US: White paper on teacher quality

The US' National Academy of Education has released a white paper on teacher quality that all educators (and administrators) can learn from, regardless of nationality. It is precisely this kind of dedication and solidarity of purpose in reforming education that the Malaysian Ministry of Education should make its mission.  Professional development programmes for school teachers in Malaysia today are sporadic and outdated, trapping promising human capital in a cocoon of mediocrity. (And yes, I'm aware how dramatic that reads, but it's the truth. Any teacher who has attended a state-funded motivational or skills training course will know exactly what I mean).

Normally, I'm not a big fan of press releases, but the brief on the Reuters' site had more than piqued my interest. And so I visited the NAE website to take a look at the complete white paper.

Here are some of the NEA's recommendations (the full white paper is available at http://www.naeducation.org/Teacher_Quality_White_Paper.pdf):

RECOMMENDATION 1: School districts, states, and the federal government should continue to experiment with various approaches to teacher recruitment, while collecting data that can be used to improve approaches that are promising and end those that are not. Tools should be developed that can reliably establish that these new recruits have the skills they need to be successful from the start.

RECOMMENDATION 2: States, school districts, and the federal government should support research on a variety of approaches to teacher preparation. Investments should be made in research and development on the core practices and skills that early career teachers require; preparation programs should then focus on these skills.

RECOMMENDATION 3: States and the federal government should encourage and fund experimentation with a wide range of teacher retention strategies. This should include strategies that target individual teachers,such as financial incentives, as well as strategies
that target schools and districts through initiatives to improve school leadership, mentoring, and the provision of high-quality opportunities for professional growth. The federal government should also support the development of robust and valid measures of teacher quality that can be used in identifying which teachers are effective and should be retained.

RECOMMENDATION 4: Districts, states, and the federal government should take steps to improve teachers’ access to high-quality professional development that is appropriate to the grades, subjects, and students they are teaching. The federal government
should invest in research and development to strengthen professional development strategies.

Research suggests there are some key features of effective professional development for content teaching:
• It focuses on deepening subject matter knowledge specifically for teaching, including understanding how students learn and the specific difficulties they may encounter in mastering key concepts
• It involves enough time for significant learning (for example, a course or program of 40 or more hours distributed over 12 or more months)
• It is coherently related to what teachers are being asked to do and builds on what teachers already know and are able to do
• Educators are actively engaged, rather than just listening to a lecture or watching a demonstration and
• Teams of teachers from the same school participate and learn together, enabling them to support each other in using what they have learned.