Abstract
We have observed a global focus on improving teacher quality through reforming teacher education, certification, recruitment, and evaluation during the past two decades. Previous single country studies have documented the focus, design, and implementation of teacher reforms in various national contexts, yet few studies systematically analyzed what explains the cross-national difference in how a national, federal, or state government develops and implements a teacher reform influenced by global dynamics. This article presents a conceptual framework to understand how this cross-national divergence emerges within a global convergence on reforming teachers and their work to guide the future research. The author argues that this divergence is a result of collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation over a “teacher quality” problem and the solution among policy actors at national and local levels, which are influenced by global dynamics but occur within nation-specific teaching and policy environments.
Keywords
In a knowledge-based, global economy, where education is more important than ever before, both to individual success and collective prosperity, our students are basically losing ground. We’re running in place, as other high performing countries start to lap us.
This quote is part of the remarks of the former Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, titled “The Threat of Educational Stagnation and Complacency.” It was released in response to the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, which showed that U.S. 15-year-olds are average in science and reading literacy and below average in mathematics compared to their counterparts in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
The United States has a long history of reforming its educational system in response to disappointing student achievement outcomes for fear of losing economic competitiveness, as we have seen in the Sputnik crisis in the 1950s, the Nation at Risk in the 1980s, and Goals 2000 in the 1990s (LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, & Wiseman, 2001; Permuth & Dalzell, 2013). Yet, the urgency for educational reforms seems to have intensified especially after the economic crisis in the 2000s, with a new focus on reforming teachers as the main cause of the disappointing performance of our students (Superfine, Gottlieb, & Smylie, 2012).
The United States is not, however, the only country with this trend. Over the past two decades, an increasing number of countries around the world have developed and implemented large-scale teacher reforms to improve teaching and student learning nationwide. National and federal governments have used a strikingly similar policy rhetoric—preparing students for the knowledge economy by equipping them with 21st-century skills such as problem-solving skills and technology (Editorial Projects in Education, 2012; Lauder, Young, Daniels, Balarin, & Lowe, 2012; OECD, 2013b). In this context, improving teacher quality became the single most important policy lever for educating the future citizens for the knowledge economy (Akiba, 2013; LeTendre & Wiseman, 2015; Paine & Zeichner, 2012).
As empirical data regarding the large-scale teacher reforms around the world are emerging (Akiba, 2013; Akiba & LeTendre, in press; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007) and U.S. educational reforms are increasingly influenced by global forces including international ranking and global economic competitiveness (Editorial Projects in Education, 2012; Koyama, 2013), it is the right time to synthesize the latest research findings on teacher reforms and discuss policy implications for the teaching profession.
Specifically, the goals of this special issue in Educational Researcher are to: (a) understand how global dynamics influence teacher reform development and implementation, interacting with national and local contexts; (b) promote research and policy dialogues on teacher reforms in global context based on three conceptual and empirical studies in this special issue (Akyeampong, 2017; Hiebert & Stigler, 2017; Ingvarson & Rowley, 2017); and (c) discuss future policy directions and research agenda on teacher reforms in global context.
The three articles included in the special issue represent the most recent conceptual and empirical studies with new findings and policy implications for large-scale teacher reforms in various national contexts. Hiebert and Stigler’s article explains that the U.S. policies have focused on improving teachers, which is only one component of teaching as a system. Based on the improvement science literature, they argue that this focus on teachers prevents a systemwide improvement in teaching, unlike Japan where a system of lesson study focusing on teaching led to such improvement over time. Ingvarson and Rowley compared quality assurance arrangements—policies and practices for teacher recruitment and selection, teacher education program accreditation, and teacher certification in 17 countries that participated in the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) in 2008. Their empirical investigation revealed that high-achieving countries with pre-service teachers with greater content and pedagogical content knowledge are more likely to have a robust quality assurance system. Using a case study approach, Akyeampong examined the practice and vision of teacher educators in Ghana in the context of teacher education reform to integrate practicum for promoting learner-centered pedagogy in early grade classrooms. His analysis revealed that teacher educators’ practice and vision of good teaching focused on the use of teaching and learning materials (TLMs) and small group discussions without integrating the principles of learner-centered pedagogy. The hierarchical relationship between teacher educators and school teachers who serve as mentors during practicum also reinforces teacher educators’ practice and vision, missing the opportunity to learn from real classroom contexts with limited resources to explore how learner-centered pedagogy could promote student learning.
Taken together, these articles raise awareness of the impact of the nation’s system and major system actors (e.g., policymakers, teacher educators) on the teaching profession. They revealed the differences in policy assumptions and contexts that shape the system for the teaching profession within the global context where improving teacher quality is considered the single most important policy lever. Without understanding the nature and impact of the system and system actors, no teacher reform initiative would likely succeed in improving teaching and student learning. Comparative education policy research is best suited for understanding the system and system actors through comparison with other countries.
With emerging findings from comparative education policy research on teacher reforms, a conceptual framework for understanding the global dynamics and their influences on national development and implementations of teacher reforms around the globe would be useful for guiding the future research. While previous single country studies have examined the focus, design, and implementation of teacher reforms (Akiba, 2013; Akiba & LeTendre, in press; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007), few have conducted a comparative study of the development and implementations of teacher reforms in multiple countries. Examining the cross-national difference in teacher reform development and implementation will deepen our understanding and insight into why our own country approached a teacher reform in a certain way and what impact it could have on improvement of teaching and student learning.
In this article, I propose a conceptual framework informed by institutional theory and sensemaking theory to address the question—What explains the cross-national difference in how a nation interprets global messages, identifies a “teacher quality” problem, and develops and implements a teacher reform? I argue that the cross-national difference in teacher reform development and implementation emerges from the collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation over what “teacher quality” problem the nation has and what reform is needed as a solution. These processes are shaped by national and local policy actors’ preexisting beliefs, perceptions, and knowledge of the teaching and policy environments—each of which is complex and diverse, consisting of various factors and relationships.
