Toespraak Bussemaker (OCW) International Summit on the Teaching Profession

Toespraak | 13-03-2013

Ladies and gentlemen,

Just now during the plenary opening, I said that giving and receiving feedback is the key to good education.
During the sessions today and tomorrow, we will therefore be discussing what makes a good teacher. And how policy makers, society and teachers assess this quality.

The three questions that follow are just as important:

• Is this quality evidence-based?

• How can we assess this quality?

• And how can we ensure that assessments do not end up buried in a filing cabinet, but are put to good use in the daily practice of the classroom? So they really contribute to better teachers, better education and thus to a better future for our youth.

Each of us can understand something of what makes a good teacher, by thinking back to the most inspiring teacher we had at school.

In my case, that was my Dutch teacher.
What made her so wonderful was that she didn't just expect me to ask her questions, but she asked me questions too. She closely observed her students to see if we understood what she was saying.
And we hung on her every word.

I later became a teacher myself, in college, where I experienced the challenge and occasional uncertainty that teaching entails.
But I also experienced enthusiasm and the tremendous sense of satisfaction that you feel when your students really understand what you’re teaching them. In my case, that were history and political science, my passions indeed.

This magical process, which is sometimes also a struggle, has been the subject of many beautiful books and films.

Consider the French teacher François Bégaudeau from the film ‘Entre les murs’, who works miracles with inner-city school kids in Paris, but who also has no choice but to expel one of his students – though he does so with a heavy heart.

Or Theo Thijssen, a socialist teacher in Amsterdam in the first half of twentieth century. He kept a wonderful journal about his experiences as a teacher at a primary school in the Jordaan, at the time a poor working-class neighborhood, just a stone’s throw from here.
In one unforgettable passage he teaches his students decimal fractions, and describes the joy they experience when they suddenly ‘get it’.

Another moving moment is when, just before the summer break, he loses his temper in front of his class of forty kids and forcibly removes one of them from his classroom.
The incident keeps him awake for nights on end, until he happens to meet the boy out on the street. The boy takes him to his father’s cigar shop, beaming with pride.

Teachers make a lasting impression. They inspire new generations and prepare them for the future. In fact, theirs is actually the most important profession.

Everyone in this room can testify from personal experience that education is only as good as the teacher in the classroom. And research also proves this, time and again.

Last year, for example, the American economist Raj Chetty established a link between good teachers and the long-term success of their students. Kids who were taught by good teachers, were more likely to enter higher education, according to this study. He also demonstrated a relationship between good teachers and a higher socio-economic standing among their students in later life.

Good teaching – not just to keep abreast with the times but also be ahead of our time, as Singapore put it during the 2012 Summit – makes heavy demands of teachers.

There are three points I would like to mention in this respect.

First of all, good teaching requires good training.
Teaching is an intrinsically valuable profession and this must be reflected in teacher training.
Here in the Netherlands we are making the entry requirements more stringent for those wishing to embark on teacher training programs. This could result in fewer trainee teachers, but I am convinced they will be better motivated to succeed.

We also have the First Class program, which gives the best and brightest university students an opportunity to get acquainted with the profession. More than seventy percent of program participants opt for a career in education over business. Each year we receive more applications than we can handle, so we are currently developing an educational traineeship for this group of talented students. I'm very curious to hear how other countries approach this question.

Secondly, it is very important that the introductory period for new teachers is carefully structured and that they receive thorough supervision. We know from practice and from research that new teachers who receive no coaching tend to leave the profession more often than teachers who are properly supervised. For this reason, we in the Netherlands intend to offer new teachers better and more intensive coaching, so that the talent we need so desperately is not lost.

A third important factor is the professional development of teachers. Dutch schools receive funding for continuing education and training programs for teachers and school administrators.
In addition to this, teachers can apply for a grant for a Bachelor’s or Master’s program, or for pursuing a PhD. More than 33.000 teachers have already done so. We also have a professional register for teachers. To be included, teachers must adhere to a specific professional standard and meet continuing education requirements.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Teacher quality is thus based on their training, the supervision they receive as they begin their careers, and follow-up training and continuing education throughout their careers.

At the same time, individual preferences also play their part in the day-to-day practice of classroom teaching.
Last week, an educational advisory panel to the Dutch government called for a greater emphasis on finding ways for teachers to design their lessons based on their own personal missions, values and identities.

In his book ‘The courage to teach’, Parker J. Palmer has the following to say on this topic:
“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique, but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom, in community with their students and their subject.”

I could not agree more. It is my own experience as a teacher. And it is just what the most inspiring teacher we all had at school has shown us - just as all those unforgettable teachers in films and books.

But I also would like to add a fundamental point.
Education – whether it be in kindergarten or in a university setting – is never dependent on just one good teacher.
And autonomy is not the same as going it alone.

Good education can only be achieved by a team of professionals.

I would therefore like to mention two points which I think are crucial to the quality of teachers - and thus to the quality of education.

These are:

• peer review
• evidence-based education

First, peer review.

In recent years, the government of the Netherlands has taken a step back from overseeing day-to-day operations in our schools. The government will tell what students should learn, but not how they should learn it.

This is a conscious choice, based on the idea that this will empower schools to respond better to the complex issues of our time and the needs of parents and students.
This does make it more important to guarantee the quality of education.

Peer review, where teachers observe one another in a professional setting, is a good instrument with which to achieve this, I feel. Because being a good teacher, is a question of cooperation, learning from one another, developing lessons and learning materials together, and collective feedback mechanisms.

Peer review transfers ownership of good education to teachers and school administrators themselves.
It inspires colleagues in the teaching profession to enter into a debate about the qualities that make up a good teacher.
And it gives teachers the scope to work together on good education.

This is exactly the kind of culture we need in education: evaluating each other constructively, having the courage to ask each other what good education entails,
and what we need to achieve it. Teachers need to engage in this kind of debate for the teaching they do individually, and as a team of educational professionals.

In addition to peer review, and here I come to my second point, evidence-based education is another strategy that greatly appeals to me. I am convinced that it can make a huge contribution to the quality of education.

I was in New York last week to visit Bank Street College, a renowned teacher training institution that works according to the principles of evidence-based education. Teachers in the program put the theory into practice straight away, and then adjust it on the basis of their classroom experiences. Trainee teachers learn a great deal from each other by using the literature to reflect on their own experiences and interventions. Both trainers and trainees receive intensive supervision. And of course, Bank Street College also embraces peer review – not only once trainees have graduated and joined the profession, but also while they are still in training: students also review their peer students.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to conclude with the following.

My message is that good education can only be achieved by a team of professionals, because giving and receiving feedback is the key to good teaching.

In the context of guaranteeing quality, this means that the government is entitled to set quality requirements for teacher training programs, and for the development of teachers as professionals in the classroom.

At the same time, a professional learning culture must prevail not only at the policy level, but also in schools themselves. A culture in which teachers relish the challenge of taking responsibility for their own development and assume appropriate ownership of this challenge. And in which teams acknowledge what is going well, but also dare to identify areas for improvement.

Let’s work together on improvement these days.

Thank you very much for your kind attention.