Positive, high-achieving students?What schools and teachers can do?

TTUTA

THIS IS the title of the 2021 report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This report has reaffirmed that teachers cannot be replaced by education technologies, notwithstanding the claims by many. It focuses on the link between the OECD’s 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) and the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA).

It acknowledges the broad spectrum of teaching and schooling goals, a task that requires highly trained and motivated teachers. Not only do teachers have to provide students with cognitive skills to find employment and lead successful and productive lives, they are also expected to challenge their charges to achieve their full potential based on their aptitudes and interests while promoting equality of opportunity despite systemic inequities.

The report surmises that the pressures placed on teachers over the past year has undoubtedly been unprecedented, with distant and blended learning approaches taking precedence; teachers have had to reorient their approach to teaching, personal and professional time management and their overall interaction with students, parents and colleagues.

Education systems the world over, says the report, has thus been forced to revisit approaches to teacher preparation and school administration. Parents now have a new-found respect for teachers and what they do in the classroom, now that they have been compelled to assume greater responsibility for their children’s learning. Social interactions between students have also been a major casualty of the pandemic schooling experience, with attendant impacts on overall emotional well-being.

The report also concludes:

1. Social and economic disadvantages have a negative impact on student performance.

2. Boys seem to be more disturbed by classroom discipline problems and school organisational issues.

3. Classes with students from mixed social backgrounds and with mixed abilities have an overall positive effect on student achievement.

4. Excessive administrative responsibilities placed on teachers undermine student learning.

5. What teachers do in and out of the classroom matters most for the cognitive and social-emotional outcomes of the schools’ students.

6. Classroom practices that create opportunities to learn, teachers’ use of working time as well as the well-being and job satisfaction of teachers are among the most influential school success factors.

7. Students do better when their parents/guardians and local communities involve themselves in school activities.

The findings of the report, along with existing literature, confirm an established principle that teachers and schools make a significant difference on how students perform and feel, and that the time teachers actually spend on teaching in class, rather than disciplining students or completing administrative work, influences how well students do academically and how motivated they are about their learning and life prospects. It is clear from the report that classroom teaching and teacher feedback and assessments go a long way towards assisting students regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds.

In combining the 2018 PISA and Talis, the OECD has been able to establish strong links between certain teacher characteristics and conditions in schools and classrooms and students’ academic performance, as well as their future prospects and plans. This underscores the significant impact teachers can have on students, underlying the need for their professional autonomy.

While the report must be taken in context, these findings are well worth considering, given the need to re-engineer our education system to meet 21st century realities of rapid advances in technologies, especially artificial intelligence and climate change.

The covid19 pandemic may have served to hasten the infusion of digital technologies in curriculum delivery and the overall modus operandi of schools, but this transition must be refined from a prism of learning objectives and outcomes aligned to a national development plan. These objectives must be cognisant of the inequalities that characterise our society, more so in a post-pandemic future that has served to exacerbate social deficits among students.

The report also touches the issue of the disparity between the academic achievements of girls versus boys, with the latter being more vulnerable to disciplinary challenges in the classroom. In the Caribbean context, the data has been revealing the disturbing trend of boys lagging behind girls in academic achievement in almost all subjects, in all age groups and the more alarming apparent indifference on the part of the authorities and country to this development.

This imbalance in our education system has already been manifesting itself in the continued marginalisation of males into alarming criminal and prison statistics. This development must be addressed with haste and alacrity to arrest the deleterious impact of this major flaw in our education system.