I will use the findings from this special issue as well as from previous studies to unpack what constitutes the global dynamics, how teaching and policy environments differ across nations, and how both global dynamics and national teaching and policy environments influence the development and implementation of a teacher reform in a nation. I will conclude the article with a discussion of future policy directions for teacher reforms and research agenda in the field of comparative education policy to inform future teacher reforms.
While drawing from previous studies conducted in various national contexts, the discussion will focus on the United States where international assessment results and global economic competitiveness have an increasing impact on the educational policy directions characterized by accountability (Editorial Projects in Education, 2012; Koyama, 2013). The United States is also one of the most decentralized countries in education governance (Fuhrman, Goertz, & Weinbaum, 2007) with complex policy implementation processes of large-scale teacher reforms involving multiple levels of governance structure (federal, state, district, and school) and diverse groups of formal and nonformal policy actors. Thus, it is an illustrative case for understanding how multiple factors in teaching and policy environments could influence teacher reform development and implementation.
Teacher Reforms Driven by “Teacher Quality” Discourses
The global policy focus on “teacher quality” emerged in the 1990s and heightened in mid-2000s after a series of international reports documented the problems of teacher recruitment, development, and retention in many countries (OECD, 2005; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006). Empirical studies have documented that many countries around the globe have increasingly implemented teacher education and certification reforms (Adams & Tulasiewicz, 1995; Akiba & Shimizu, 2012; Blomeke, 2006; Chudgar, 2013; Cochran-Smith, Piazza, & Power, 2013; Kobakhidze, 2013; Sacilotto-Vasylenko, 2013; Shinn, 2012) and teacher evaluation and compensation reforms (Avalos & Assael, 2006; Flores, 2012; Kang, 2013; Luschei, 2013; Youngs, Kim, & Pippin, 2015). Scholars argued that many of these policies were developed under an assumption that holding teachers and teacher education institutions accountable will improve teacher quality (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007).
Specifically, international student assessment rankings (e.g., PISA, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS]) (H.-D. Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Wiseman, 2010) and international agencies such as the OECD (Robertson, 2012) have been identified as major global factors that instigated these reforms. Scholars have debated the role that these global actors and networks play as carriers of globalization and what globalization means for the nation-state, national culture, and teachers’ work lives (Anderson-Levitt, 2002, 2003; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, Goesling, & Wiseman, 2001, 2002).
In the United States, the federal role in monitoring teacher quality has increased since the 1990s (Cohen-Vogel, 2005; Plecki & Loeb, 2004; Superfine et al., 2012). The Title II of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 required that all teachers become “highly qualified” using measures of a possession of a bachelor’s degree, full certification, and subject content knowledge (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). The Race to the Top (RTTT) program in 2009 further promoted teacher accountability policies by incentivizing states to develop teacher evaluation policies using student value-added scores as a measure of teaching effectiveness (Harris & Herrington, 2015). The federal government has also promoted teacher education accountability reforms by holding teacher education institutions accountable for the effectiveness of teacher education graduates in improving student achievement using value-added scores (Cochran-Smith et al., 2013).
The concept of teacher quality has been highly contested, especially in the current reform climate promoting standardization and accountability both in the United States (Berliner, 2005; Cochran-Smith, 2002; Cohen, 2010; Cohen-Vogel, 2005) and overseas (Hebson, Earnshaw, & Marchington, 2007; Hull, 2013; Ingvarson & Rowe, 2008). In the United States, scholars have focused on teaching quality (Hiebert & Morris, 2012; Hiebert & Stigler, 2017; Kennedy, 2010; Knight et al., 2015), arguing its focus on teaching instead of teachers as individuals is critical for system-level improvement of teaching and student learning.
With the adoption of value-added scores as a measure of teaching quality in teacher evaluation, a large amount of literature emerged on the validity, reliability, and limitations in applying value-added scores (Harris & Herrington, 2015; Hill, Kapitula, & Umland, 2011). At the same time, researchers have explored various ways to measure teaching quality, including classroom observation protocols (Bell, Gitomer, McCaffrey, Hamre, & Pianta, 2012; Grossman, Cohen, Ronfeldt, & Brown, 2014; Grossman, Loeb, Cohen, & Wyckoff, 2013), teacher knowledge assessments (Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005; Hill, Schilling, & Ball, 2004; Hill, Umland, Litke, & Kapitula, 2012; Kersting, Givvin, Thompson, Santagata, & Stigler, 2012), performance assessments (Duckor, Castellano, Tellez, Wihardini, & Wilson, 2014; Jaquith, Mindich, Wei, & Darling-Hammond, 2010; Sato, 2014), teacher logs or instructional logs (Rowan, Camburn, & Correnti, 2004; Rowan & Correnti, 2009; Rowan, Harrison, & Hayes, 2004), and combinations of classroom observation, student surveys, and value-added scores (Kane, McCaffrey, Miller, & Staiger, 2013). These efforts significantly advanced the limited measures of teacher quality focusing on basic qualifications such as certification, subject major, and teacher education coursework in earlier studies.
Internationally, advancement in student assessments in core subject areas—mathematics, science, and reading (National Research Council, 2002)—and accompanying background survey data from students, teachers, and principals have allowed researchers to compare important characteristics of teachers and schools (Baker & LeTendre, 2005). The video study component of the TIMSS, which gathered video files from a nationally representative sample of classrooms in three countries in 1995 and seven countries in 1999, both including the United States (Givvin, Hiebert, Jacobs, Hollingsworth, & Gallimore, 2005; Hiebert et al., 2005; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), further revealed the differences in the quality of mathematics instruction and students’ opportunity to learn across countries.
More recently, two projects funded by OECD and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), respectively, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M), dramatically expanded the data collection from teacher education programs, pre-service teachers, and practicing teachers from many countries around the globe, including the United States. TALIS has been implemented since 2008 with a five-year cycle and 34 countries participating in the most recent survey in 2013 (OECD, 2014b), and TEDS-M gathered data on various characteristics of teacher education institutions, programs, and curricula and future teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about mathematics and mathematics learning from 17 countries in 2008 (Brese & Tatto, 2012; Tatto, 2013).
