Publication: What Matters Most for Teacher Policies : A Framework Paper
Loading...
Published
2013-04
ISSN
Date
2014-09-15
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Over the past decade, both developed and developing countries have become growingly concerned with how to raise the effectiveness of teachers. The growing focus on the need to strengthen the teaching profession to ensure better education results has encountered the problem that evidence on the policies that raise teaching quality is scattered, incomplete and, in some cases, presents contradictory findings. This paper provides a framework for analyzing teacher policies in education systems around the world in order to support informed education policy decisions. It provides a lens through which governments, World Bank staff, and other interested parties can focus the attention on what the relevant dimensions regarding teacher policies are, what teacher policies seem to matter most to improve student learning, and how to think about prioritization among competing policy options for teacher policy reform. The systems approach for better education results (SABER) - teachers initiative aims to collect, analyze, synthesize, and disseminate comprehensive information on teacher policies across countries around the world. The focus of the paper is the description of the conceptual framework to analyze and assess teacher policies, as well as a review of the evidence base that supports it. The document is organized as follows: section one provides an overview of the general approach, main components, and objectives of the framework, as well as an explanation of the evidence base that supported its development. Section two focuses on the first component of the framework, and describes the categories that are relevant to produce a comprehensive descriptive account of the teacher policies that are in place in a given education system. Section three focuses on policy guidance. Section four concludes presenting an account of how the framework is expected to evolve as new evidence on teacher policies becomes available.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2013. What Matters Most for Teacher Policies : A Framework Paper. Systems Approach for Better Education
Results (SABER) working paper series;no. 4. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20143 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication System Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) : What Matters Most in Teacher Policies? A Framework for Building a More Effective Teaching Profession(Washington, DC, 2012-07)The document is organized as follows. Section one provides an overview of the general approach, main components and objectives of the framework, as well as an explanation of the evidence base that supported its development. Section two focuses on the first component of the framework, and describes the categories that are relevant to produce a comprehensive descriptive account of the teacher policies that are in place in a given education system. Section three, in turn, focuses on policy guidance. It reviews those policies that, based on the available evidence to date, are known to matter most to improve student outcomes. It describes in detail the evidence supporting each of these policies, as well as the ways in which high performing education systems combine them to ensure outstanding student outcomes. The document concludes presenting an account of how the framework is expected to evolve as new evidence on teacher policies becomes available.Publication Serbia Teachers : SABER Country Report 2012(Washington, DC, 2012)In 2012, Serbia joined the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) trust fund program, the goal of which is to help countries improve their capacity to design, carry out, analyze, and use assessments for improved student learning. As part of the READ trust fund program, and in order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, Mozambique participated in a formal exercise to benchmark this system under The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) program. SABER is an evidence-based program to help countries systematically examine and strengthen the performance of different aspects of their education systems. SABER-teachers are a component of the SABER program that focuses specifically on benchmarking teacher policies and systems. The goal of SABER-teachers is to attract, retain, develop, and motivate great teachers. Teachers system tends to be comprised of seven main types of activities, each of which serves a different purpose and addresses different information needs. These three main types are: teacher expectations, preparing, skill matching, monitoring, leading, and supporting teachers. This report focuses specifically on policies in the area of teachers.Publication Kazakhstan Teachers(Washington, DC, 2013)A new tool, systems approach for better education results (SABER) teachers, aims to help fill the gap by collecting, analyzing, synthesizing, and disseminating comprehensive information on teacher policies in primary and secondary education systems around the world. SABER teacher's collects data on 10 core teacher policy areas to offer a comprehensive descriptive overview of the teacher policies that are in place in each participating education system. To offer informed policy guidance SABER teachers analyzes the information collected to assess the extent to which the teacher policies of an education system are aligned with those policies that research evidence to date has shown to have a positive effect on student achievement. SABER teachers analyzes the teacher policy data collected to assess each education system's progress in achieving eight teacher policy goals: (1) setting clear expectations for teachers; (2) attracting the best into teaching; (3) preparing teachers with useful training and experience; (4) matching teachers' skills with students' needs; (5) leading teachers with strong principals; (6) monitoring teaching and learning; (7) supporting teachers to improve instruction; and (8) motivating teachers to perform. By classifying countries according to their performance on each of the eight teacher policy goals, SABER teachers can help diagnose the key challenges that countries face in ensuring they have effective teachers.Publication Nigeria : Bauchi Teachers(Washington, DC, 2012-01)Research suggests that teacher quality is the main school-based predictor of student achievement and that several consecutive years of outstanding teaching can offset the learning deficits of disadvantaged students (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2006; Nye et al, 2004; Park and