Standards for Teaching: Theoretical Underpinnings and Applications

Elizabeth Kleinhenz and Lawrence Ingvarson

© New Zealand Teachers Council, 2007

Opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily coincide with those of the New Zealand Teachers Council

Table of contents

Foreword
Executive summary
1. Introduction
   Overview
   Methodology
2. Definition of 'standard' and related issues
   Standards as professional values
   Standards as measures
   Content standards (defining good teaching)
   Gathering evidence to indicate achievement of professional standards
   Assessing the evidence and setting performance standards
   Towards a full definition of standard
   Standards: What are the benefits for the teaching profession?
   Standards as vehicles for professional learning
   Standards and research on teaching
   Standards and the 'wisdom of practice'
   Relationships between teachers' professional knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes
   'Quality' teaching, 'good' teaching, and 'successful' teaching
   Conditions for learning
   Fenstermacher and Richardson's analysis of quality teaching in three research programmes
   'Successful' teaching and the concept of 'quality' in teaching
   The Best Evidence Syntheses (New Zealand Ministry of Education)
3. The development and application of professional teaching standards in countries around the world
   Standards and assessments at different points of teachers' careers
   Graduating standards and teacher registration
   Standards for full teacher registration
   Standards for advanced teaching practice
4. Recommendations: Research questions and parameters for further research
   Standards for the accreditation of teacher education programmes
   Methods for assessing teacher performance in relation to registration standards
   Standards for professional recognition of highly accomplished teachers
References
Websites
Annotated bibliography
Appendix A: Approaches to standards and professional certification, NCATE
Appendix B: Standards of professional practice for full registration, Victoria
Appendix C: Approaches to standards and professional certification, INTASC
Appendix D: Approaches to standards and professional certification for accomplished teachers, USA
Appendix E: Approaches to standards and professional certification for accomplished teachers, Scotland
Appendix F: Summary of examples of standards discussed in the report

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Foreword

In 2005, the New Zealand Teachers Council began a process of preparation for reviewing the Teachers Council's registration standards, the Satisfactory Teacher Dimensions (1996). The Professional Leadership Committee of the Teachers Council was charged with developing a strategy paper on the role of teaching standards in determining entry to the profession and maintaining a practising certificate. As part of this development process, the Teachers Council commissioned a research report: Standards for Teaching: Theoretical Underpinnings and Applications. The Request for Proposals asked the researchers to conduct a critical review of the literature on the application of professional standards to teachers' practice and to consider:

• Where, in the complex mix of factors that can support teachers' professional capacity, do professional standards sit?
• How can standards support teacher learning?
• What are the benefits, costs and harms?
• Which models enhance and which detract from teachers' professional learning and the professions' overall capacity?
• Can the documented strengths of working with professional standards be gained in other ways?

The researchers were asked to canvass the international and New Zealand literature and to consider the issues in the context of teaching in early childhood and school, including kaupapa Māori settings in New Zealand. They were asked to take into account the different curricula for these settings, and to be mindful of the findings of the Best Evidence Synthesis reports being developed by the Ministry of Education and other notable New Zealand research such as Te Kotahitanga.

The contract for this proposal was won by the Australian Council for Educational Research. The two lead researchers, Elizabeth Kleinhenz and Lawrence Ingvarson, had already published extensively in this area and were very familiar with the international literature. A reference group was established including representatives from the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association, New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa, Te Tari Puna Ora o Aotearoa, the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Council's early childhood and Māori medium advisory groups. We thank them for the considerable time and thought they gave in helping to guide the research and in considering draft reports.

The Teachers Council is pleased to make this report available to the wider education community. The findings have been helpful in the development of the Teachers Council's understanding of and strategic thinking about the role of standards for the teaching profession in New Zealand. At the same time, the views in the report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect any views or positions held by the Teachers Council. The Teachers Council has used many sources to inform strategic thinking around these important issues.

Dr Peter Lind
Director
June 2007

Executive summary

The primary purpose of this report was to conduct a critical review of the literature on the application of professional standards to teachers' practice. The New Zealand Teachers Council provided the following questions in the Request for Proposals to guide the review:

• Where, in the complex mix of factors that can support teachers' professional capacity, do professional standards sit?
• How can standards support teacher learning?
• What are the benefits, costs and harms?
• Which models enhance and which detract from teachers' professional learning and the profession's overall capacity?
• Can the documented strengths of working with professional standards be gained in other ways?

Chapter 2 of the report examines definitions of standards as (a) 'flags' or 'banners' that describe what is considered most desirable to achieve in teaching knowledge and practice; and (b) as 'measures' of performance. To be useful, a complete set of standards needs both aspects, including specifications for how the standards will be applied in determining levels of performance. Well written teaching standards focus mainly on what students are doing as a result of teaching. They do not 'standardise' teaching methods. Standards should provide useful tools for making judgements about the effects of teaching in a context of shared understandings about what is valued.

The ability to define and apply standards is the main avenue by which professions demonstrate their credentials as a profession. Through standards, teachers can gain more influence over decisions affecting teacher quality, such as:

• who gains entry to teacher preparation courses
• who trains new teachers — and how
• who gains registration and enters the teaching profession
• who defines what new teachers should know and what experienced teachers should 'get better at'
• who sets standards for good teaching
• who assesses and gives recognition to teachers who attain high standards.

Teachers' organisations and employing authorities internationally are increasingly recognising that they have a shared responsibility for the quality of learning opportunities for students. Attracting, developing, and retaining effective teachers is now the central policy focus for any educational system that is serious about improving student learning outcomes. Teacher organisations have an important leadership role to play in the main quality assurance mechanisms for any profession: accreditation, registration, and advanced certification.

Valid teaching standards and methods for assessing performance are essential for career structures that reward improvements in the quality of teaching and retain effective teachers. Writing standards provides an opportunity for the profession to build stronger bridges between research and practice. Standards support the development of a professional community in educational settings. They give teachers something about which to be collegial. Standards provide clearer, long-term goals for professional development. They indicate what the professional community thinks its members should 'get better at'. Profession-wide standards provide a more valid basis for teacher accountability than performance management schemes and standardised tests of student outcomes.

Chapter 2 also examines the relationship between teaching and learning and conceptual issues involved in making judgements about quality in teaching. It also reviews the implications of research on teaching for writing teaching standards. This research indicates the domain-specific nature of teacher expertise and the importance of professional judgement. Valid standards articulate knowledge about content and students that teachers need to promote quality opportunities for learning. Valid standards also identify what teachers need to 'get better at' over the long term. They provide a framework to guide teachers' professional learning.

Conceptual issues are raised relating to the role of performance assessment in standards-based professional learning systems for teachers. Just as assessment for students is now regarded as a vehicle for learning, new methods of performance assessment for teachers respect the complexity of teaching and engage teachers in effective forms of professional learning.

The contribution of research to the development and application of teaching standards is discussed in some depth, noting that the task of defining standards requires investigation and analysis of research findings by experienced, reflective teachers who bring their own 'wisdom of practice' to the complex tasks of writing and applying standards.

Chapter 3 of the report presents examples of teaching standards and their applications in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Scotland, Denmark, and the United States. The examples are arranged in four categories that broadly correspond to teacher career stages: 'graduation', 'full registration', 'experienced', and 'accomplished practice'. The various models are discussed in terms of their purpose, structure, assessment arrangements, and the incentives they provide for teachers to undertake the professional learning required for their achievement.