Despite these methodological advancements to better understand the characteristics and effectiveness of the teaching profession through cross-national comparisons, teacher reforms around the globe seem to be mainly driven by the perceptions and discourses of “teacher quality” problems and solutions instead of research findings on teacher and teaching characteristics and effectiveness. For example, several East Asian countries have implemented teacher accountability reforms during the past decade based on the public discourses on the crisis of the education system and failures of teachers to support student learning. In South Korea, the media coverage of “classroom collapse” created a sense of urgency for teacher reforms, leading to the implementation of teacher evaluation reform since 2006 (Kang, 2013). In Japan, both the media coverage of school crisis due to school bullying and violence, student absenteeism, and uncontrollable classrooms and dropped national ranking in the PISA from 1st to 6th in mathematics literacy and 8th to 14th in reading literacy between 2000 and 2003 created a discourse of a major teacher quality problem, leading to the development of teacher license renewal policy in 2007 (Akiba & Shimizu, 2012). In neither case, high-quality teaching practice and organizational supports to engage in continuous professional learning in these countries identified by previous comparative studies (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Kang & Hong, 2008) entered the teacher quality discourse. There is a need to understand how each nation develops and implements a large-scale teacher reform influenced by the global focus on improving teacher quality.
Conceptual Framework: Teacher Reform in Global Context
Previous researchers applying institutional and neo-institutional theories have recognized the transforming power of a “world culture” that evolved out of Western rationality, which led to the global spread of formal schooling as a key institution in modern societies (Baker, 2009, 2014; J. Meyer & Ramirez, 2000; J. Meyer, Ramirez, Rubinson, & Boli-Bennett, 1977; J. Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysol, 1992) and converging school curriculum content over the years around the globe (Benavot, Cha, Kamens, Meyer, & Wong, 1991; J. W. Meyer, Kamens, & Bevavot, 1992).
Based on this theoretical perspective, I argue that the global focus on reforming teachers driven by teacher quality discourses can be explained by the global education culture. Baker (2009) identified four dimensions of the global education culture: (a) development of modern individuals for the collective good, (b) dominance of academic intelligence, (c) equality of opportunity and social justice, and (d) meritocratic achievement and education credentials. The first two dimensions seem to explain the common policy rhetoric of improving teacher quality as a policy lever for educating the future citizens with 21st-century skills for the knowledge economy.
First, the shared belief in the development of modern individuals for the collective good emphasizes the critical role of teachers to educate the population who contributes to the collective economic and social advancement of the society. Policymakers around the globe pay attention to the economic return for investment in teacher quality, following the logic of human capital theory (Hanushek, 2011; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004), even though an empirical study showed that the link between student achievement and economic growth is tenuous (Ramirez, Luo, Schofer, & Meyer, 2006). Other key actors may also perceive education as citizenship production, emphasizing the role of teachers for social-political advancement of the society (Wiseman, Astiz, Fabrega, & Baker, 2011).
Second, the dominance of academic intelligence in the global education culture values problem solving, higher-order thinking, and generation of new ideas over traditional craftsmanship, memorization and reproduction, and vocational training (Baker, 2009). This seems to explain the global reform focus on learner-centered pedagogy or constructivist instruction that promote problem solving and higher-order thinking and focus on teacher quality for delivering this type of instruction. Globalization of valued knowledge has led to the establishment of common definitions of educational inputs and metrics of achievement outcomes in international assessments, which are increasingly influencing national policymaking (Wiseman, 2010).
Thus, when national policymakers see a mediocre academic performance of students and are informed of the problems of the teaching workforce through international reports or media, a common response is to seek a solution to this problem by initiating a teacher reform to avoid losing the nation’s standing in the global economy. The U.S. response to the PISA results as well as many others’ initiation of teacher reforms seem to be explained by these aspects of the global education culture.
Yet, institutional theory or neo-institutional theory does not fully explain how such global education culture leads to diverse interpretations of global messages and how nations develop and implement teacher reforms differently, and other perspectives and approaches for understanding microlevel policy processes are necessary (Wiseman, Astiz, & Baker, 2014). More recent empirical work recognizes both global similarities and national differences in local actors’ actions and organizational characteristics (Astiz, 2006; Astiz & Akiba, 2016; Baker & LeTendre, 2005; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, Goesling, et al., 2001). I extend this line of work to identify where the global similarities and national differences come from in development and implementations of teacher reforms around the world by incorporating perspectives from sensemaking theory.
Based on sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995, 2001), I conceptualize that how teacher quality problems and solutions are identified within each nation is a result of collective sensemaking, negotiations, and contestations among policy actors at national and local levels. Sensemaking perspective posits that when a new idea for policy or practice is introduced, policymakers, administrators, and educators go through a sensemaking process of the new idea through the lens of their preexisting beliefs and knowledge, interpreting and adapting the idea through interactions with others (Coburn, 2001; Jennings, 1996; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002).
When a new concept such as international standards, 21st-century skills, or teacher quality enters a policy discourse, policy actors engage in a sensemaking process through various information networks and interactions. The teacher’s role is increasingly perceived to be linked to the human capital development for the nation’s economic competitiveness, thus policymakers are highly invested in improving teacher quality, and the policymaking process is often highly political (Furlong, Cochran-Smith, & Brennan, 2009; Ginsburg, 2012).
The large number of policy actors involved in teacher reform design and implementation—national/federal government, state government, local government, teacher education institutions, district and school administrators, teachers unions, teacher professional associations, advocacy groups, parents and community members, and most importantly, teachers—as well as the complexity of teachers’ work means that multiple levels of negotiations, contestations, and conflicts over teacher quality and teacher reforms are simply unavoidable. Such political conflicts often continue even after the policy is implemented, leading to multiple revisions of a teacher policy.
