Comments, opinions and an occasional ramble
Teaching qualification is not the same as teaching quality
The Straits Times recently published a news story saying that three-quarters of Singaporean teachers now have degrees. It’s a good development to read about but I have a problem with the story. The story, at least from my perspective, conflates teaching qualification with teaching quality.
I quote the following paragraph from the news story:
NIE director Lee Sing Kong said Singapore should aim to have a high-quality teaching force where teachers have a university or even higher degrees.
He said that Finland, which is touted to have one of the best education systems in the world, requires all its new teachers to have at least a masters degree.
Prof Lee cited a recent report by consultancy firm McKinsey on the world’s best-performing school systems, which showed that ‘the quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else’.
Studies done in the United States have shown that if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed to be in the top fifth percentile of the profession, they end up in the top 10 per cent of student performers.
The reverse is also true – if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom.
While I do think that university education does help further one’s intellectual development, which in turn can help assist in one’s ability to teach, I do not think that quality teaching is necessarily positively correlated with the level of education. Even if you have a PhD, it doesn’t mean you can teach.
I remember that the best teachers I had in primary school were teachers without a degree. They did not have a degree, but they were dedicated teachers who were able to spark my interest in learning. They built a solid foundation and that helped me advance academically.
During my undergraduate days, I came across professors who couldn’t teach for nuts. I totally switched off during such lectures. They just droned on and on with powerpoint slides that are chock full of text in small font sizes. I don’t think one needs a PhD to know that such teaching makes students completely uninterested to learn.
I think at the end of the day, what is most important for a teacher is whether he/she is able to communicate with students in an engaging fashion. Of course, in the first place, the teacher should have a certain level of expertise in the subject area but beyond that, it is really about pedagogy and communication.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Aaron Ng on 26/12/2007 at 12:37 pm, and is filed under Perspective. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 2 years ago
The fact that 3/4 of our teachers are degree holders is not a particularly meaningful one. The question is, what kind of degrees do they hold? For example, a person who hold a degree in real estate management is not necessarily more qualified to teach to English to a primary school class than a A-level school leaver. The relevant question is how much relevant education our teachers have? For example, how many of our Mother tongue /English/Math/Science teachers have degrees in what they teach?
about 2 years ago
Fox,
Good point. I think teachers should have a strong grasp of their subject. However, even if you have a degree in that subject, it doesn’t necessary mean you can teach it well, though. This aside, I do think that it might be overkill to have a very highly educated teacher teach at lower levels. I don’t really think we need graduates for primary school kids. The average primary school kid probably won’t benefit in any way because they have yet to develop the necessary intellectual potential.
about 2 years ago
Lee Sin Kong is absolutely right. A good honours degree or a Masters degree is a high indication that the teacher is one of good quality, and has a high correlation with better student performance. In Finland, it has worked wonders for their system.
Well educated teachers across the board also injects a certain degree of fairness in the education system – which is good for the purposes of a more egalitarian society.
http://tehsitalk.blogspot.com/2007/09/finlands-egalitarian-shadow.html
about 2 years ago
totally agree with you that the key to being a teacher is to be able to communicate and engage; not qualification.
unfortunately, moe (just like other civil service) is too pre-occupied with qualifications. ask around teachers who are doing or have done upgrading degree and you realize most choose the easiest course and modules to get their degree for a PAY RAISE; not so much about equiping themselves for classroom teachings. in fact, I have even known of hods being pressurized to get their bachelor and masters.
about 2 years ago
Hello Aaron,
I haven’t been around recently, so I thought I’d drop by to say hi.
In education theory, there is a distinction between Subject Matter Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). The former is knowledge about the subject you teach (English, Physics, Literature, etc). The latter is knowledge about HOW to teach the subject in the classroom context.
To be a good and effective teacher, you need to have good PCK. However, you can only have good PCK if you have already established mastery of your subject matter knowledge. That said, to be a good A Level Physics teacher, you only need to be a master of A Level Physics. Having mastery of graduate level astrophysics doesn’t necessarily help you teach A Level Physics better.
The question to ask MOE now is: how does going for more graduates help produce greater PCK among teachers? One answer could be that many teachers in Singapore do not even have mastery of their individual subject matters in the first place. But usually teachers familiarize themselves with the syllabus within a few years of teaching. Subject-matter knowledge would have been sufficiently developed by then (caveat: except maybe of language teachers and humanities teachers).
Here is another answer: learning PCK is not easy. PCK is (supposedly) first taught in NIE, and then the teacher is expected to further develop their PCK on their own throughout their teaching careers, either by attending courses, through experimenting with their own classes, or just by sheer accumulation of experience. One might be inclined to think, that graduates, supposedly of greater intellectual development, would have a higher probability of achieving this than non-graduates.
If the above answer is true, then these questions are begged: are teachers really doing the above? Are they motivated to do the above? Is NIE really doing its job?
about 2 years ago
teh si,
I am still not quite sure if Finland’s success in education is due to its teachers having high qualifications. I suspect that their teachers probably undergo good teaching training as well. I don’t think that paper determines whether one is a good teacher or not because this simply means that the teachers we had of yesteryear were all rubbish teachers because they didn’t have degrees.
This being said, I do agree that teachers with degrees can certainly add value to students, but at elementary levels? I don’t know.
about 2 years ago
Hi FO,
Thanks for bringing in educational theory into the discussion. That was enlightening.