Essential differences between 'generic' and subject/year level/specialist standards are pointed out, and the observation is made that while generic standards may have value as statements of overall principles about what is valued, they are limited in their capacity to 'capture' what good teachers know and do. The value of 'core' standards such as those developed in the United States by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is that they provide an underpinning for the development of standards that are specific to subjects and/or particular years and kinds of schooling. Such standards 'drill down' into the many complex areas of teachers' knowledge and skills. When they are integrated into complete systems of professional learning and assessment they provide an exceptionally powerful form of teacher professional development.

Chapter 4 of the report offers three suggestions for further research and parameters for research linked to the core functions of the New Zealand Teachers Council:

1. It is important that standards for the accreditation of teacher education programmes are consistent with research on the characteristics of effective teacher education programmes. A research programme is suggested to investigate factors affecting the effect of teacher education programmes on teacher preparedness during their early years of teaching. Such a programme could play a valuable role in the development of accreditation standards that improve the quality of teacher education.
2. The Teachers Council might explore the value of a research project to develop methods for assessing teacher performance that promote development toward registration standards for entry to the profession. Registration increasingly means gaining a qualification and successfully completing a period of support and induction that is integrated with the normal work of a beginning teacher and provides evidence of attainment of performance standards.
3. The Teachers Council might investigate the feasibility of a pilot programme to develop a professional learning and certification system for recognising teachers who attain 'advanced' or 'accomplished' standards of practice. This would give stronger recognition to teachers who provide evidence of their professional learning over time. The report identified two broad approaches to providing recognition, one from the NBPTS in the United States and the other from the General Teaching Council in Scotland. If the New Zealand Teachers Council were to consider the introduction of a system to provide certification to teachers who attain advanced standards in teaching, it would be useful for the Teachers Council to investigate the relative validity, benefits, and costs of these two systems.

1. Introduction

The brief for this report was to conduct a critical review of literature that examines the theoretical underpinning and application of standards to the professional practice of teaching.

The review focuses in the main on standards developed for profession-wide purposes such as entry into teaching (registration), accreditation of teacher education programmes, and recognition of ongoing professional learning (professional certification). In most professions, these quality assurance purposes or functions are delegated to statutory agencies and professional bodies, in the service of the public. The review does not focus on procedures used in performance management systems, which are properly the responsibility of particular employing authorities. These two quality assurance purposes for standards are seen as different but complementary.

To demonstrate their credentials as a profession, teachers and their associations in several countries are undertaking the responsibility to develop professional standards. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in the 1980s in the United States was one of the first to develop teaching standards. Other professional associations have followed, in the United States and in Australia. There are several reasons for this trend.

One of the most important reasons is to protect and enhance the quality of teaching and learning. The NCTM, for example, was concerned about the deleterious effects of trends in mathematics textbooks and testing in the 1980 on the quality of mathematics teaching. The idea for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards emerged in the late 1980s from a coalition of teacher unions and other stakeholders concerned about the crisis in supply and retention of able teachers.

The newly established National Institute for Quality Teaching and Professional Leadership in Australia emerged in part as a result of concerted pressure from teacher and principal associations to play a stronger role in the professional development of their members and in the provision of recognition to those who attained high professional standards. There is no doubt that teacher associations are taken more seriously now in policy arenas in Australia as a result of the pioneer work on standards conducted by English, mathematics, and science subject associations. Other associations are following their lead.

Without a demonstrated capacity to define and apply standards, a profession is defenceless against policies that may run counter to quality practice and conditions that enable practitioners to do their best. Teaching standards give the profession an opportunity to play a stronger part in key decisions about quality in teacher education and continuing professional learning, on behalf of the public. These are decisions about who joins the teaching profession, who trains teachers and how, and what the profession's members should get better at with experience. No one can doubt that it is in the interests of governments and employers to have a teaching profession that has a strong sense of ownership for the standards that are used in making these decisions. When given the responsibility for developing standards for entry and advancement, the United States and Australian experience has been that teachers set standards that are higher than governments and employers have dared to set.

Overview

The discussion in this report is divided into three parts. The first, in Chapter 2, examines definitions of standards and reviews how these definitions are applied to professional standards for teaching. Discussion follows on a range of conceptual issues related to the application of teaching standards to professional learning and the assessment of quality in teaching.

Chapter 3 presents models of professional teaching standards and their implementation in a number of countries, and weighs the relative merits of the various approaches, especially when used for assessment.

Discussion of the models identifies:

• the research on which the models of standards and professional recognition was based (where applicable)
• the extent to which the developers captured professional knowledge about effective teaching practices
• the ways in which standards were used (e.g. to assess teachers for full registration or to award certification at a highly accomplished level and/or to provide opportunities for professional learning).

The review also provides information in relation to evaluations of the various models, and commentary on their implementation.

Drawing upon information from the preceding chapters of the report, Chapter 4 offers the New Zealand Teachers Council several recommendations for a research agenda in teacher education. Given the time limitations of the project, it was not possible to investigate and discuss all the identified models to the extent that the review team members would have liked. Deeper investigation and further discussion of standards models that have high potential to inform present and future projects of the Teachers Council may well be part of this research agenda.

The following questions guided the review. They are not research questions, but were used to support the discussion at relevant points:

• Where, in the complex mix of factors that can support teachers' professional capacity, do professional standards sit?
• How can and do they support teacher learning?
• What are the benefits, costs, and harms?
• Which models enhance and which detract from teachers' professional learning and the profession's overall capacity?
• Can the documented strengths of working with professional standards be gained in other ways?

Methodology

A search of websites of teachers councils, professional organisations, and various accrediting, licensing and regulatory bodies and agencies in New Zealand, Australia, and internationally was made to discover information relevant to the review. A search of the academic literature on professional teaching standards and their application was also carried out and the information was gathered and sorted into relevant categories in line with the main research questions and purposes of the review. Colleagues and professional networks in a number of countries, especially the United States, England, and Scotland, were consulted for information and advice.

An initial brief scoping report was prepared that set out a possible structure for the review. This report made the point that since there are now so many examples of teaching standards, some of which are of doubtful use or relevance, the review would concentrate on those standards that have been, or are being, used for specific purposes. These included standards for teacher registration and the accreditation of teacher education programmes, and standards to support and provide recognition to teachers' professional learning during their careers.

The scoping report was followed by an interim report that was submitted to the Teachers Council. The review then proceeded in line with feedback and suggestions provided by the reference group.

2. Definition of 'standard' and related issues

The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives two meanings of the word 'standard', both of which are relevant to the subject of this report:

Professional standards for the teaching profession contain elements of both rallying and measurement. In the first sense, they aim to describe a consensus model of what is most worthy, and most desirable to achieve, in teaching knowledge and practice. By rallying to the standards, groups of teachers come to discover and understand the most distinctive features and aspirations of their profession. In the second sense, standards are used as measures that provide specifications about levels of achievement. Teaching standards can thus be used to describe a vision of teaching practice, based on a consensus of professional values and beliefs. They can also be used as measurement tools for making professional judgements.

Standards as professional values

In line with the first definition, a standard may be understood as a call to higher achievement, a rallying point for a cause or ideal. Standards, understood in this sense, unite people around shared ideas and values. They encourage the reconciliation of divergent views. By this definition, standards are also statements about what is valued in the profession. Their developers are guided by conceptions of significant elements in the exchanges that occur between teachers and learners.

It is often said of standards (understood in the flag or banner sense), that they are exemplars of 'good' or 'quality' teaching practice. As such, they ultimately rest on a professional consensus about what counts as quality learning and what that implies for what teachers should know, believe, and be able to do. Reaching such a consensus is a necessary part of all processes of standards development. It means that teachers as standards developers must reach agreement on the basic principles, the scope, and the content of their work.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do, developed by teachers in the United States, provides a good example of professional standards as values. The principles include:

1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning.
2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.
4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
5. Teachers are members of learning communities.

