• More teachers see their role as encouraging students to play an active role in learning, rather than merely communicating knowledge to them.
• Teaching practices lean more towards a structured approach, with explicitly stated learning goals, rather than a more student-oriented approach, where students work in small groups and are given individually adopted tasks.

Significance

Quality of instruction is fundamental to student learning, but there is no single, well-defined best way of teaching. Indeed, how teachers teach and their professional knowledge can differ not only among countries but also among teachers within a country. This spread looks at what teachers said about their beliefs and approaches to teaching and their actual teaching practices.

Findings

Teacher beliefs about teaching: The TALIS study distinguishes between two main approaches:

• Direct transmission view: This sees the teacher's role as communicating knowledge in a clear and structured way, to explain correct solutions, to give students clear and resolvable problems, and to ensure calm and concentration in the classroom.
• Constructivist view: This sees the teacher's role as facilitating student inquiry, and emphasises encouraging students to develop solutions to problems on their own and to play an active role in instructional activities.

Support for the constructivist view was stronger in all countries, bar Italy, but there were variations in the strength of teachers' endorsement of each of the two approaches. The preference for a constructivist view was especially pronounced in Australia, Austria, Belgium (Fl.), Denmark, Estonia and Iceland. Diffe-rences in the strength of endorsement were small in Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal and Spain. In general, then, teachers in Australia, Korea, northwestern Europe and Scandinavia showed a stronger preference for a constructivist view than teachers in Malaysia, Mexico/South America and southern Europe. Teachers in eastern European countries were in between.

Classroom practices: Teachers' beliefs shape how they teach in the classroom. The TALIS study distinguishes between three main approaches to teaching practices:

• Structuring practices: Explicitly stating learning goals, summary of earlier lessons, and homework review.
• Student-oriented practices: Working in small groups, ability grouping, student self-evaluation and student participation in classroom planning.
• Enhanced activities: Working on projects that require at least one week to complete, making a product, writing an essay, and debating arguments.

Structuring practices were the most frequently employed across all participating countries, with a particular emphasis on them in Hungary, Ireland and Malta. Enhanced activities were less frequently used than student-oriented practices in all participating countries. Again, a general pattern of relative frequencies is observed but also cross-country differences. In Brazil, Korea, Malta and Mexico the relative average frequencies of enhanced activities and student-oriented practices were very similar. Hence, in these countries the relative frequency of enhanced activities was high compared with other countries. Relatively large differences between student-oriented and enhanced activities were found in Bulgaria and Slovenia. These data suggest that across all countries, greater use of enhanced activities and student oriented practices could be made in the classroom.

Definitions

See introduction to this section.

Further reading from OECD

Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS (2009).