I think you should do a much more thorough writeup on this issue, since you are knowledgeable about this area and can probably explain in much greater depth than what I possibly can do.
about 2 years ago
you are too kind. and i am too bored of blogging. really.
when you going to invite us into your new house??
about 2 years ago
I think those who criticize the MOE here are simply targeting the rather amorphous nature of such similar claims. There are bound to be exceptions in this classroom or that teacher or another – either a Masters teachers who CMI or a non-degree holder who is the best teacher ever.
Studies in the USA are probably claiming that on average, better qualified teachers – and that in the USA content probably means having displayed subject competency by getting a minor or major degree in that subject – a requirement in some US states . Sure, there are exceptions where a Physics master degree holder cano be said to have subject competency but that it far less likely than that of a Physics A levels holder. To say that a Physics A Levels Holder might achieve the necessary subject competency does not negate the claim that better qualified teachers – meaning those who have at least a degree – perform better – for the students. And Finland, more than the US, have ensured that this is the case by ensuring a higher minimum standard.
The truth is, parents have no time and the state unable to judge which teacher is really good or lousy and have to come up with some standard, no matter how many exceptions they might provide.
NIE is not there to teach physics but teach people how to teach. That one is another issue altogether. People should first acquire that necessary subject competency studies then go NIE to be taught.
At the end of the day, what I don’t like is we have Singapore civil servants using US studies to push for changes when they can easily perform these studies in Singapore. If it is shown that it is indeed the case, that better qualified teachers correlate to better scores in Singapore, then it makes for a better argument. That said, I cannot imagine that a study Singapore will prove otherwise the thesis that better qualified teachers in classrooms will correlate to better scores.
about 2 years ago
Teh Si,
I think nobody is criticising MOE. I just didn’t feel comfortable to draw such a quick link between teaching quality and the level of paper qualifications. At the end of the day, correlation between two items indicates a relationship but the observed relationship could be the result of an intervening factor that is constantly causing a correlation to be observed. This means that the intervening factor is the “true” cause. Thus, I am not inclined to completely accept that better paper qualifications means better teaching quality.
Of course, if the same study was done in countries all over the world and the same correlation is observed all the time, then perhaps I would be more inclined to believe that better paper qualifications would necessarily lead to better teaching quality. For starters, we should research our home ground. I am not as confident as you in predicting that similar results will emerge in Singaporean classrooms. But, I could be wrong.
And, NIE does not exist just to teach people how to teach. They offer subject knowledge as well. See this link: http://www.nie.edu.sg/nieweb/programmes/loading.do?id=Foundation&cid=13467652
about 2 years ago
FO,
I hope to move in next week. Once I move in, I will be making plans for housewarming!
about 2 years ago
Here’s an interesting argument I forgot to bring up:
In NIE, graduates take the 1-year PGDE (post graduate diploma in education) course, while non-graduates either take the 3-year diploma or the 4-year Bachelors in Education. Some have argued that 1-year is way too little time to prepare anyone to be an effective teacher. On the other hand, non-graduates spent 3/4 years in NIE preparing to teach, and have a longer time span to develop their PCK compared to the 1-year program. (I’ve heard sources tell me that some educators in NIE try to extend the PGDE program to 2 years, but they face resistance from MOE who wants teachers to come out to the ground to teach as soon as possible)
How all this translates into how successful teachers become when they actually teach on the ground is a big question mark. I agree with TS, studies can be easily conducted locally, and probably should have been.
about 2 years ago
Hey FO,
What happened to your blog? Can’t seem to access it.
Housewarming? Hmmm.. Can I self invite so that I can arrange a massacre? Or maybe a priority hit.
To me, the problems with teachers is that it is not about qualifications or training or what not. It is about whether teachers see what they are doing as fulfilling a calling or getting a job.
A significant number of my acquaintances became teachers because they couldn’t find a better job elsewhere after considering perks and salary.
I remember there was a time some years ago when MOE went on this blitz in hiring and the package was quite good. Not sure about the terms though but I heard it was attractive among those who took it.
The strategy was to take it, ride out the hard economic times and move on to something better when economy improves.
Of course not all teachers are like that. But when you tweak the incentives, you build into the system a certain probability regarding the sort of candidates you will attract.
When I was in Primary School, the teachers I had were good because they truly saw it as a calling. There is a teacher I still remember fondly. The school did not institute any mandatory programs but she still stayed back to coach some of us to take part in external competitions because she felt it would be beneficial for us. She arranged everything and managed us outside the school’s auspices because she wanted to make a difference in our lives. And she did. I think I would have been a different type of student if not for teachers like her.
about 2 years ago
Quite true…I had an ex-engineer for a teacher who was really super in maths but couldn’t teach to save his life. He could produce the best answer sheets and took less than an average teacher to solve complex questions but just couldn’t make us understand his methods.
On the other hand, my tutor, an undergrad who was only 20/21 at that time, was quite weak in certain chapters and not ashamed to admit it before she thought me those chapters really motivated me to do well in maths. The things she taught me then(about 4 years ago) I still remember today.
about 2 years ago
This reminds me of the days when the National Library insisted on a Higher School Certificate the GCE A level equivalent when they recruited library officers whose job was just to process borrowing and returning of books, sorting, shelviing, binding and cataloging, and prepring acquisition lists of book titles. An O level entrant could have done all that save for the more complex cataloging.
So we now need university graduates to teach the three ‘R”s. What next? Diploma in marketing for counter sales staff? BA in geograhy for taxi drivers?
Singapore and Singaporeans believe in the paper trail. What we get is inflation of educational qualifications, nothing more nothing less…
about 2 years ago
Look like inflation is not just restricted to my daily cup of coffee.