These are core propositions, or values, setting out in general terms what United States teachers think accomplished teachers should know and be able to do, regardless of the level or specialist field in which they taught. The five propositions provide the philosophical basis for the development and elaboration of standards for specific fields and levels of teaching (such as primary teaching, or high school science teaching).

Standards as measures

To be useful for purposes such as professional learning and recognition, standards must also be understood in the second sense of the dictionary definition, as measures. One of the hallmarks of a profession is its demonstrated capacity to define and measure quality performance. If teachers are to use standards as fair and valid measures of professional performance, for purposes such as professional recognition and certification, there are three essential steps in their development. These are:

1. defining what is to be measured (what is good teaching?). These are called content standards
2. deciding how teaching will be measured (i.e. how will relevant evidence about teaching be gathered?)
3. identifying what counts as meeting the standard, or how good is good enough (this leads to performance standards).

Sykes and Plastrik (1993) point out that the word 'standard' used in this second sense of measurement carries different usages and nuances. One of these is the idea of a standard as a legally recognised unit, such as that of Greenwich Mean Time, or the Gold Standard, or the Standard Metre for length. Another is the notion of a standard as 'an authoritative or recognised exemplar of perfection', such as the sacred books of a religious organisation. Yet another usage refers to 'a definite level of excellence, attainment, wealth or the like' such as 'standard of living' or a particular level of proficiency (Sykes & Plastrik, 1993, p. 4).

Content standards (defining good teaching)

Standards that describe the scope and content of teachers' work are usually referred to as 'content' standards. As in educational measurement generally, content standards set out the domain of what is to be assessed. They set out the main areas of a teacher's responsibilities and provide elaborations on what the standards mean in terms of a teacher's knowledge and practice. In recent years, teachers have shown that they can develop standards that reflect the complexity and sophistication of what it takes to teach well far better than the checklists of competencies used on them in the past.

To be valid, content standards need to be based on evidence about conditions that foster purposeful and worthwhile student learning. This means they also need to be sensitive to differences in what teachers are expected to know and be able to do in different subjects and at different levels. The same applies to people who are assessing teachers' performance based on content standards.

Generic standards are useful in delineating the main areas and important aspects of teachers' work, but their limitations become apparent when standards writers attempt to go deeper and articulate what teachers need to know and be able to do to support learning in specific areas of the curriculum, or for students at specific levels of schooling. For example, standards that describe what an effective early childhood teacher needs to know and be able to do to teach reading will be different from those that a high school teacher of social studies needs to know to initiate and sustain productive discussion of a controversial issue. Reverse the settings for these teachers and each will readily feel de-skilled. Expertise in teaching, as in other professions, is domain-specific not generic. This means that accomplished early childhood and primary school teachers are as much specialists in their teaching fields as secondary and university teachers.

Gathering evidence to indicate achievement of professional standards

Well written standards indicate how teachers may develop and improve their performance over time. They point to the kinds of evidence teachers might gather to show that they have developed professionally and are more effective in providing quality opportunities for students to learn. Well written standards also indicate what counts as meeting the standard and how decisions will be made about whether the standards have been met. As with the development of content standards, the methods chosen by the profession to measure the extent to which a standard has been met — evaluation against the (content) standards — will express values and conceptions about teachers' work.

In the past, teachers rightly rejected invalid and unreliable methods of gathering evidence; for example, administrators using observation checklists during brief classroom visits. Teachers and their professional associations have become more involved and creative in developing new methods for assessing their performance. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the United States provides one example. Subject associations in English, science, and mathematics in Australia have been moving down the same path.

New methods for gathering evidence about teacher performance may require teachers to undertake several authentic teaching tasks, each providing evidence relevant to several standards. One of the guiding rules for authentic tasks is to ensure they provide evidence of what students are doing as a result of the conditions for learning established by the teacher. Examples of tasks include portfolio entries, based on videotapes and student work samples over time, together with teacher commentaries. Such tasks are based on the natural harvest of evidence surrounding teaching.

Specification of required evidence — spelling out what evidence teachers need to provide as evidence and how to present it — needs to be precise for an evaluation to be valid and feasible. Vague or imprecise requirements often result in teachers presenting an oversupply of evidence that bears little or no relation to the relevant standards, so that making accurate judgements becomes difficult or impossible. (Validity, in this instance means that the evaluation provides an accurate measure of what it sets out to measure.)

Assessing the evidence and setting performance standards

Content standards define the scope of teachers' work, but of themselves they do not tell us how good a teacher's performance needs to be in relation to the standards. Or, put another way, content standards alone do not tell us what a satisfactory level of performance is on the assessment tasks. The key question to be answered by teachers in setting performance standards is how good is good enough? Setting standards and training teachers to use them in assessing evidence of teaching can be just as complex as identifying the content standards. The evidence is that teachers can do this very well. The process involves developing scales and scoring rubrics, weighting different tasks and sources of evidence, identifying benchmark performances, and training assessors. Recent experience indicates that teachers can reach high levels of reliability assessing evidence in relation to the standards.

Towards a full definition of standard

Sykes and Plastrik (1993) provide a definition of a standard (as a measure) that usefully summarises the foregoing discussion:

This definition is a useful reminder that a complete definition of standards needs all three components above. That is, content standards (what are we measuring?), rules for gathering evidence (how will we measure it?), and performance standards (how good is good enough and how will we judge the evidence?).

Some people have opposed the idea of standards for teaching because of concerns that they could be used against teachers, especially when they fail to express fully the nature of teachers' work. Such standards, it has been claimed, could de-skill teachers and intensify their work. To avoid a situation where 'professionalism under the guise of standards becomes a tool for employers demanding more of teachers' (Sachs, 2001, p. 5), stakeholders argue strongly that standards should be 'owned' by the teaching profession, and not by employers.

While standards aim to provide a consensus about good teaching practice, they need not prescribe or 'standardise' the means by which the standards are brought to life in practice. Teachers who have widely varying teaching 'styles' and who exhibit quite different behaviours in the classroom can achieve the same set of standards. Well written standards place emphasis on what students would be doing and learning, as a result of the conditions for learning that a teacher has established in their classrooms. They do not prescribe one way of teaching.

Standards: What are the benefits for the teaching profession?

As mentioned in the introduction, teaching standards open up a range of opportunities for the profession to have a stronger and more credible voice in decisions that affect the quality of teaching and learning.

Well-developed standards, as described above, provide a basis for the profession to enhance the contribution it makes to the quality of teacher education and continuing professional learning. Standards-guided teacher education systems, such as the Bachelor of Learning Management in Queensland described below, are rated highly by graduate teachers.

Standards for accomplished teachers provide a basis for the profession to build its own professional learning system with the following components:

• teaching standards that articulate what teachers should get better at and provide direction for professional development over the long term
• a voluntary system of professional certification to give recognition to teachers who attain the standards based on rigorous peer assessment
• an infrastructure for professional learning that enables teachers to gain the knowledge and skill embodied in the teaching standards.

Such a professional learning system can support the development of improved career paths for teachers with a stronger capacity to provide incentives for sustained professional learning. By providing a basis for career paths based on evidence of professional learning, standards lift the status given to teaching and justify better pay for teachers.

Professional standards provide a basis for developing more valid systems for teacher accountability and performance. Standards also highlight conditions, such as opportunities for collegial interaction, that need to be in place for teachers to teach effectively.

