What makes for a satisfied science teacher?

by Tarek Mostafa
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Teachers play a vital role in the lives of their students. They impart knowledge, provide pastoral care, act as role models and, above all, create an environment that’s conducive to learning. But teaching is

What does teaching look like? A new video study

by Anna Pons
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

Looking – literally – at how teachers around the world teach can be a game changer to improve education. The evidence is clear that teachers are what makes the greatest difference to learning, outside students’ own backgrounds. It is widely recognised that the quality of an education system is only as good as the quality of its teachers. Yet we know relatively little about what makes a good and effective teacher.

Our new research project, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Video Study, aims to help us learn more about how our teachers teach. The study aims to provide a better understanding of which teaching practices are used, how they are interrelated, and which are most strongly associated with students’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes.

The TALIS Video Study is based on a truly innovative research design. It uses videos to capture what goes on in the classroom, and also surveys teachers and students, measures students’ learning gains, and looks into instructional materials to get as complete a picture of teaching as possible. The study will not produce a comprehensive assessment of “the state of teaching”, a global assessment of teachers or a ranking of the quality of countries’ teachers. Instead, we’ll be gaining valuable insights into the practice of teaching and student learning.

We don't really know how teaching and learning unfold in classrooms across the globe. At the OECD, we have asked teachers and students about what goes on in class; we have measured students’ outcomes and teachers’ knowledge, and collected information about the resources at teachers’ disposal and their autonomy in shaping their lessons. But that doesn’t give us a complete picture of what teaching looks like and how it influences student outcomes. Watching peers in action, though, can help teachers become aware of their own teaching methods, reflect on other approaches, and understand what innovative pedagogies actually mean in practice.

The importance of observing real teaching can only increase as the job becomes ever more challenging. Teachers are being asked to move away from teacher-centred methods and to cater to the different learning needs, styles and pace of their students. They are also expected to meet the demands of rapidly changing environments, from being able to use new technologies to assist them in their lessons, to understanding how to teach students from increasingly diverse backgrounds.

Observing how teachers around the world deal with similar challenges in different ways can offer useful new insights. Differences in teaching practices are greater between countries than within countries, particularly when it comes to student-centred and innovative teaching practices. This is because teaching practices are strongly influenced by national pedagogical traditions and do not travel easily. Opening up peer observations to the entire world can provide fresh ideas about how teachers can improve their own practice, no matter where in the world they teach.

Links
Teaching in Focus No. 20 - What does teaching look like? A new video study
Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

Join us on Edmodo

What matters for managing classrooms?

by Francesca Gottschalk
Consultant, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Teaching is a demanding profession. Teachers are responsible for developing the skills and knowledge of their students, helping them overcome social and emotional hurdles and maintaining equitable, cohesive and productive classroom environments. On top of their teaching responsibilities, they are also expected to engage in continued professional development activities throughout their careers. The demands of the job are many and varied, and teachers tend to report some of the highest levels of workplace stress of any profession. This contributes to the loss of many talented and motivated individuals from the teaching workforce.

Teachers, especially the least experienced, tend to report that student disengagement and misbehaviour is one of the biggest stressors. In fact, terms like “reality shock” or “shattered dreams” are sometimes used to describe what happens when teachers are first put in front of a classroom.

So, what can be done? There are a number of ways to soften the sometimes harsh contrast between their expectations and what really goes on in the classroom. Specialised training and practicum during teacher education programmes can help prepare new teachers for the realities of teaching, while protective factors, such as teacher self-efficacy or confidence in their skills, can also make a big difference. When teachers are capable and confident in classroom management, ensuring that lessons are run smoothly in an organised classroom environment, student learning and positive social and emotional outcomes can be enhanced.

How can we establish if teachers have this “protective factor” and are confident in their abilities? The Innovative Teaching for Effective Learning Teacher Knowledge Survey offers a unique opportunity to better understand teachers’ professional competence and how this is developed. The pilot study assessed teachers’ pedagogical knowledge (or, in simple terms, what teachers know about teaching and learning), their opportunities to learn, and other professional competences, such as self-efficacy. Teachers’ knowledge of classroom management is part of their “toolkit” of instructional processes, which also encompasses elements like teaching methods and lesson planning.

