We are experiencing a global learning crisis. Simulations show up to 70 percent of children in low-and middle-income countries cannot read a simple text by age 10. Out of all school-related interventions to improve learning, interventions helping teachers improve the quality of their instruction have the largest consistent positive effects. Thus, improving teaching quality is necessary to address the learning crisis in low-and middle-income countries. However, education systems regularly fail to set teachers up for success: pre-service training does not always equip teachers to perform effectively in the classroom, policies on teacher selection and deployment are often arbitrary, classrooms ill-equipped and high-quality learning resources scarce. Teachers may work in isolation from other adults and without support from school leaders or experienced peers. This combination of policies frequently results in high levels of teacher absence, low teacher subject content knowledge and poor teaching practices in the classroom. While high-quality support and in-service professional development opportunities could help mitigate the shortcomings of the system that teachers experience, many programs prove ineffective.
Education systems need to invest more effort in setting teachers up for success, by improving recruitment, preparation, support, selection, deployment, teacher working conditions and teacher motivation. There is increasing evidence on which teacher policies can help improve outcomes in all these dimensions. However, the evidence is often not robust, with similar teacher policy interventions having substantially different results once applied. An often-neglected reason why policies that look good on paper fail to generate the desired change lies in understanding how teachers' behaviors are formed and changed. By drawing on advances in behavioral science on how to influence behavior change, this topic will shine a light on how we can improve learning outcomes by helping teachers adopt effective teaching behaviors.
The scope of this Research Topic covers the nexus between two areas of research: effective teaching and behavioral change. How can we use what is known about how behaviors are formed, changed, and maintained over time to improve teaching behaviors across the world? The research topic aims to combine insights from the fields of education and behavioral science to support teachers in improving the quality of their teaching. The scope covers change at the individual, program, and system levels: how to support individual teachers in adopting new behaviors, how to design and implement pre-service training and in-service professional development programs that encourage behavioral change among groups of teachers and finally, how to create an education system of coaches, principals, administrators, and policymakers that strive toward the transformation of teaching to ensure quality education for all. We encourage submissions that incorporate an equity lens in their analysis, engaging with marginalized populations in issues such as gender, race, refugee status, sexual identification or socio-economic disparity.
We are experiencing a global learning crisis. Simulations show up to 70 percent of children in low-and middle-income countries cannot read a simple text by age 10. Out of all school-related interventions to improve learning, interventions helping teachers improve the quality of their instruction have the largest consistent positive effects. Thus, improving teaching quality is necessary to address the learning crisis in low-and middle-income countries. However, education systems regularly fail to set teachers up for success: pre-service training does not always equip teachers to perform effectively in the classroom, policies on teacher selection and deployment are often arbitrary, classrooms ill-equipped and high-quality learning resources scarce. Teachers may work in isolation from other adults and without support from school leaders or experienced peers. This combination of policies frequently results in high levels of teacher absence, low teacher subject content knowledge and poor teaching practices in the classroom. While high-quality support and in-service professional development opportunities could help mitigate the shortcomings of the system that teachers experience, many programs prove ineffective.
Education systems need to invest more effort in setting teachers up for success, by improving recruitment, preparation, support, selection, deployment, teacher working conditions and teacher motivation. There is increasing evidence on which teacher policies can help improve outcomes in all these dimensions. However, the evidence is often not robust, with similar teacher policy interventions having substantially different results once applied. An often-neglected reason why policies that look good on paper fail to generate the desired change lies in understanding how teachers' behaviors are formed and changed. By drawing on advances in behavioral science on how to influence behavior change, this topic will shine a light on how we can improve learning outcomes by helping teachers adopt effective teaching behaviors.
The scope of this Research Topic covers the nexus between two areas of research: effective teaching and behavioral change. How can we use what is known about how behaviors are formed, changed, and maintained over time to improve teaching behaviors across the world? The research topic aims to combine insights from the fields of education and behavioral science to support teachers in improving the quality of their teaching. The scope covers change at the individual, program, and system levels: how to support individual teachers in adopting new behaviors, how to design and implement pre-service training and in-service professional development programs that encourage behavioral change among groups of teachers and finally, how to create an education system of coaches, principals, administrators, and policymakers that strive toward the transformation of teaching to ensure quality education for all. We encourage submissions that incorporate an equity lens in their analysis, engaging with marginalized populations in issues such as gender, race, refugee status, sexual identification or socio-economic disparity.