Standards as vehicles for professional learning

Many researchers have argued that professional standards can serve as a powerful vehicle for teachers' learning. Sergiovanni and Starrat (2002) suggested that professional standards can provide a useful framework for teachers to reflect on their practice and talk to each other about their work. There is abundant research evidence that the assessments used by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the United States are a powerful avenue of teacher professional development. Ingvarson (1999, 2002) describes how the process of preparing portfolio entries for National Board certification necessarily engages teachers in the kind of practice-based professional learning that is consistent with research about the conditions for effective professional learning (Hawley & Valli, 1999). Darling-Hammond (2001), Pyke and Lynch (2005), and Danielson and McGreal (2000) have all found that the formative purposes of standards-based teacher evaluation systems lead to enhanced professional learning because they allow teachers to play an active role in self-directed enquiry.

Elmore (1996) makes the point that, for teachers to learn effectively, they need to look beyond their immediate experience to measure themselves against 'challenging conceptions' that have found expression in external 'norms' about what constitutes good practice across the whole profession:

Standards and research on teaching

Well written standards can provide a bridge between research and practice. They aim to articulate, where possible, what the research implies teachers should know and be able to do. The task of defining standards is, in part, an attempt to summarise the implications of research. Research on teaching and learning has much to offer for developers of professional teaching standards, particularly research in specific content areas such as literacy or science. It has told us, for example, that effective teachers are people who communicate well and are able to think and plan systematically. Achievement levels are higher for students of teachers who perform well on tests of verbal ability and literacy (Rice, 2003). Teachers' levels of education and preparation in the subjects they teach (Wilson et al., 2001) have also been shown to correlate positively with higher levels of student achievement.

Studies by Lingard et al. (2002) and Ayres et al. (2000) identified the following competencies that impinge on teacher effectiveness:

• sound subject knowledge
• communication skills
• ability to relate to individual students
• self-management skills
• problem-solving skills
• organisational skills
• classroom management skills
• a repertoire of teaching methods
• teamwork skills
• research skills

There is broad agreement, however, that the qualities that distinguish effective teachers are hard to identify. Easily measured attributes account for only a small part of why some teachers appear to be more effective than others.

Research is valuable to standards developers because it informs and illuminates understandings about teaching. But the products of research are not like the solutions to sums at the back of old-fashioned arithmetic textbooks. They do not, of themselves, provide the 'right' answers. As Hiebert (1999), in reply to a question about the relationship between research and the curriculum standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), said:

Clearly, processes of developing teaching standards need to be conceived of as multi-dimensional, broadly based, and conceptually challenging. On this principle, Shulman (1992) identified five areas for the development of professional knowledge and expertise in teaching:

• behaviour — effectiveness is evidenced by teacher behaviour and student learning outcomes
• cognition — teachers are intelligent, thoughtful people whose actions are characterised by wise intentions, strategies, decisions, and reflections
• content — teachers have good knowledge of the subjects they teach
• character — teachers are 'moral agents' and teaching is a moral undertaking
• cultural and social awareness — teachers are sensitive to the cultural, social, and political contexts and the environments in which they teach.

Standards and the 'wisdom of practice'

Many sets of standards for teaching have now been developed in countries across the world. Effective processes of standards development in which we have been involved (see Chapter 3 of this report) have consisted of groups combining experienced and highly regarded teachers with academics who have strong research backgrounds in the relevant field of teaching. It is important that these standards development working parties or committees represent the diversity of informed and reasonable opinion in relation to the field of teaching in question. Consensus about what constitutes good teaching practice is often reached on the basis of heated discussions and reminiscences about what has 'worked' for them.

Teachers' 'knowledge' has been criticised on the grounds that it is overly subjective, pragmatic, and individualistic (Lortie, 1975; McAninch, 1993). However, Shulman (1986, 1987), Fenstermacher (1994), and many other writers and researchers have drawn attention to its value. Shulman (1987) called this knowledge 'the wisdom of practice'. Using research-derived theoretical knowledge effectively, he maintained, would require that teachers develop sound powers of reasoning about their teaching practice, as well as being skilful in performance.

Acknowledging the validity of teachers' practical knowledge, and its relationship to research-derived knowledge about teaching, has implications for processes of standards development. Among other things, it strongly suggests that these processes need to be carried out by practitioners who are able to articulate, reflect on, and share their knowledge and experiences of teaching. However, this is not to say that the wheel must be reinvented every time a group of people develops a set of standards. Many examples of standards now serve as excellent models, and new research continues to provide new insights and inform practice.

Standards form a bridge between research and practice. The task of defining standards requires investigation and analysis of research findings by experienced, reflective teachers who bring their own 'wisdom of practice' to the task of writing standards statements.

Relationships between teachers' professional knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes

One widely although not universally held assumption is that 'good' teaching will result in higher student achievement. A great deal of research is predicated on this assumption and it is now common for teacher 'quality' to be judged on the basis of student learning outcomes. An increasing expectation of standards developers in the 21st century context of 'outcomes' and 'accountability' is that their standards should reflect the notion that teaching gets results — that is, that 'good' teachers improve their students' learning. When their performance is being evaluated against the standards — so this argument goes — teachers should be required to produce evidence of having caused their students to learn something.

The concept of quality in teaching is notoriously slippery, especially for standards developers, who will always need to exercise caution when attempting to decide what is to be 'counted' as essential components of what teachers know and do. As McAninch (2003) points out in relation to standards for accrediting teacher education courses:

The idea that it is conceptually sound to infer a causal relationship between what a teacher does and what a student may or may not learn has not gone unchallenged in the literature. This issue is of particular relevance for those with an interest in professional standards. McAninch (2003) questions the assumption of a causal relationship between teaching and student achievement. She singles out, as an example, Standard 1 of the United States National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which states:

and its supporting statement:

By exploring the 'causal nexus' (or lack of it) between teaching and learning, which is made explicit in this standard, McAninch (2003, p.2), using some ideas of Scriven (1996), examines whether this standard rests on 'solid conceptual foundations' or 'conceptual sand'. Using arguments that draw upon Ryle's (1949) distinction between task verbs and achievement verbs, she argues, in common with Green (1971), that teaching and learning are independent types of activities. One does not necessarily imply the other as in a 1:1 causal relationship, or as in terms such as 'competing' and 'winning'. She goes on to argue that attempts to make teachers and developers of teacher education courses accountable, on the basis of a causal connection between teaching and learning, are conceptually invalid.

The positing of a causal relationship between teaching and learning in the NCATE standards, she continues, reflects a categorically mistaken view of teaching as a production process, as outlined by Green (1971):

McAninch expresses concern that any further structures or processes that are built upon this particular standard, such as measures to hold teachers or teacher education programmes accountable on the basis of their students' achievement, will be unstable because the standard itself reflects a 'category mistake' (that is, the standard is being placed into a 'production process' category rather than one of education). To others, however, it seems reasonable to expect to find effects of teaching on student learning, without expecting a perfect relationship in every case.

'Quality' teaching, 'good' teaching, and 'successful' teaching

This issue is taken up by Fenstermacher and Richardson, in 'On making determinations of quality teaching', published in the Teachers College Record in 2005. Their arguments present a fresh analysis of the relationship between teaching and learning which allows for a degree of causality between teaching and learning.

The authors set out to define 'quality' teaching and ways in which it may be recognised:

Like McAninch, these writers apply Ryle's (1949) 'task and achievement' distinction to the verbs 'teaching' and 'learning' and agree that teaching (the task verb) does not necessarily entail learning (the achievement verb).

