Teacher Quality In Canada

BEST PRACTICES FROM CANADA'S HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOL SYSTEMS Empowered Educators in Canada is one volume in a series that explores how high-performing educational systems from around the world achieve strong results. The anchor book, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, is written by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues, with contributions from the authors of this volume. Empowered Educators in Canada details the core commonalities that exist across Canada with special emphasis on the localized nature of the systems—a hallmark of Canadian education. Canada boasts a highly educated population, and the provinces/territories truly value education as evidenced by the significant proportion of public funds allocated to schooling. Operated by the provinces and territories, participation in kindergarten, primary, and secondary education is close to 100% across the nation. In addition to offering traditional academics, secondary education includes opportunities for students to attend technical and vocational programs. To demonstrate exemplary education systems, the authors examine two top-performing jurisdictions, Alberta and Ontario, which have developed strong supports for teacher development. Canadian teachers are highly qualified, and salary scales in all jurisdictions are typically based on a teacher's level of education and years of experience. While Canada has enjoyed much educational success, the education of First Nations students has historically been one of the country's more controversial and contentious issues. Overall, Canada is a country that is proud of its education system and places a high value on—and participation in—publicly funded education.

Virtually every Canadian has been influenced, for better or worse, by schoolteachers. Adults recall with clarity experiences with individual teachers; children are in contact with schoolteachers on a daily basis; parents know the importance of teachers in their children’s lives. Teachers are the key component in the hotly debated, heavily funded education systems across the country. Theirs is a profession at the centre of often contradictory interests: pedagogic, political, professional, and public. Alexander Lockhart offers a survey of elementary and secondary schoolteachers and presents a profile of the profession as a whole. Among the topics he discusses are the characteristics of today’s teachers, the conditions in which they work, their professional associations, career patterns in teaching, the political environment, current pedagogy, and the public interest. His findings reflect a profession in transition. In elementary schools two-thirds of teaching staff are women; in secondary schools two-thirds are men. Half of all Canada’s teachers are at mid-career, aged 35–49, and near the top of their salary levels. Teachers’ salaries have risen faster than the industrial composite in recent years, yet teachers are frustrated in their aspirations. As a group, Lockhart says, teachers have less autonomy than other professionals. Current policy directions and public attitudes aggravate this situation. Lockhart warns that the teaching profession is moving into crisis. The implications are serious, for our children, and for the quality of life throughout Canada as we look toward the twenty-first century.

Research surrounding teacher quality and teacher effectiveness has continued to grow and become even more prominent as teaching has become more professionalized globally and countries have invested more comprehensively in teacher education, certification, and professional development. To better understand teacher effectiveness, it is important to have a global viewpoint to truly understand how beliefs and practices vary in each country and can lead to different characterizations of what makes an effective teacher. This includes both cross-cultural commonalities and unique differences in conceptualization of teacher effectiveness and practices. With this comprehensive, international understanding of teacher effectiveness, a better understanding of best practices, teacher models, philosophies, and more will be developed. International Beliefs and Practices That Characterize Teacher Effectiveness identifies, shares, and explores the predominant conceptual understandings of beliefs and practices that characterize effective teachers in different countries. This book provides international and cross-cultural perspectives on teacher effectiveness and examines the prominent philosophies of teaching and pedagogical practices that characterize teachers in selected countries. Each chapter includes a background, such as history and undergirding philosophy within each country, effective teacher models, prominent applications of teacher effectiveness practices, and special or unique features of teaching in the specific countries mentioned. This book is essential for practicing educators in various countries, teacher educators, faculty, and students within schools and colleges, researchers in international comparative studies, organizations engaged in international education, and administrators, practitioners, and academicians interested in how teacher effectiveness is characterized in different countries and regions across the world.

This groundbreaking work examines teacher quality, work norms, and professional learning opportunities, using data from 15 countries. The authors compare and contrast the United States with two high-achieving countries--Japan and Australia--that have implemented very different approaches to improving teacher quality. Drawing on both large international data sets and ethnographic and small-scale studies, the book addresses critical questions: (2) How do teacher quality and teacher recruitment and hiring policies in the United States differ from those in other countries?; (2) How do the working conditions of U.S. teachers differ from those of teachers in other countries?; (3) How do U.S. teachers' opportunities for professional learning differ from those of teachers in other countries?; (4) How do the characteristics of the national teaching force influence student achievement?; And (5) What U.S. policies offer promise for improving teacher quality?

This report describes the current state of school board recruiting and retention practices in a sample of school boards. It provides tips to help boards tackle the issue of finding and keeping good teachers now and in the near future.