For example, in the United States, a heated multiyear debate occurred among policy actors and advocates over the causes of poor student achievement before the teacher evaluation systems based on value-added modeling, performance pay scheme, and elimination of teacher tenure were passed by Florida lawmakers in 2011 (Harrison & Cohen-Vogel, 2013). In South Korea, teacher organizations and parent groups expressed conflicting perspectives on teachers’ work in public forums and policy committee meetings for the development of a teacher evaluation policy, and the policy was enacted without a resolution, affecting the commitment of teachers for implementation (Kang, 2013). In Krygystan, a strong opposition to a teacher salary reform from experienced teachers in influential urban schools led to multiple revisions of the policy scheme, reverting the initial goal of equalizing salary distribution between beginning and experienced teachers back to the unequal system favoring experienced teachers (Steiner-Khamsi & Belyavina, in press).
As illustrated in Figure 1, this collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation over what teacher quality problem the nation has and what reform is needed as a solution is shaped by the policy actors’ preexisting beliefs, perceptions, and knowledge of the teaching environment and policy environment—each of which is complex and diverse, consisting of various factors and relationships. Previous studies also identified that the existing organizational contexts play an important role in the sensemaking process by influencing the understanding of the new idea that is feasible within the organizational structure and routines (Coburn, 2005; Spillane, 1998, 2000). I argue that because of the complexity and diversity in the teaching and policy environments across countries, each nation’s approaches to a teacher reform is distinctly different—creating a cross-national divergence in teacher reform implementation and its impacts on the teaching profession within a global convergence over the focus on reforming teachers. In what follows, I explain the characteristics of the global dynamics and cross-national differences in nation-specific teaching and policy environments and how they influence the teacher reform development and implementation around the globe based on the previous literature and articles in this special issue.
Conceptual framework of teacher reforms in global context
Global Dynamics
As discussed previously, the widely circulated reform concepts such as the knowledge economy, 21st-century skills, and international standards have led to the global focus on reforming teachers. However, these concepts did not emerge from a single source. Instead, they slowly emerged as a result of global information networks and multiple interactions among various global policy actors influenced by the global education culture. Figure 1 identifies a diverse group of global policy actors and a wide range of global factors that constitute the “global dynamics” influencing the policy discourses on teacher quality problems and solutions.
A growing number of countries, including developing countries, are participating in international student assessments such as the PISA and TIMSS, and the nation’s ranking in comparison to the economic competitors has been used as a rationale for a large-scale reform targeting teachers in many developed countries (Akiba & Shimizu, 2012; Avalos & Assael, 2006; Blomeke, 2006; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, & Wiseman, 2001; Wiseman, 2010).
Intergovernmental organizations such as OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank have produced influential reports on the conditions of teachers and needs for reforming the teaching workforce (OECD, 2005, 2009, 2011a, 2013b, 2016; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2006; World Bank, 2012) that are often cited by national governments (Paine & Zeichner, 2012). These organizations also promoted the education-economic growth myth (Resnik, 2006), creating a sense of urgency among many countries for implementing a teacher reform for improving student achievement. In recent years, both OECD and World Bank have increased its policy influences through policy recommendations in country-specific reports (OECD, 2004, 2010, 2011b, 2011c, 2011d, 2012, 2013a, 2014a) and a diagnostic tool on teacher policies called SABER-Teachers (World Bank, 2011, 2012). Furthermore, international agreements, meetings, and programs such as the annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession, the Bologna process, Education for All, and Teach for All 1 have promoted international communications among national policymakers on the critical role of the teachers to educate future citizens for the knowledge economy (Paine & Zeichner, 2012).
Yet, the impact of these global information networks and global policy actors on a nation’s policymaking vary across nations based on economic and political power. In developing countries, the scholars have documented the influences and pressures from international donor agencies such as the World Bank, USAID, and DFID to adopt certain best practices such as “learner-centered pedagogy” and teacher education and certification reforms as a form of policy recommendations as described in Akyeampong’s article and previous studies (Anderson-Levitt & Diallo, 2003; Ginsburg, Cooper, Raghu, & Zegarra, 1990; Kobakhidze, 2013; Shinn, 2012; Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006; Tabulawa, 2003).
Policy borrowing and lending literature (Phillips & Ochs, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004a, 2010; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012) has documented political and economic rationales for adopting “best practices” or “international standards” in both developing and developed countries. These scholars argue that international assessment results and policies or practices of high-achieving countries are used as a political tool to resolve protracted policy conflicts and rationalize the political agenda already established by presenting a supposedly more neutral policy option borrowed from elsewhere (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004a, 2010; Takayama, 2007, 2010). High-achieving countries such as Finland, Singapore, and China gather attentions of policymakers around the globe (Sahlberg, 2011; Sellar & Lingard, 2013; Tucker, 2011) not simply because they look for solutions to the local problem but to use them as evidence to move the political agenda forward using the policy rhetoric of “best practices” or “international standards.” Developing countries have an economic rationale for adopting reform ideas such as learner-centered pedagogy as a condition for receiving financial aid from international organizations (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010, 2012). These scholars argue that institutional theory or world culture theory overlooks the agency of the local policymakers who interpret and use the global messages for their own political and economic benefits (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004b, 2010; Steiner-Khamsi & Stolpe, 2006). Despite the disagreement, both camps of scholars seem to acknowledge the complex nature of global dynamics and that how global dynamics influences national policymaking processes varies across countries.
Most available research has focused on the influences of formal intergovernmental organizations and international assessments, yet other important global actors and information networks such as international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), corporate actors, philanthropic foundations, advocacy groups, global teacher and research professional networks, media portrayal and discourse of teachers, and human capital migration cannot be overlooked. The important role of INGOs in supporting and influencing local education has been documented (Anwar & Islam, 2013; Boli & Thomas, 1999; Burde, 2004), and corporate actors such as McKinsey & Company, IBM, and Microsoft; philanthropic foundations such as Gates Foundation and Soros Foundation; and advocacy networks including Global Campaign for Education and Children’s Rights Network have significant influences on a nation’s educational policies and practices (Mundy & Ghali, 2009).