When considering task and achievement verbs, Fenstermacher and Richardson caution against sliding into the conceptual fallacy that teaching per se could only be said to be occurring when students were learning, and suggest that quality teaching might entail successful teaching; that is, teaching that had caused learning to occur.

When making a judgement about quality, describing an act of teaching as 'successful' is clearly insufficient as an assessment of 'quality'. Children could be taught to kill successfully, to lie, to cheat, but no one would describe such teaching as 'quality'. And even if the content were acceptable, such as teaching the causes of World War II or how to calculate the mass of an electron, the teacher might beat the children, or drug them to learn. Such teaching would never attract the adjective 'quality'.

Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005) argue that 'quality' teaching must include considerations not only of what is taught, but how it is taught. Such teaching may be called 'good teaching':

Teaching may thus be seen as capable of being good without being successful, or successful without being good: 'Good teaching is grounded in the task sense of the term, while successful teaching is grounded in the achievement sense of the term' (Fenstermacher & Richardson, 2005, p. 189). These distinctions matter when it comes to the writing of standards to be used in the assessment of teaching performance. Should standards and assessments focus on evidence of student learning outcomes, or the quality of the conditions for learning that the teacher has established?

Conditions for learning

It would be tempting at this point, say Fenstermacher and Richardson (p.190), to conclude that 'quality teaching' is some kind of simple combination of 'good' and 'successful' teaching. But that argument is 'fraught with complexities'. For a student to succeed in learning four conditions need to be in place:

• willingness and effort by the learner
• a social surround supportive of teaching and learning
• opportunity to teach and learn
• good teaching.

If these conditions are valid, they continue, then good teaching is but one of the factors that relate to the achievement verb 'learning'. 'Successful' teaching, which posits a relationship between teaching and learning, thus depends upon more than 'good' teaching; it requires the presence of at least three conditions that are outside the control of the teacher. For this reason, they argue, policy related to teaching standards and teacher evaluation that presumes a simple relationship between learning and teaching is misguided:

Fenstermacher and Richardson's analysis of quality teaching in three research programmes

After making the further observation that 'good teaching' is learner sensitive while 'successful teaching' is learner dependent, Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005) describe three approaches to teaching in ways that make evident the differing conceptions of quality teaching. They also show the extent to which student achievement plays a role in perceptions of quality. The three programmes are:

• teaching as transmission
• teaching as cognition
• teaching as facilitation.

Teaching as transmission — the process—product approach

The process—product approach to research on teaching, which reached its height in the United States in the mid-1970s, aimed to identify the generic features of effective teaching. Researchers studied the relationships between classroom processes and student outcomes. The research designs used in this tradition were correlational, not causal, in the main — they could only identify those behaviours of teachers that were associated with higher achieving classes of students. For this reason, they need to be treated with some caution if used in high stakes teacher evaluation.

Fenstermacher and Richardson point out that the process—product approach uses successful teaching as the first identifier (that is, student achievement is used to identify the more effective teachers within a sample). The process—product approach brings task and achievement aspects together as it seeks to discover the teacher behaviours that resulted in success. Although the limitations of this approach are now well recognised, it has left a 'legacy' in the continuing search for causal connections between teaching and learning (see also Scriven, 1994, p. 200).

A possible danger with process—product research, as a foundation for teaching standards, is that of privileging certain teaching behaviours or styles (for example, wait-time, group work, or advance organisers) that are not necessarily related to successful learning. This danger materialised in the 1980s and 1990s where some jurisdictions translated process—product research findings into checklists for classroom observation that were used in teacher appraisal. Scriven (1994) provides a damning critique of the use of process—product research as a basis for teacher evaluation.

Teaching as cognition — cognitive science

A major shift in approach to research on teaching took place during the 1980s — from a focus on classroom behaviour, as in the process—product tradition, to a greater interest in how teachers' knowledge and thinking shapes their planning and actions in the classroom. In this research programme, which Fenstermacher and Richardson label 'teaching as cognition — cognitive science', there is little emphasis on successful teaching as outcomes. It is assumed that teaching which pays attention to how students think and learn will lead to better learning. Good teaching, in this approach, is consistent with the notion of expertise, which, as Berliner (1994) demonstrated, is not necessarily the result of experience. Much attention is paid, in this research programme, to identifying the nature and levels of teacher expertise. Many of the teachers who participated in this research were selected on the basis of their students' achievements (Carter et al., 1988), but student learning was a less critical factor in this research programme than it was in the earlier process—product work (Scriven, 1994, p. 203).

Lee Shulman (1987) has been a major influence in this research tradition. He helped to turn researcher attention from seeking to identify the generic behaviours of effective teachers to understanding what lies behind their behaviour. He refers to 'the missing paradigm' in research on teaching — the lack of attention researchers had given to subject matter as a context for studying teaching. Shulman's initiative led to many studies of the ways in which teachers understand subject matter and the way that understanding shapes every aspect of their pedagogy, including planning, learning goals, classroom interaction, assessment, and evaluation.

Teachers became more actively involved in this type of research, unlike process—product research. It turned out that teachers' knowledge and beliefs about what is involved in teaching and learning the subject had a highly significant influence on the quality of their pedagogy. Brophy's Teachers' Knowledge of Subject Matter as it Related to Their Teaching Practice (1991) contains a wide range of studies in this vein.

The implications of this research approach for the development of teaching standards were clear. Generic teaching standards under-represented the professional knowledge that underpinned good teaching of subject matter and skills. They did not spell out what effective teachers know. Shulman coined the term 'pedagogical content knowledge' to capture the kind of additional knowledge that expert teachers acquired that enabled them to help students learn the relevant content, whether early years literacy, numeracy, or university-level economics.

Around the late 1980s, teachers in the United States started to become more involved in the development of their own teaching standards, through their professional associations (for example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), Professional Standards for the Teaching of Mathematics, 1991) and through the establishment of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Teachers involved in these developments were determined to produce something better than the lists of generic behaviours used by administrators to evaluate teaching, which they disdained and distrusted. They wanted, instead, to begin the standards conversation with a clear vision of quality learning in their field of teaching, then work through what that vision implied for what teachers needed to know and be able to do to make that vision a reality.

This, for example, was part of the vision that NCTM teachers wrote:

Mathematics teachers involved in developing teaching standards took this vision of quality learning and worked through its implications for what teachers needed to know, believe and be able to do, based, where possible, on research. It was clear that standards would need to reflect the importance of teachers' knowledge of mathematics, their knowledge of how students learn mathematics, their knowledge of how to identify difficulties in learning mathematical concepts and much more, if they were to be a valid reflection of the professional knowledge of good mathematics teachers.

Teaching as facilitation — constructivist teaching

For the third research programme, teaching as 'facilitation — constructivist teaching', Fenstermacher and Richardson describe how, in constructivist classrooms, students are expected to be actively involved with their peers in the construction of meaning, as they make use of opportunities provided by the teacher. Fenstermacher and Richardson had not come across any research studies in this tradition that sought to identify 'effective' or 'less effective' constructivist teaching. As with the cognitive science approach, they point out, constructivists assume that deep learning will occur as a result of teaching that is consistent with constructivist principles, but while constructivists saw constructivist teaching as highly learner sensitive, they would not predicate its effectiveness on 'successful' student performances.