Hannum, 2001; Rivkin et al, 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Sanders, 1998; Sanders and Rivers 1996; and Vignoles et al, 2000). However, it is not yet clear exactly which teacher policies can raise teacher effectiveness (Goldhaber, 2002 and Rivkin et al, 2005). Thus, devising effective policies to improve teaching quality remains a challenge. The eight policy goals includes the following headings: setting clear expectations for teachers; attracting the best into teaching; preparing teachers with useful training and experience; matching teachers' skills with students' needs; leading teachers with strong principals; monitoring teaching and learning; supporting teachers to improve instruction; and motivating teachers to perform.Publication Nigeria : Ekiti Teachers(Washington, DC, 2012-01)Research suggests that teacher quality is the main school-based predictor of student achievement and that several consecutive years of outstanding teaching can offset the learning deficits of disadvantaged students (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2006; Nye et al, 2004; Park and Hannum, 2001; Rivkin et al, 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Sanders, 1998; Sanders and Rivers 1996; and Vignoles et al, 2000). However, it is not yet clear exactly which teacher policies can raise teacher effectiveness (Goldhaber, 2002 and Rivkin et al, 2005). Thus, devising effective policies to improve teaching quality remains a challenge. There is increasing interest across the globe to attract, retain, develop and motivate great teachers. While the World Bank has ample experience in supporting teacher policy reforms in developing countries, until recently there was no systematic effort to offer data and analysis that can provide policy guidance on teacher policies. The focus of the initiative is the design of teacher policies as opposed to their implementation on the ground. A number of complementary activities will be looking at implementation in a sample of countries as this will involve a different methodological approach and will require more financial and human resources.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Twenty Years of Wage Inequality in Latin America(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09)This paper documents an inverse U-shape in the evolution of wage inequality in Latin America since 1995, with a sharp reduction starting in 2002. The Gini coefficient of wages increased from 42 to 44 between 1995 and 2002 and declined to 39 by 2015. Between 2002 and 2015, the 90/10 log hourly earnings ratio decreased by 26 percent. The decline since 2002 was characterized by rising wages across the board, but especially among those at the bottom of the wage distribution in each country. Triggered by a rapid expansion of educational attainment, the wages of college and high school graduates fell relative to those with primary education. The premium for labor market experience also fell significantly. But the compression of wages was not entirely driven by changes in the wage structure across skill groups. Two-thirds of the decline in the variance of wages took place within skill groups. Changes in the sectoral, occupational, and formal-informal composition of jobs matter for the process of reduction in inequality, but do not fully account for the fall in within-skill variance. Evidence using longitudinal matched employer-employee administrative data suggests that an important driver was falling wage dispersion across firms.Publication Disseminating and Using Student Assessment Information in Jordan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)Student assessment has been increasingly recognized as playing a key role in monitoring and improving student learning and achievement levels. This case study discusses the important steps that Jordan has taken to strengthen its student assessment system and ensure that the information gathered from classroom assessments, examinations, and large-scale assessment activities supports student learning. Countries seeking to strengthen the utilization and dissemination of student assessment data can extract the following lessons from Jordan's experience: they should (i) set clear objectives for their assessment system, based on a well-defined vision of what is being assessed and why; (ii) entrust an external entity with managing system-level assessments in order to ensure impartial evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the education system; and (iii) introduce change gradually, coupled with adequate training on new assessment strategies and methods.Publication What Matters Most for School Autonomy and Accountability(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-03-30)This framework paper provides an overview of what matters most for school autonomy and accountability. The focus is on public schools at the primary and the secondary level. This paper begins by grounding School Autonomy and Accountability in its theoretical evidence base (impact evaluations, lessons learned from experience, and literature reviews) and then discusses guiding principles and tools for analyzing country policy choices. The goal of this paper is to provide a framework for classifying and analyzing education systems around the world according to the following five policy goals that are critical for enabling effective school autonomy and accountability: 1) level of autonomy in the planning and management of the school budget; 2) level of autonomy in personnel management; 3) role of school councils in school governance; 4) school and student assessment, and 5) accountability to stakeholders. This paper also discusses how country context matters to school autonomy and accountability and how balancing policy goals matters to policy making for improved education quality and learning for all.Publication Walking the Last Mile(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2017-02)Albania’s authorized economic operators (AEO) program is not yet operational, even though the country has adopted the necessary European Union (EU) legal and regulatory frameworks. This smart lesson outlines shortcomings in the adoption of AEO provisions under the European community customs code (CCC) as well as the obstacles the national government has faced putting in place the complementary reform measures necessary to ensure practical effectiveness. Lessons learned from the Albanian experience may be instructive for other countries in the central European free trade agreement region as they look to operationalize their AEO programs without diverting from AEO guidelines as set out in the EU acquis.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.