The pilot results suggested that in-service and pre-service teachers have a relatively strong knowledge of classroom management, especially in comparison to other areas of pedagogical knowledge. Teachers who reported being confident in their classroom management skills also reported being provided with lots of opportunities to learn how to manage classrooms and tended to be more experienced teachers. As there is a link between teacher confidence and retention, the relationship uncovered between learning opportunities and self-efficacy in this pilot study is quite promising!

Furthermore, since experienced teachers tended to show higher self-efficacy than their pre-service counterparts, it could be helpful to build more field experience into teacher education. Many countries across the OECD, such as Estonia, Hungary and Israel, are already doing this. Similarly, longer induction sessions before entering the teaching workforce could also help bridge the gap between expectations and reality – this approach will be important to explore further, especially as teachers find classroom disturbances to be one of the most stress-inducing parts of their jobs. If left unchecked, it can eventually lead to burnout.

The pilot project was an initial exploration of teacher knowledge and competence that has laid the groundwork for future work on a larger scale. Its purpose was to provide evidence that can help shape policies to improve teacher preparation and education, but it can also help to attract (and retain) high-quality individuals to the profession.

Strong education systems depend on having an effective teaching workforce. It is therefore essential to equip them with the knowledge and skills for them to be effective and confident in the classroom. In order to keep them there, countries need to focus on piecing together the “shattered dreams” of teachers, and supporting them as much as possible along the way.

Links
Teaching in Focus No. 19 - How do teachers become knowledgeable and confident in classroom management? Insights from a pilot study
Innovative Teaching for Effective Learning Teacher Knowledge Survey
Understanding teachers' pedagogical knowledge: Report on an international pilot study

Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

What today’s teachers need to know

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

I’ve often said that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. How, then, do teachers become really good at their jobs? One important way is by learning from one another – across classes, across schools, and yes, even across countries. That’s why the OECD is a knowledge partner of the 2017 Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum, which is being held in Abu Dhabi on 7 and 8 October. The Forum is bringing together more than 900 teachers from 83 countries to discuss “Teaching for Tomorrow”.

The focus of the forum couldn’t be more timely. According to reports by the World Economic Forum, one-third of the skillsets required to perform today’s jobs will be entirely redundant by 2020. And experts assert that nearly two-thirds of children entering primary school today will end up working in jobs that do not yet exist. The dilemma for teachers is that the kinds of things that are easiest to teach and easiest to test, are precisely the things that are also easy to digitise, automate and outsource. If we want to educate students for their future, rather than for our past, we need to better understand the future and what it implies for teaching today.

“Qudwa” is the Arabic word for “role model”. Teachers are role models for their students, and they can also be leaders in their communities. They need to learn how best to prepare children for living and working in this new, highly digitised world so that tomorrow’s communities are cohesive and productive. We know so much more about what makes for effective teaching; and we now have the tools to amplify and share this knowledge so that we can develop a global network of change leaders.

Participants at the forum will be sharing information and exchanging their views about the most effective teaching strategies, using technology in the classroom, making schools more inclusive, and engaging with parents, among many other topics. Most of the discussions will be based on data collected by the OECD: a strong foundation on which a high-quality teaching force – and thus high-quality education systems – can be built. Like all of us, teachers need inspiration to perform at their best; I’m certain they will find lots of it in Abu Dhabi this weekend.

Links

Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum

Read the OECD Policy Briefs

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #Qudwa2017

Photo credit: Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum

Back to school time: “Think beyond grades – to life”

Facebook Live session with Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills

by Marilyn Achiron, Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

This back-to-school moment is a great time to grab a few minutes with Andreas Schleicher, head of the Directorate for Education and Skills, to get his thoughts about preparing for – and succeeding in – the school year ahead.

In our Facebook LIVE interview yesterday, he said that “there’s always something interesting happening in school”, and suggested that students “think beyond grades – to life”. Schleicher said of teaching that “there’s probably no tougher job today”.

What is common to the best-performing countries in PISA? According to Schleicher, these countries “believe in the future more than in consumption today; they make an investment in education”; “they believe in the success of every child”; and “they can attract the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms”.