Global and local media impact the perceptions of citizens about teachers and an education crisis, which instigated a large-scale teacher reform in several countries, including Japan (Akiba & Shimizu, 2012) and South Korea (Kang, 2013), as described previously. Other less documented global actors and networks also influence teachers’ work directly, which could impact sensemaking of teacher quality problem. International teachers union Educational International (Bascia, 2000, in press; Sinyolo, in press) and educational researcher associations including Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in the United States and other similar associations overseas promote international information networks through conferences and publications. Global online networks of teachers such as eTwinning (Blazic & Verswijvel, in press) and transnational professional learning models such as lesson study (Akiba, 2016; Lewis & Lee, in press) and professional learning communities (PLC) influence teacher learning and teaching practices across countries. Furthermore, human capital migration including teacher migration from developing countries to developed countries with a teacher shortage (Bartlett, 2014; Brown & Stevick, 2014; Sharma, 2013) and higher education migration to English-speaking countries of future educational researchers and policymakers could influence policy dialogues on teacher quality problems and solutions and development of a teacher reform.
These emerging studies indicate that the global dynamics are more complex and diverse than we thought previously, involving multiple global actors with various roles and agendas who promote diverse information flows and exchanges within a broadly shared focus on teachers as a policy lever for promoting students’ 21st-century skills for the knowledge economy. Accordingly, the impacts of the global dynamics differ across the global actors and networks and across receiving countries’ economic and political standing in the international community.
Teaching Environment and Teacher Reform
In most democratic nations, policymaking process involves multiple policy actors who bring their own perceptions and beliefs about teachers and teaching to the policy discourse on teacher quality problem and solution. As teachers’ work is complex and enacted within interdependent contexts, without understanding these contexts, we will not be able to understand how teacher quality problem and its solution are debated by policy actors at various levels within each country. Using either qualitative or mixed-method approaches, previous U.S. studies have revealed the importance of conditions and situational factors influencing teaching (Bell et al., 2012; Kennedy, 2010; Valli, Croninger, & Buese, 2012). For example, Kennedy (2010) identified teaching quality is influenced by teacher’s preparation time availability, instructional curriculum and materials, and work assignment, which are outside the control of teachers. She argues that policymakers are making a “fundamental attribution error” by overestimating the influence of personal qualities on teaching as teacher quality and underestimating the influence of these situational factors. Other studies have pointed out the important role of student characteristics in influencing teaching quality (Bell et al., 2012) and warn against the individual concept of teacher quality by showing the increasingly collective nature of teaching because of a convergence of policies such as inclusion and collaborative professional development (Baker-Doyle, 2015; Valli et al., 2012).
Figure 1 identifies three major interrelated domains in the teaching environment—the teaching profession, instructional contexts, and work contexts. These three domains influence and shape one another to constitute the teaching environment within each nation. For example, in a country where teaching is professionalized and teachers are respected for their expert knowledge and skills, they are given more lesson preparation time and resources (instructional context), have a strong professional network, and enjoy higher salary and benefits as part of working conditions (work context) (Akiba, Chiu, Shimizu, & Liang, 2012; Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, Goesling, et al., 2001).
Regarding the first domain of the characteristics of the teaching profession, previous comparative studies have revealed major cross-national differences in teachers’ identities and cultural values (LeTendre, 1995, 2000; Tobin, Hsueh, & Karasawa, 2009; Tobin, Wu, & Davison, 1989; Welmond, 2002), depth of knowledge and teaching practice (Givvin et al., 2005; Hiebert et al., 2005; Schmidt, Blomeke, & Tatto, 2011; Schmidt, Cogan, & Houang, 2011; Tatto et al., 2012), and indicators of professionalization including ownership and control of teaching knowledge and practice, professional autonomy, and professional accountability (Ben-Peretz, 2012; Goodwin, 2012). Furthermore, the political influences of teachers based on the political power of teacher associations and unions and teachers’ involvement in policymaking process vary across countries (Bascia, 2000, in press). In countries where teachers enjoy the professional status and societal respect, a large number of students aspire to become teachers, and the government can continue to hire the best and brightest to fill the teaching positions (Park & Byun, 2015).
Hiebert and Stigler in this issue identified that Japan has a system that focuses on improving teaching while the U.S. teacher reforms tend to focus on teachers. The existence of this system in Japan could be partly explained by Japanese teachers’ collective identities, values, and beliefs about teaching as a career-long process for development, instead of something individual teachers bring to schools (i.e., teachers are born, not made) (Shimahara & Sakai, 1995), and the sense of responsibilities and accountability to improve collective teaching quality in the profession as pointed out by Hiebert and Stigler.
The second domain of instructional contexts largely shapes teachers’ teaching practices. The characteristics of students, including cultural background, race and ethnicity, language, and poverty level, are critical for teachers to understand to promote learning of diverse groups of students. Previous comparative studies have shown that U.S. teachers work not only with more diverse groups of students but also are assigned heavier instructional load (Liang & Akiba, in press) and out-of-field subjects to teach (Ingersoll, 2007) with a limited level of shared instructional resources and common curriculum and assessment (Hiebert & Stigler, 2017).
In sub-Saharan African countries, severely limited material resources in large classrooms pose a major challenge for practicing learner-centered pedagogy in classrooms, especially when the national curriculum for high-stakes testing focuses on memorization, and teacher-centered instruction is expected by parents and students (Akyeampong, 2017; Samoff, 2003; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012). In addition, peer teachers’ instructional orientation impacts teaching both positively and negatively, especially in the current policy climate promoting teacher collaboration and professional learning communities (Achinstein, 2002; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Seashore Louis, 2012).
