervention. Designing the combination of these touchpoints to maximize the potential impact while minimizing the cost is the trick of the new theory of pedagogical change.
Fundamentally, teachers are more likely to change their practices over the long run after they themselves see the benefits of new methods on student learning. These methods are more likely to be effective if we build programming on a foundation of understanding teacher decision-making.
We need to do a better job in the sector of being explicit about how our programming will help teachers change their instructional practices, starting by thinking deeply about where pedagogical change fits into traditional ToCs. This also includes closing research gaps on understanding how we can make a step change on the relationship between particular elements of redesigned initial teacher education on teacher classroom practices and student learning outcomes. Little empirical research has been conducted on initial teacher education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries that can generate lessons for the wider sector. To begin to address this, the World Bank is undertaking a global study to analyze how primary school teachers are prepared across the world through various models of initial teacher education as the first step of their career-long professional development. This study will identify lessons and guiding principles that can help countries to improve the quality of their teacher preparation mechanisms, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
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