We also talked about student anxiety, class size, homework and the kinds of skills students today need to acquire.

Schleicher also hinted at some interesting data, to be published next Tuesday in Education at a Glance 2017, on who studies what, and what that means for employment and earnings later on.

Take a look!

Links

Education at a Glance (EAG) 2017 will be launched on 12 September 2017 at 11:00 am, Paris time
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

#OECDEAG
Join our OECD PISA Learning Community on Facebook

Awarding – and imagining – teaching excellence

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Tonight, the winners of the Higher Education Academy’s newly launched Global Teaching Excellence Award will be announced. The award is a milestone in advancing the higher education agenda. It’s time for teaching excellence to attain the same status and recognition as academic research, which still seems the dominant metric for valuing academic institutions, whether we look at rankings published in the media or research assessment frameworks or at performance-based funding for research.

There are compelling reasons to change this, and the award makes a start.

Tertiary qualifications have become the entrance ticket for modern societies. Never before have those with advanced qualifications had the life chances they enjoy today, and never before have those who struggled to acquire a good education paid the price they pay today. There are always those who argue that the share of young people entering higher education or advanced vocational programmes is too large. But they are usually talking about other people’s children. In the past century, they would have probably argued that there are too many children in high school.

The evidence is clear. On average across OECD countries, men with at least a bachelor’s degree earn over ÚSD 300 000 more than what they paid for their education or lose in earnings while studying, compared with those who only have a high school degree. And taxpayers too realise a return of over USD 200 000 per tertiary graduate in higher public revenues and lower social transfers. It is hard to think of a better investment at a time when knowledge and skills have become the currency of modern societies and economies. And despite the burgeoning number of graduates, we have seen no decline in their relative pay, which is so different from those with fewer qualifications.

But it’s also clear that this entrance ticket to the knowledge society is expensive; and people are generally allotted just one. That makes it so important to get it right. And this is where teaching excellence comes in. We all know that more education alone doesn't automatically translate into better jobs and better lives. We might know graduates who can’t find a job even as we hear employers lament that they can’t find people with the skills they need. Teaching excellence is about ensuring that the right mix of knowledge and skills is delivered in effective, equitable and efficient ways.

And the value of teaching is only bound to rise as digitalisation unbundles educational content, delivery and accreditation in higher education. In the digital age, anything that today you call your proprietary knowledge and content is going to be a commodity available to everyone tomorrow. Accreditation still gives universities enormous power to extract monopoly rents, but just think a few years ahead. What will micro-credentialling do to this system? Or think of what happens when all employers can see beyond degrees to the knowledge and skills that prospective employees actually have. That leaves the quality of teaching as perhaps the most valuable asset of modern higher education institutions. It becomes harder for universities to hide poor teaching behind great research. We are living in this digital bazaar and anything that is not built for the network age is going to crack apart under the pressure.

Future jobs are likely to pair computer intelligence with the creative, social and emotional skills, attitudes and values of human beings. It will then be our capacity to innovate, our awareness and our sense of responsibility that will harness the power of the machines to shape the world for the better. That means faculty need to look for outcomes that are fresh and original, that contribute something of intrinsic positive worth. Achieving these outcomes is likely to involve entrepreneurialism, imagination, inquisitiveness, persistence and collaboration.

As a result, universities’ previous priority of preparing a select few for research has given way to providing up to half the population with advanced knowledge and skills. The result has been the rapid expansion of the higher education sector and the establishment of more diverse types of higher education institutions. There are now over 18 000 higher education institutions in 180 countries that offer at least a post-graduate degree or a four-year professional diploma.

This historic shift has been accompanied by changes in funding regimes. The rising costs of higher education are increasingly borne by students themselves (see, for example, the United Kingdom). So it follows that students are becoming more discriminating consumers. And in choosing between universities, they are also thinking ahead about securing future employment. In response, institutions are competing to provide more relevant knowledge and skills through more effective teaching.

These sweeping developments in the higher education marketplace are intensifying competition. Indeed, a global education market has emerged. In 2015, there were 3.3 million students travelling across OECD countries to study. Others look to the new, internationally available, digital platforms to provide or supplement their learning.