Conclusions reached by Fenstermacher and Richardson

The main conclusions reached by Fenstermacher and Richardson were:

• Quality teaching can be defined as teaching that is both good and successful.
• A good teacher would find it exceedingly difficult to be a successful teacher without the other three conditions (learner effort, a supportive surround, and opportunity to learn) being in place. For this reason, a good teacher would be unlikely to be judged a quality teacher if those three conditions were not present.
• Practices that may supply evidence of good teaching may not be 'actionable' in certain 'deficient' contexts. Where learner effort, supportive surround, or opportunity to learn are absent or deficient it may not always be possible for a teacher to display elements of good teaching.
• A teacher may be a good teacher in one context and a mediocre one in another.
• A teacher does not have to be a hero:

• Both approaches would need to be multi-dimensional and grounded in the four conditions for learning (student effort and willingness, a supportive surround, opportunity to learn, and good teaching).
• Appraisal of quality is strongly interpretative and requires high levels of discernment on the part of the appraisers.

Fenstermacher and Richardson close with a final suggestion for policy makers. Their framework for quality teaching, they say, opens up the possibility that teaching could be improved by attending, not only to the knowledge and behaviours of teachers, but also to factors like surround and opportunity upon which quality teaching depends. The framework:

We recommend this paper to the New Zealand Teachers Council, as we believe it clarifies some important foundational issues that need to be taken into consideration by developers and implementers of professional teaching standards.

'Successful' teaching and the concept of 'quality' in teaching

Fenstermacher and Richardson's identification of 'successful' teaching as a component of 'quality' teaching leaves the way open for continuing study of the work of teachers and 'quality teaching' as a major influence on students' learning and achievement. John Hattie (2003), for example, is one of many researchers who argue that policy emphasis should continue to be placed on developing teacher excellence, provided that 'excellence' is conceived of in the broadest terms:

Hattie's research took student achievement as the starting point for a discussion of excellence among teachers. It made sense, he argued, to discover where the major sources of variance in students' achievement were to be found, and to 'concentrate on enhancing these sources of variance to truly make the difference' (p. 1).

Hattie noted that many studies have been conducted in recent years that sought to identify sources of variance, most of which have used hierarchical linear modelling to 'decompose' the many influences that impinge on learning. The major sources of variance, ignoring the often minor interactions effects shown, were:

• Students: 50 percent

• Home: 5—10 percent

• Schools: 5—10 percent

• Principals: 5—10 percent

• Peer effects: 5—10 percent

• Teachers: 30 percent

Of his synthesis of more than 500,000 international studies of the effects of these influences on student achievement, Hattie said that he found 'nearly everything we do' influences student learning, but that certain things have a 'marked and meaningful effect' on student learning (p. 4). His quest then became to identify what those things seen as 'attributes' of excellence in teaching were.

On the basis of a literature review and Hattie's synthesis, a model was identified that included the following five 'major dimensions' of excellent/expert teachers. Expert teachers can:

1. identify essential representations of their subject
2. guide learning through classroom interactions
3. monitor learning and provide feedback
4. attend to affective attributes
5. influence student outcomes.

Sixteen 'attributes' were added to these dimensions so that they formed a 'profile' of an expert teacher. Hattie was careful to stipulate that the model was a profile rather than a checklist:

Hattie reported that he and his colleagues had evaluated the profile in a study that was undertaken in more than 300 classrooms in the United States. Part of the focus of the study was a sub-sample of teachers who had passed or failed to pass the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards assessments for teachers of advanced practice. The results of this study are taken up in a later section of the present report.

The Best Evidence Syntheses (New Zealand Ministry of Education)

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has made a significant contribution to the international discussion about quality in teaching by commissioning a series of papers that synthesise national and international research in particular areas. This series of Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) reports now provides a comprehensive evidence base for policy and practice, bringing together examples of selected New Zealand and international research on quality teaching that are relevant to school and early childhood education in New Zealand. These reports are an invaluable resource for establishing the New Zealand context for professional teaching standards. They help to make research in many areas of teaching and learning accessible to a variety of education stakeholders, including those involved in the development of professional teaching standards.

Four BES projects are discussed below. Two other BES projects are under way: one, by Helen Timperley, is on continuing professional learning and the other, led by Viviane Robinson and Michael Minstrom, is on leadership.

BES 1: Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling, by Adrienne Alton-Lee (2003)

Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling identifies quality teaching as 'the key system influence on high quality outcomes for diverse students' (Alton-Lee, 2003, p. 89). It presents evidence about quality teaching and what 'works' for diverse students. Ten characteristics of 'quality' teaching, derived from a synthesis of research findings of evidence linked to student learning outcomes are identified.

1. Quality teaching is focused on raising student achievement (including social outcomes) and facilitates high standards of student outcomes for diverse learners.

2. Pedagogical practices enable classes and other learning groupings to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.

3. Effective links are created between school cultural contexts and other cultural contexts in which students are socialised to facilitate learning.

4. Quality teaching is responsive to student learning processes.

5. Opportunity to learn is effective and sufficient.

6. Multiple task contexts support student learning cycles.

7. Curriculum goals, resources including ICT usage, task design, and teaching are effectively aligned.

8. Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students' task engagement.

9. Pedagogy promotes learning orientations, student self-regulation, metacognitive strategies, and thoughtful student discourse.

10. Teachers and students engage constructively in goal-oriented assessment.

BES 2: Quality Teaching Early Foundations, by Sarah-Eve Farquhar (2003)

This synthesis, Quality Teaching Early Foundations, addresses the question of what works in early childhood teaching for maximising children's learning outcomes and reducing disparities amongst diverse children.

It identifies seven research-based characteristics that are linked to successful learning outcomes for children in the early childhood years. Derived from an analysis of the best evidence found through national and international literature searches within the time frame of the project, these characteristics are:

1. Effective pedagogy involves working with children as emergent learners.
2. Pedagogy is informed by contextual knowledge of children's learning.
3. Effective teachers use content knowledge confidently to support and extend children's learning in interactive and play-based situations.
4. Pedagogy scaffolds, co-constructs, promotes metacognitive strategies and also facilitates children's learning in the context of adult/older child activities.
5. The social setting is organised in ways that support learning and maximises outcomes.
6. The physical setting is organised in ways that support learning and maximises outcomes.
7. Teaching is responsive to children's physical and emotional well-being.

The synthesis brings together a substantial body of research findings on the relationships between teaching and learning, including considerations of culture and diversity, the heterogeneity of children in New Zealand, learner age, and how teachers think critically about their teaching. The main body of the synthesis draws on examples of New Zealand and overseas research that illustrate and explain the research-based features of the seven characteristics of quality teaching derived from the best evidence.

BES 3: Characteristics of Professional Development Linked to Enhanced Pedagogy and Children's Learning in Early Childhood Settings, by Linda Mitchell and Pam Cubey (2003)

This BES, Characteristics of Professional Development Linked to Enhanced Pedagogy and Children's Learning in Early Childhood Settings, addresses the question of what constitutes quality professional development as it relates to learning opportunities, experiences and outcomes for children within diverse early childhood provisions.

The BES summarises the findings of studies on professional development and linkages to pedagogy and student outcomes in early childhood settings. (In New Zealand, early childhood is defined as the period of education from birth to approximately five or six years of age.) The findings have been summarised in three categories: enhancing pedagogy; contributing to children's learning; and building linkages between early childhood education settings and other settings.