Finally, the third domain of the work contexts of teachers, including leadership support, learning opportunities (i.e., mentoring, professional development, and teacher collaboration), and teacher networks within and beyond schools, has been reported to impact teacher instruction, attrition, satisfaction, and sense of belonging (Baker-Doyle, 2011, 2015; Kennedy, 2016; Leithwood & Hallinger, 2002; Townsend & MacBeath, 2011; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Teacher evaluation and career advancement system and working conditions, including compensation, benefits, workload, and work assignment, communicate expected responsibilities and performance of teachers and teacher leaders, reflecting the social status of the teaching profession (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009). Finally, the school-community relationship provides both supports and challenges to teachers, depending on the nature of the relationship and organizational structures and climates for collaborating with parents and community members (Casto, Sipple, & McCabe, 2016; Cohen-Vogel, Goldring, & Smrekar, 2010).
Previous studies found that U.S. teachers’ compensation and benefits are comparatively limited, yet they are assigned heavier instructional and non-instructional workload and given less opportunities to observe other classrooms for instructional improvement (Akiba et al., 2012; Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, Goesling, et al., 2001). Career ladder plans have not been scaled up nationally (Conley & Odden, 1995; Freiberg & Knight, 1991), and teaching continues to be a flat occupation with limited career advancement opportunities in many states. Only 10% of first-year teachers in the United States are given a reduced teaching load (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.), compared to 46% of Australian teachers and 100% of Japanese teachers (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009), which could lead to high attrition rates (Ingersoll, 2007), especially when limited leadership and mentoring supports are given to new teachers (Kardos & Johnson, 2010; Kauffman, Johnson, Kardos, Liu, & Peske, 2002). Furthermore, inequality in students’ access to qualified teachers in the United States is larger than many other countries (Akiba, LeTendre, & Scribner, 2007; Akiba & Liang, 2013). These are all critical factors that constitute the teaching environment in the United States and influence the development, design, and implementation of teacher reforms.
Policy Environment and Teacher Reform
Compared to the rich cross-national data on the teaching environment, less comparative research has been conducted on the policy environment surrounding the teaching profession. The implementation of a teacher reform varies based on the reform focus (e.g., recruitment, teacher evaluation) and specific policy design (e.g., goals, instruments), as illustrated in Figure 1.
The implementation process is impacted by the policy implementers’ commitment and capacity, coherence with other educational and social policies and school organizational and institutional contexts, and the availabilities and qualities of material, human, and social resources (Coburn, 2005; Gamoran et al., 2003; Honig, 2006; Spillane, Louis, & Mesler, 2009; Spillane & Thompson, 1997).
Regarding the reform focus, researchers identified major domains of reforms targeting the teaching profession (Akiba, 2013; Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Rice, Roellke, Sparks, & Kolbe, 2008), which ranges from teacher recruitment and selection to teacher education and certification and to teacher hiring, development, and retention, including professional development, working conditions, evaluation, and career advancement system. Previous empirical studies have documented that many countries are promoting accountability by reforming teacher education, certification, and evaluation (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007).
At the same time, emerging studies show that several countries are implementing diverging teacher reforms, such as the 2007 Free Teacher Education Policy in China (Youngs, Qian, Hu, & Ji, in press), which aims to recruit and equally distribute qualified teachers educated in prestigious national universities to rural schools, and the 2001 Chartered Teacher Scheme in Scotland that recognizes and rewards teachers who attained high standards of practice (Ingvarson, 2009; Reeves & Drew, 2012). In many developing countries, with the increased access to primary education under the Education for All (EFA) initiative, ensuring equal access to qualified teachers (DeStefano, 2013; Luschei & Chudgar, 2017) and improving teacher quality through instructional coaching (Piper & Zuilkowski, 2015) and teacher professional development (Hardman, in press; Kretchmar, Nyambe, Robinson, Sadeck, & Zeichner, 2012) are becoming increasingly important.
Close examinations of these reforms further show that even the same reform focus results in different policy design and implementation because of the cross-national differences in teaching and policy environments. For example, teacher evaluation reform has been implemented in the United States (Harris & Herrington, 2015), South Korea (Kang, 2013; Youngs et al., 2015), and Mexico (Luschei, 2013). Yet, the policy design and implementation are largely different. In South Korea, the teachers who excelled in teacher evaluation are rewarded a one-year paid sabbatical while the teachers who underperformed are also given time to participate in further professional development (Kang, 2013). It is the responsibility of the local education agencies to meet the learning needs of underperforming teachers by providing necessary professional development opportunities. In Mexico, teachers working in high-poverty schools receive greater points for salary raise and promotion than teachers in wealthier schools for the same level of performance, which resulted in more equal distribution of qualified teachers (Luschei, 2013).
In the United States, the complexity of educational governance system involving federal, state, and local (school districts and schools) authorities and decentralized education control (Fuhrman et al., 2007), unlike most industrialized nations, creates a context where teacher policies and reforms are highly contested, unstable, and fragmented (Cohen, 2010). As a result, within the federal focus on teacher and teacher education accountability, there exists a range of reforms targeting teacher recruitment through multiple alternative routes (Glazerman, Mayer, & Decker, 2006; Mitchell & Romero, 2010; Scribner & Heinen, 2009), teacher tenure (Harrison & Cohen-Vogel, 2013; Loeb, Miller, & Wyckoff, 2015), teacher evaluation (Harris & Herrington, 2015; Harrison & Cohen-Vogel, 2013), and teacher professional development (Akiba & Wilkinson, 2016; Loeb, Miller, & Strunk, 2009).
Ingvarson and Rowley in this issue found in their comparative study of 17 countries that teacher recruitment and selection system into teacher education programs in the United State is relatively weak and high-achieving countries with teacher education graduates with deeper content and pedagogical content knowledge tend to have a stronger teacher recruitment and selection system. They pointed out that these countries have centralized control over the number of pre-service teachers, set rigorous entry requisites to admit only high-achieving candidates, and ensure that teaching remains an attractive career choice for citizens.