Taken together, these developments have created an urgent demand for data to measure and improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Institutions need data to build on competitive strengths and address weaknesses. Governments need data to determine policy and funding priorities. Employers need data to assess the value of qualifications. And, perhaps most important, students themselves need data so that they can make informed decisions about their preferred place of study and show prospective employers evidence of what they have learned.

But these demands are still often unmet. Without such data, judgements about the quality of higher education institutions will continue to be made on the basis of flawed rankings, derived not from outcomes, nor even outputs, but from idiosyncratic inputs and reputation surveys.

Everyone knows how important data are to me, but I’m also well aware that throwing data into the public space does not, in itself, change the ways students learn, faculty teach and universities operate. We need to get out of the “read-only” mode of our education systems, in which information is presented in a way that cannot be altered. To really change education practice, we need to combine transparency with collaboration.

I am always struck by the power of “collaborative consumption”, where online markets are created in which people share their cars and even their apartments with total strangers. Collaborative consumption has made people micro-entrepreneurs; and collaborative consumption is fuelled by building trust between strangers.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of technology is not only that it serves individual learners and educators, but that it can create an ecosystem around learning. Technology can build communities of learners that make learning more social and more fun. And it can build communities of faculty to share and enrich teaching resources and practices. Imagine the power of a higher education system that could meaningfully share all of the expertise and experience of its faculty.

What if we could get faculty working on curated crowd-sourcing of best teaching practice, and perhaps even across institutional and national borders? Technology could create a giant open-source community of faculty, unlocking the creative skills and initiative of so many people simply by tapping into the desire of people to contribute, collaborate and be recognised for it. And we could use technologies to liberate learning from past conventions, connecting learners in new ways, with new sources of knowledge, with innovative applications and with one another. Maybe that’s something for next year’s teaching excellence award.


For the latest data on tertiary education, look out for Education at a Glance 2017, which will be published on 12 September.

Links

Global Teaching Excellence Award

Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators

Photo credit: @shutterstock 

Finding and cultivating talented teachers: Insights from high-performing countries

by Esther Carvalhaes
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Teachers are the backbone of any education system. After all, without qualified teachers, how can governments and schools secure each child’s right to quality education and build a society of educated citizens, capable of shaping their own future?  But selecting the right candidates to the profession – aspiring teachers who hold the promise of becoming great teachers – can often feel like an elusive task. The complications start with the very definition of what a good teacher is.

In a rapidly changing world, having a strong knowledge base in their subject area, good classroom management skills and a commitment to helping students learn may no longer be enough to meet the expanding role of teachers. Nowadays, teachers are expected to teach diverse groups of students, adapt to new technologies and curricular changes, and be attuned to the skills, values and attitudes that their students will need in the near future. The reality is: most teachers develop those skills on the job, which makes it harder to predict from the outset who has the potential to become an effective teacher.

But that does not deter some PISA high-performing countries from keeping a close eye on the pool of candidates entering the profession. As this month’s PISA in Focus shows, in Finland, Hong Kong (China), Macao (China) and Chinese Taipei, for example, those who wish to enter a teacher training programme must pass a competitive entry examination. In Japan, it is not enough to receive training from such programmes: graduates must pass a competitive examination before they start teaching. In Singapore, recruitment starts by looking at the best students from the secondary school graduating class; in addition, teaching graduates must complete a probation period in order to teach. Yet, some of these requirements are also found in low-performing countries, showing that selection mechanisms alone are not enough to ensure a qualified teaching force.

Certification requirements add another quality checkpoint to the profession. Research shows that students learn more from teachers who are certified in the subject they teach compared to those taught by uncertified teachers. In PISA 2015, countries that performed above the OECD average in science have a higher percentage of fully certified teachers (92%) compared to other countries (76%), on average. In OECD countries, even though almost all teachers are certified, a modest but positive association is observed between the proportion of fully qualified teachers and student performance.