1. Enhancing pedagogy

2. Contributing to child outcomes

3. Building linkages between early childhood settings and other settings

Eight characteristics of effective professional development
From the evidence of professional development linked to effective pedagogy and improved student learning outcomes, eight characteristics of effective professional development were identified:

1. The professional development incorporates participants' own aspirations, skills, knowledge, and understanding into the learning context.
2. The professional development provides theoretical and content knowledge, and information about alternative practices.
3. Participants are involved in investigating pedagogy within their own early childhood settings.
4. Participants analyse data from their own settings. Revelation of discrepant data is a mechanism to invoke revised understanding.
5. Critical reflection enabling participants to investigate and challenge assumptions and extend their thinking is a core aspect.
6. The professional development supports educational practice that is inclusive of diverse children, families, and whānau.
7. The professional development helps participants to change educational practice, beliefs, understanding, and/or attitudes.
8. The professional development helps participants to gain awareness of their own thinking, action, and influence.

This BES identified several areas where evidence was meagre and where further research would be valuable. These areas included:

• professional development linked to outcomes for children within the principles, strands, and goals of Te Whāriki
• longitudinal research to provide evidence of the longer term sustainability, for teachers and children, of professional development programmes
• expansion of the knowledge base about Pasifika pedagogy and content knowledge to inform professional development approaches in the Pasifika sector
• strengthening partnerships between home, including extended family members, and educational settings
• professional development aimed at strengthening partnerships between primary and early childhood teachers, including ways to build primary teachers' understanding of Te Whāriki
• professional development aimed at strengthening linkages with community organisations
• professional development processes that work well for participants from service where there is a mix of qualified and unqualified teachers
• professional development programmes for teachers/educators in kōhanga reo, home-based education and care, and Pasifika services, and also for teachers/educators working with toddlers and babies, and children with special needs.

Mitchell and Cubey also point out that:

BES 4: The Complexity of Community and Family Influences on Children's Achievement In New Zealand, by Fred Biddulph, Jeanne Biddulph, and Chris Biddulph (2003)

This BES, The Complexity of Community and Family Influences on Children's Achievement in New Zealand, relates to the influence of community and families on the development and achievement of children in New Zealand. It was based on a wide range of data obtained mostly from New Zealand, but includes the findings of some overseas studies.

The BES produced findings that are summarised in four categories: family attributes; family processes; community factors; and centre/school, family, and community partnerships.

Within each category, the synthesis identified factors that influence student achievement. These are summarised below.

• Family attributes

• Family processes

• Community factors

• Centre, school, family, and community partnerships

This BES describes some factors that are unique to New Zealand, and many of its findings are based on data obtained in New Zealand. However, many of the factors found to influence children's education are now observable in developed countries around the world, as previously monocultural societies become increasingly diverse, and greater attention is paid to the special needs of indigenous groups. For teachers in New Zealand, as in most developed multicultural countries and countries that are concerned with maximising educational opportunities for indigenous children, building the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for teachers to understand diversity and the cultural heritage of all their students is essential. This fact needs to be strongly reflected in standards of professional practice. For standards developers in New Zealand, the Biddulph BES will clearly be an indispensable point of reference in this regard.

Relevance of the BES to the development of professional teaching standards

Our general observation, from sighting many sets of professional teaching standards from a number of countries, is that standards developers of all kinds, whether they are groups of practising teachers, members of committees set up by employers, or other groups of 'specialists', give high priority to issues such as those identified in the four BES discussed above, particularly those related to diversity and inclusiveness. Standards developers with whom we have worked, without exception, have regarded teachers' knowledge of individual students and their home and cultural backgrounds as highly significant and essential elements of content standards. We believe that quality teaching, as reflected in the best sets of teaching standards, is impossible to conceive in the absence of proper explication and consideration of these issues. This is one reason why sets of standards that include clear and lucid prose commentaries and descriptions of teachers' work in all of its complexity are much more reflective of good practice than those that rely on brief bullet points.

Most standards development processes involve consultation. The BES findings point to the importance of broad consultation across all groups, including groups other than 'professionals'.

The BES that bring together research findings in the area of early childhood (Mitchell & Cubey, 2003; and Farquhar, 2003) provide a particularly valuable resource for developers of standards, especially in view of the fact that the international literature tends to be silent on early childhood issues. The two sets of standards for early childhood teachers that are identified later in this report (Education Department, Western Australia, and National Board for Professional Teaching Standards) have been developed for a slightly older group of learners than those in the New Zealand context, where early childhood education covers the range of birth to five years.

Consideration of the BES also raises the issue of field-specific versus generic standards, which is also discussed later in this report. Close reading of the BES that relate to early childhood suggests that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to write a set of generic content standards that would describe the work of early childhood teachers in sufficient depth and detail for them to make a significant contribution to professional learning, an important function of standards for early childhood teachers.

The BES also refer to research that identifies the importance of teachers' knowledge in specific curriculum areas. This research suggests, for example, that teachers who deepen their understanding of how conceptual development takes place in certain learning areas such as literacy or mathematics, and gain skills in how to trace that growth in their students, become more effective teachers in that curriculum area. This kind of knowledge is not likely to find its way into generic sets of teaching standards.

3. The development and application of professional teaching standards in countries around the world

The preceding chapter has described some of the complexities and challenges that researchers in the field of standards development encounter. This chapter describes models that show how various sets of standards in education systems across the world have been developed and applied.

Standards and assessments at different points of teachers' careers

The three-legged stool

Darling-Hammond describes the three ways in which professions generally set and enforce standards as a 'three-legged stool' (Darling-Hammond, 2001, p. 752). Broadly, she says, professional standards are of three different kinds (different legs of the stool). They have three separate purposes and apply to teachers' work at three separate career points:

1. accreditation standards for teacher preparation programmes
2. standards for state licensing purposes
3. standards for certification and recognition of advanced performance.

In the United States, as Darling-Hammond points out, there is enormous variation in the ways different states use standards at different stages of teachers' careers. The three-legged stool, she says (Darling-Hammond, 2001, p. 752), was 'quite wobbly in teaching, a profession in which each of the quality assurance functions is still underdeveloped'. She described as a 'morass' the 'enormous variability' of standards currently being used in the United States (Darling-Hammond, 2001, p. 754), where different states have different arrangements and standards for approving teacher preparation programmes and for licensing teachers, and where, before 1986 when the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was established, there was no national professional certifying body for the recognition of teachers who attained high standards.

Teacher evaluation in New Zealand

Originally, when planning this report, we had intended to order the discussion of standards models under the heading of 'the three-legged stool.' However useful feedback from the New Zealand Teachers Council pointed out that in New Zealand there are several career points at which teachers may experience some form of evaluation on the basis of corresponding standards. These stages are:

• initial teacher education:

• registration/practising certificate:

• experienced teacher and principal standards:

Standards and teacher evaluation in Australia

In Australia, many groups at state and national level are working on developing and implementing standards for the teaching profession. These include professional associations, established and emerging teacher registration authorities (all states and territories, with the single exception of the Australian Capital Territory now have such bodies), and employers. The standards and standards frameworks that were developed as part of these initiatives informed the development of the National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching (the National Framework), which guides and supports this ongoing work.

The National Framework was developed following a lengthy consultation process. It was considered at the July meeting of the Ministerial Council of Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in 2003, following which it received Federal, State, and Territory Education Ministers' endorsement. The National Framework supplies an architecture within which generic or subject/year level/specialist professional standards could be developed. It provides an organising structure which establishes, at a national level, agreed foundational dimensions and elements of 'good teaching' under the headings of 'professional knowledge', 'professional practice', 'professional values', and 'professional relationships'. These serve as organising categories within which the content of standards can be developed.

The National Framework proposed four stages of career progression for teachers:

1. graduation — beginning teachers who have undertaken endorsed programmes of teacher preparation and who are about to begin their teaching careers
2. competence — teachers who have demonstrated successful teaching experience
3. accomplishment — teachers who are recognised by their peers as highly proficient and successful practitioners
4. leadership — teachers with a record of outstanding performance who apply their professionalism in ways that are transformative for other teachers, students, and the community.