The decentralized control of the K–12 education and teacher education in the United States means that the teaching environment consisting of the teaching profession, instructional context, and work context, as illustrated in Figure 1, vary significantly across states, districts, and schools and recruitment into teacher education programs mainly is driven by competitions to ensure sufficient enrollment to financially manage the programs instead of supplying effective teachers to schools by admitting only a small number of qualified candidates. The responsibility to increase teachers’ social status to address recruitment problems is assumed by no one as teachers’ working conditions, including salary and work assignments, are matters of school districts and schools that operate with unequal resources and capacity to support teachers (Cohen, 2010; Superfine et al., 2012). As pointed by Ingvarson and Rowley, shared responsibilities between state governments, teacher education programs, and the teaching profession to develop an integrated approach for recruitment and selection, program accreditation, and entry to profession would be an important consideration.
The decentralized educational control and limited capacities of the federal and state departments of education to effectively engage in the development of the teaching workforce (Cohen, 2010; Superfine et al., 2012) are among important factors that influence the teacher reform focus, design, and implementation in the United States. This unique policy environment combined with the complex and diverse teaching environment poses a major challenge in achieving a systemwide improvement of teaching and student learning. Such challenge was evident in a case of lesson study policy implementation in Florida (Akiba, 2016; Akiba & Wilkinson, 2016). This case illustrates how a transnational reform idea such as lesson study was interpreted and adapted to fit within unique teaching and policy environments different from those in Japan where lesson study originated.
In response to the call for innovation in the Race to the Top program, the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) decided to implement lesson study as one of 13 state projects after the Chancellor of Public Schools traveled to Japan and brought back the idea of lesson study for policy consideration. Without being fully aware of the teacher-driven, inquiry-based continuous learning process that requires a teaching environment with in-depth teaching expertise, time resources, and coherent curriculum and assessment system, lesson study was interpreted through the lens of existing belief of teacher professional development—a tool for implementing new teaching methods in the state standards aligned with the Common Core State Standards (Akiba, 2016)—instead of as a long-term process for achieving a systemwide improvement of teaching as described in Hiebert and Stigler’s article. As a result, the state policy mandated the districts with low-achieving schools to implement lesson study as another professional development model added to many existing professional development programs. Because the U.S. teaching environment does not provide sufficient time resources or professional autonomy for teachers to develop content and teaching expertise necessary for leading lesson study, most districts implemented it as one of the district-led short-term professional development programs that are completed in a few days without studying student thinking and instructional approaches (Akiba & Wilkinson, 2016). This major adaptation was necessary to make lesson study feasible to implement within the current teaching environment.
Understanding the unique teaching and policy environments within our own country in comparison to those in other countries is the first step before adopting and implementing a reform idea imported from oversea. The collective sensemaking of a new reform idea is largely influenced by the perceptions, beliefs, and experiences emerged out of the national teaching and policy environments that significantly vary across countries, as previous comparative research has shown. We need to move beyond simply learning from “international lessons” from high-achieving countries for seeking reform ideas as if they are the silver bullets for solving domestic problems. The perception of a teacher quality problem itself is influenced by global dynamics, whether it is a disappointing student performance in an international assessment or a media bashing of the teaching profession. Becoming aware of the influence of global dynamics on policy discourses and understanding the differences in the teaching and policy environments across countries will allow policymakers and researchers to think twice about following the education-economic growth myth and adopting “best practices” meeting the “international standards.”
Future Directions for Teacher Reforms in a Global Context
The focus on reforming teachers and their work emerged about two decades ago, and it continues to shape the direction of national policymaking around the globe. Based on the articles in this special issue and previous studies in the field of comparative education policy, this article presented a conceptual framework for examining cross-national difference in how a national government develops and implements a large-scale teacher reform. Informed by institutional theory and sensemaking theory, the conceptual framework illustrates that the collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation of teacher quality problem and solution among various policy actors is influenced by global dynamics as well as nation-specific teaching and policy environments. Three recommendations can be made for national policymakers as they continue to engage in developing and implementing large-scale teacher reforms.
First, it is important to understand that the policy discourse is influenced by global dynamics that constantly communicate urgency for a new teacher reform based on the shared belief that educational success determines the competitiveness in the knowledge-based global economy. The reason why many national policymakers perceive that participation in international assessments and promotion of 21st-century skills are legitimate directions to follow, despite the tenuous empirical link between education and economic growth, is because of the shared belief system in the global education culture shaped by global information networks and interactions. Becoming aware of the existence of this shared belief system allows policymakers to carefully reexamine their decisions considering the local needs of the teaching profession in the country. The complex nature of global dynamics involving multiple policy actors and information networks created by various sources means that each nation can intentionally interact with certain global actors or choose to accept only certain global messages based on the assessment of what benefits the country. The fluid nature of global education culture, which continues to change over time, means that each country can contribute to shaping and changing the culture instead of blindly following what is perceived to be legitimate in the knowledge-based global economy.
Second, it is important to understand how specific aspects of global dynamics enter the policy discourse and are interpreted and reinterpreted through the processes of sensemaking, negotiations, and contestations of teacher quality problem and solution to shape the development and implementation of a teacher reform. When policymakers have a better understanding of the unique teaching and policy environments in their own country, they are in a better position to understand the nature of the debate among policy actors and advocates and make informed decisions based on the prediction of the implementation challenges and successes. A systemwide improvement of teaching and student learning requires an awareness of the complex ecology of teaching and policy, as illustrated in Figure 1. Even though accountability may sound like a legitimate logic to drive teacher reforms for policymakers, it becomes clear that simply holding teachers or teacher education programs accountable without addressing the critical factors impacting them will not likely succeed.