High-performing countries also know that great teaching may only occur after a good deal of practice, allowing teachers to deepen their knowledge base and skills. This is why professional development is critical, particularly school-based activities. In high-performing countries, at least 80% of students are in schools that invite specialists to conduct teacher training, organise in-service workshops or where teachers co-operate with each other, while only 40% to 60% of students in Algeria, Brazil, Kosovo and Turkey are in such schools. Within countries, teacher collaboration clearly pays off: students in schools where teachers co-operate by exchanging ideas or materials score higher in science. It makes sense: rather than sitting through hours of mandatory lectures that are only weakly connected to their day-to-day practice, teachers benefit more from learning from each other and from sharing “tried and tested” techniques that work in their own contexts, as TALIS results also show.

These are some of the ways in which countries boost teacher quality: they strive to attract the best candidates to the profession, but also foster a culture of continuous learning by engaging teachers in professional development and in peer networks to strengthen their knowledge and maintain high standards of teaching. Together with the ability to take work-related decisions, these form the pillars of a professional teacher workforce.

Links
PISA in Focus No. 70: What do we know about teachers’ selection and professional development in high-performing countries?
PISA 2015 Results (Volume I): Excellence and Equity in Education
Teaching in Focus No. 14: Teacher Professionalism

The 2017 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP 2017)
29-31 March in Edinburgh, Scotland
Join a public webinar on Wednesday, 29 March, 12:00pm Europe Summer Time (Paris, GMT +02:00) with Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Education and Skills Directorate.
Follow on Twitter #ISTP2017

photo credit:friendly senior high school teacher helping students in classroom @shutterstock

Why do so many women want to become teachers?

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education and Skills 

It is well known that the share of women in the teaching force is growing. According to the latest Education Indicators in Focus brief, the average share of female teachers across OECD countries increased from 61% in 2005 to 65% in 2010 and to 68% in 2014, in all education levels combined. Around 82% of primary school teachers and 63% of secondary school teachers are women. Some policy makers see this trend as a cause for concern, citing, among other things, that the lack of male teachers and role models might play a role in the decline of learning outcomes among young boys. But it seems fair to say that few people would be concerned about a similarly skewed gender imbalance in other professions if it benefited men.

The statistics on the age distribution of male and female teachers show that the gender imbalance in the teaching profession will increase even more in the years to come. At the lower secondary level, women make up 70% of teachers under the age of 30, while they account for 65% of those aged 50 and over. This pattern is observed in 22 out of 35 countries with available data. The larger proportion of women among young teachers raises concerns about future gender imbalances at the lower levels of education, where women already dominate the profession.

Gender imbalances among teachers have a lot to do with gender stereotyping, and the power and prestige connected with certain occupations within the profession. This is seen in the smaller shares of female teachers in the higher levels of education, in (perceived) more prestigious fields of study and in leadership positions. Women fill only 43% of the jobs in tertiary education. In secondary school, women are less frequently found teaching science, mathematics and technology classes. And, on average across OECD countries, 68% of lower secondary teachers are women, but only 45% are principals. This is particularly striking given that principals tend to be recruited from among the ranks of teachers – suggesting that female teachers are less likely to be promoted to principal than their male counterparts. So, the large share of women in the teaching profession is, itself, skewed towards specific jobs: those at the bottom of the education pyramid and the bottom of the hierarchy of power.

So why, then, do so many women want to become teachers? Gender imbalances in teaching are the result of women’s conscious and strategic choices as much as of labour market conditions, social norms and cultural messages. In many countries, women’s increased participation in the labour market coincided with the need for more trained teachers in expanding education systems. Countries where female labour participation in general is low, like Japan, also have the smallest shares of female teachers. In addition, stereotypical views of teaching as a profession that, at times, resembles parenting, probably play a role, especially with younger generations of women who apparently value motherhood more than their own baby boom mothers did. Labour provisions that allow teachers to work part time and to flexibly combine work, family life and the care of one’s own children also seem to be more appealing to women.

But less well-known is that the salaries of teachers, as measured against the average wages of other tertiary-educated workers, are much more attractive for women than for men. As shown in the chart above, on average across OECD countries, male primary school teachers earn 71% of the wages of other tertiary-educated men. But female teachers earn a significantly higher relative wage. Women in primary education earn over 90% of the salaries of other tertiary-educated female workers. While men and women doing the same teaching job in public schools earn nearly the same, the relative value of their earnings in the professional labour market is strikingly different. This is probably why more women are interested in teaching, especially at the lower levels of education.