Examples of standards developed in Australia include:

• the Professional Teaching Standards Framework (New South Wales Institute of Teachers)
• the Professional Standards for Teachers (Education Department Queensland)
• the School Excellence Initiative standards (Department of Education Australian Capital Territory)
• the Professional Standards for Teachers (The Department of Education and Training Victoria)
• the Standards of Professional Practice for Full Registration (Victorian Institute of Teaching)
• the Western Australian Competency Framework for Teachers (Department of Education Western Australia)
• competencies (aligned with the Competency Framework) for the Level 3 classroom teacher status (Department of Education Western Australia)
• criteria for the Advanced Skills Teacher Tasmania
• criteria for the Advanced Skills Teacher South Australia
• standards for Teacher of Exemplary Practice Northern Territory
• the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (English and literacy teachers' subject associations)
• Standards for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics in Australian Schools (Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers)
• The national Professional Standards for Highly Accomplished Teachers of Science (Australian Science Teachers Association).

Standards and teacher evaluation in other countries

As in New Zealand and Australia, teachers in education systems around the world may experience assessments against various sets of standards throughout their careers. Often the assessments occur:

1. as part of a teacher preparation course, periodically, and with some form of final summative assessment at the end. In some countries, this is all that is required for a person to be legally 'qualified' to teach. (Standards or criteria for assessment are developed by the institution. In some countries, institutions are required to meet the 'accreditation standards' of an outside regulatory body)
2. as part of an initial and/or continuing certification or registration process that gives a professional licence to teach
3. as part of continuing performance management processes in schools
4. for certification as 'advanced' or 'accomplished' practitioners of teaching.

In view of this, and in light of the feedback from the New Zealand Teachers Council, it was decided that, rather than grouping standards models under the heading of the 'three-legged stool', useful as this concept is, we would arrange the various standards models under the following headings:

• graduating standards (noting the relationship with standards for accrediting courses) and initial teacher licensing arrangements
• standards for full registration
• standards for experienced teachers
• standards for teachers of advanced practice.

Graduating standards and teacher registration

Graduation usually refers to successful completion of a university course leading to the award of a university qualification, such as a Bachelor of Arts. Graduation requirements, or standards, are usually set by universities. In this sense, 'graduating standards' are the standards a teacher education institution sets for its graduates. The term 'graduating standards' is also used to describe a set of standards developed and used by a body such as a teachers council or registration board to guide processes for provisionally registering graduates from approved teacher education courses.

Registration and course accreditation often go hand in glove. Accreditation has traditionally been based on an assessment of courses and resources; that is, quality of provision. Increasingly, accreditation is based on the quality of outcomes, especially graduate knowledge and skills. Graduating standards set by registration bodies may be used to assess graduates of teacher education programmes independently of assessments conducted internally by universities or other teacher preparation institutions. One variation of this is that when courses are being accredited, part of the evidence they need to provide relates to the number of graduates who have met the graduating standards of the accrediting body.

OECD countries

In about half of the 25 countries that participated in the OECD project Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers, the completion of a teacher education course was not sufficient to gain a licence to teach (OECD, 2005, Table 4.1, p. 106). In France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Korea, Mexico (some states), and Spain, teachers had to also pass competitive entry examinations. Examinations could include tests of subject matter knowledge, observation of the candidate's teaching, in-depth interviews or consideration of portfolios with records of experience and achievement. Italy and Spain require one year of mandatory teaching work experience. Mandatory work experience (between one and three years) is also a requirement in England, Ireland, Israel (for primary and lower secondary education), Scotland, Turkey, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, some states of the United States, and Wales (OECD, 2005, p. 114).

Following are some examples of standards and their applications for graduating teachers in several countries. In some instances, the reference also includes examples of standards used to accredit teacher education courses. This is because the same standards are used as a basis for assessing beginning teachers. Accreditation of courses may depend upon the number of graduates of those courses who are able to satisfy the standards for graduation.

New Zealand

The New Zealand Teachers Council has now developed graduating teacher standards which will come into effect in 2008.

People who seek registration as teachers in New Zealand schools are not currently required to undertake any assessments that are independent of those already completed as part of their teacher preparation programmes.

New Zealand operates a dual accreditation and approval process for all tertiary qualifications. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority has the overarching mandate for the approval of all courses and the accreditation of institutions to provide them. In the New Zealand setting, these institutions include universities, colleges of education, institutes of technology and polytechnics, wānanga, and private training establishments. In practice, some of these accreditations are delegated to other quality assurance bodies linked to the university, college of education, or institute of technology sector.

New Zealand is unusual in that, for its population, it has a large number of providers of teacher education programmes across the range of institution types and a large number of programmes that lead to registration as a teacher.

Under the legislation, any teacher education programme which may lead to registration as a teacher must also be approved by the New Zealand Teachers Council. This applies to those teaching in the early childhood, primary and secondary sectors, and to programmes delivered by each type of institution. Memoranda of understanding have been developed between the Teachers Council and the three quality assurance agencies to streamline this process and standardise expectations. These memoranda recognise that the Teachers Council does not have an accreditation role but that, as the professional body for teachers in New Zealand, it has a role in ensuring that all teacher education programmes graduate teachers who have demonstrated developing competence in teaching, are of good character and are 'fit to be a teacher'.

The Teachers Council and the appropriate quality assurance agency work cooperatively to form expert panels who visit the institution, evaluate its teacher education programmes, and recommend them for approval or re-approval. This takes place for newly developed programmes and then on a regular cycle. Teacher education programmes are also monitored on an annual basis by an external monitor appointed by the quality assurance agency with the agreement of the institution and the Teachers Council. The Teachers Council works with the three quality assurance agencies to ensure that this occurs.

Graduating from an approved teacher education programme entitles a beginning teacher to provisional registration and to access an advice and guidance programme leading to full registration. The guidelines for the advice and guidance programme, Towards Full Registration: A Support Kit, are produced and updated jointly by the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Council, and published by Learning Media.

England

The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) is a statutory authority, whose principal aim is 'to secure and effective school workforce that improves children's life chances' (Training and Development Agency for Schools, 2006a, p. 3).

The standards and requirements for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) set out:

• the Secretary of State's standards, which must be met by trainee teachers before they can be awarded QTS
• the requirements for training providers and those who make recommendations for the award of QTS.

The standards for the award of QTS are outcome statements that describe what a trainee teacher should know, understand, and be able to do in order to achieve QTS. The standards are organised in three sections:

• S1. Professional values and practice
• S2. Knowledge and understanding
• S3 Teaching.

Each of these is further articulated in indicators that describe the criteria for the award. The teaching section has three sub-areas: planning, expectations and targets; monitoring and assessment; teaching and class management.

The requirements are set out in four areas:

• R1. Trainee entry requirements
• R2. Training and assessment
• R3. Management of the initial teacher training partnership
• R4. Quality assurance.

The Handbook of Guidance (Training and Development Agency for Schools, 2006b), which
accompanies the professional standards for QTS and the requirements for initial teacher training, states that various people are involved in making the necessary judgements involved in the award of QTS, and that assessments are wide ranging:

Guidance to help the assessors reach their judgements is provided for each sub-element. For example, for S3.2.6 Recording progress:

The only assessments that are carried out by the TDA itself (rather than the range of assessors mentioned above), are the QTS skills tests. The relevant standard is:

The tests are computerised. Registration and booking for the tests takes place online via the TDA website: www.tda.gov.uk/trainin