Finally, understanding the differences in teaching and policy environments across countries would better inform the policymakers in deciding whether and how to import reform ideas from overseas. Many governments have voluntarily and involuntarily imported teacher reform ideas without fully understanding the national context surrounding the teaching profession. Understanding why the U.S. policies continue to focus on teachers instead of teaching, why the teacher recruitment and selection system in the United States is weak, and why Ghana continues to promote learner-centered pedagogy when it may not fit well within the hierarchical educational culture and structure is as important as knowing what is not working.
The United States has a long history of borrowing and adapting educational ideas and practices from overseas—starting from Montessori schools in the 1950s, to International Baccalaureate in the 1970s, Reading Recovery from New Zealand in 1980s, and more recently, Singapore Math and lesson study during the past two decades (Editorial Projects in Education, 2012). Most recently, the reference to the focused, rigorous, and coherent national standards in high-achieving countries along with the U.S. underperformance in PISA and TIMSS was used to support the Common Core State Standards implemented since 2010 (McDonnell & Weatherford, 2013). Each reform model or idea emerged and developed within specific teaching and policy environments, and understanding the differences in the teaching and policy environments between the exporting and importing countries is necessary before fully embracing international innovations or borrowing reform ideas from other countries. Learning from the history of importing and adapting international innovations—its successes and challenges—could be an important step for understanding what could work within the unique teaching and policy environments that surround the teaching profession in each country.
Future Research Agenda in Comparative Education Policy
The expansion of international databases on teachers—TIMSS teacher background surveys, TALIS, and TEDS-M—contributed to advancing our knowledge on the cross-national similarities and differences in the characteristics of teachers and their work as well as how they are associated with student achievement. Combined with regional qualitative studies, we now have a better understanding of the cross-national differences in the teaching environment—the teaching profession, instructional context, and work context. A growing number of studies have also documented the focus, design, and implementations of teacher reforms in various national contexts (Akiba, 2013; Akiba & LeTendre, in press; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007). The next step is to understand how global dynamics influences the national policy discourse and how various factors in the teaching and policy environments influence the collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation of teacher quality problem and development of a teacher reform as a solution.
To address the question of what explains the cross-national difference in how a nation interprets global messages, identifies a teacher quality problem, and develops and implements a teacher reform, three areas of research need to be conducted. First, more research is needed to fully understand the complex nature of global dynamics influencing the policy discourses on teachers around the world. Existing research in this area focused on the roles of international assessments (H.-D. Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Wiseman, 2010) and intergovernmental organizations such as the OECD (Robertson, 2012), and little is known about the influences of non-system actors, media, teacher and researcher networks, and human capital migration on national policymaking on teachers. More importantly, what global messages from which global sources are perceived as important by policymakers and used to support a specific teacher reform in various national contexts needs to be examined. Future studies can conduct interviews with policymakers, analysis of interactions in international meetings on teacher reforms, and policy document analysis to understand global dynamics and its potential influences on teacher reform development and implementation in various national contexts.
Second, more cross-national and comparative studies on the policy environment—teacher reform focus, design, and implementation—are needed. Most existing research on teacher reforms focuses on single countries to describe the background, design, and implementation of a specific reform (e.g., teacher evaluation, teacher certification). These studies have revealed that not all teacher reforms are driven by an accountability logic, although many are, and there are more challenges than successes reported in implementation (Akiba, 2013; Akiba & LeTendre, in press; Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Tatto, 2007). In addition, differences in the reform design within the same focus (e.g., teacher evaluation) have been reported, reflecting differences in the policy assumptions about teachers and their roles, as we have seen in the cases of the United States, South Korea, and Mexico, described previously. Future studies need to examine how the differences in the teaching and policy environments across countries result in divergent focus, design, and implementation of teacher reforms within the global convergence for reforming teachers and their work. Other important factors influencing implementation—such as involvement of teachers in policymaking processes (e.g., Bascia, in press), which impacts the commitment and capacity of teachers as implementers and coherence of the reform with institutional, organizational, and policy contexts and material, human, and social resources available for implementation—need to be investigated through comparative studies. A better understanding of the policy environment in various national contexts allows researchers to address an important policy question of why so many nations focus only on one aspect of the teaching profession (e.g., certification, evaluation) and fail to take an integrated approach to address the teacher workforce development (Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Superfine et al., 2012).
Finally, cross-national differences in the processes of collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation of a teacher quality problem and a reform proposal as a solution among national and local policy actors need further investigations. The cross-national variation in the governance structures across countries (e.g., degree of centralization/decentralization, teacher involvement in formal policymaking processes) result in different degree and nature of processes for collective sensemaking, negotiation, and contestation. The structure of interactions and decision-making opportunities (e.g., policy committees, town hall meetings, information and feedback sessions) given to various levels of policy actors shape these processes. The differences in various factors within the teaching and policy environments and relationships among these factors shape the perceptions about the teachers and their work, which influences what teacher reform focus and design make sense and are considered reasonable and feasible for implementation by various policy actors.
It is also important to recognize that the availability of research knowledge on teacher reforms in a global context is impacted by researchers’ access to information mediated through relationships with policymakers. Because of the easier access to teacher education programs in higher education settings and pre-service and in-service teachers in many countries as well as the availability of measurable survey data in international databases such as TIMSS and TALIS, the available knowledge of teacher reforms tends to focus on snapshots of teacher education and perspectives of teachers and their classroom and work contexts instead of the interactions between global dynamics and national and local teaching and policy environments for influencing the process of developing and implementing a teacher reform.
To reveal and compare the process of teacher reform development and implementation across countries, cross-national collaborations of researchers and partnerships with policymakers at various governmental levels would be beneficial. Cross-national collaborations of researchers expand the current English-dominant research knowledge to include non-English research knowledge on teacher reforms. Partnerships with policymakers allow researchers to engage in the processes of collective sensemaking, negotiations, and contestations of teacher quality problem and its solution, bringing the knowledge of research findings to this process while understanding the complexity of policymaking that occurs within the diverse teaching and policy environments influenced by global dynamics. This would promote important research and policy dialogues that could inform the future success and challenge of large-scale teacher reform implementation in a global context.