Paradoxically, introducing a greater gender balance into the teaching profession depends on the extent to which and the speed with which other sectors reduce gender gaps in earnings. But the education sector could do much more to ensure that women are promoted into leadership positions, and to end the stereotyping that prevents women from breaking the glass ceiling in specific subject areas and in universities. It could also do more to attract young men into teaching by offering them better career prospects and labour conditions that can make teaching a more competitive career choice, even if teachers’ salaries still lag behind those of other professionals.

Links: 
Education Indicators in Focus No. 49: Gender imbalances to the teaching profession
Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators
Follow the conversation on twitter: #OECDEAG

Chart source: OECD (2016), Education at a Glance (database)

Opening up to Open Educational Resources

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Technology has a profound impact on our lives. A few days ago, an inmate who spent 44 years
behind bars was released from prison and could not believe what he saw on the streets: people with wires in their ears using strange devices to talk to invisible friends. Maybe his confrontation with the modern world would have been less of a surprise if he had visited a school first.

Technology has indeed entered the classroom; but it has not yet changed the ways we teach and learn to the same extent that it has transformed our way of communicating in the outside world. In our private lives we freely share experiences, thoughts and feelings with friends all over the world; but in classrooms we tend to stick to the traditional carriers of knowledge – textbooks, which are certified for use by the bureaucracy and well-aligned to a prescribed curriculum.

But maybe this is about to change. Technology could give education access to the nearly unlimited teaching and learning materials available on the Internet, which are often in much nicer and pedagogically better-designed formats than can be developed by individual teachers. “Open Educational Resources”, or OER as we call them, are not new, but we are now seeing a real breakthrough in availability, usability and quality. In 2007, the OECD analysed the emergence of OER in its book, Giving knowledge for Free. A new publication, Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation, supported by a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, takes stock of where we are in 2015.

The most immediate benefit of OER is the open (through open licenses) and free (in most cases at no cost) access to quality teaching and learning materials, often in multimedia formats. OER provide an alternative to costly textbooks and, hence, might lead to significant savings for both schools and learners. International organisations, such as UNESCO, and national governments, such as the federal government in the United States, see an enormous opportunity in OER to widen access to high-quality teaching and learning resources in poor countries or among disadvantaged communities of learners.

A few years ago, the development of free and accessible resources was stymied, partly because of some resistance among education publishers and ill-adapted intellectual property regulations. But over the past few years we’ve seen OER mainstreamed into several education systems.

But OER has an even much richer potential. As the title of the new book suggests, OER is also a catalyst for innovation in education. For example, we know from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) how important teacher collaboration is for the development of professional practice, efficacy and job satisfaction. We also know how difficult it is to convince teachers to work together, even within the same school. One of the most interesting characteristics of OER is that, if licensed properly, they invite users to continuously improve and update educational resources. OER enables teachers to engage in communities of practice not only for exchanging resources, but also for modifying and developing resources collaboratively. Teachers willing and able to enrich their teaching practices beyond the prescribed curriculum and available textbooks will find OER to be a fantastic way to connect to colleagues all over the world to jointly develop new resources. The OER depositories are full of resources that have been developed by inspired teachers working together.

Some people and organisations fear that technology will lead to the de-skilling and disempowerment of teachers. Yes, there is a risk that the availability of an infinite wealth of information on the Internet may deprive teachers of their authority as being the possessors of knowledge, or that it may engender a laissez-faire attitude among teachers. But the professional responsibility of teachers goes well beyond asking students to look for information in Wikipedia. OER invite teachers to reinvent their professional responsibilities and add to their pedagogical expertise and experience to enable students to turn information and knowledge into real learning.

The potential of OER to catalyse change and innovation in education is not yet well understood by many governments. But that is changing, too. A small survey, the results of which appear in the book, found that most governments are now considering various policies to support the production and use of OER, such as indirectly or directly funding them, developing codes of practice or guidelines for the production or use of OER, launching information campaigns aimed at schools, legislating the use of OER, supporting the development of OER repositories and/or encouraging research into OER. In the end, perhaps OER will be one of the most significant and substantive ways that technology will transform teaching and learning.

Links:

Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) Web page
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)

Photo credit: © vege - Fotolia.com