On the Role of the Teacher – report by an expert panel. Fact sheet 2016:5

Also see the Norwegian version: Om lærarrolla – rapport frå ei ekspertgruppe. Faktaark 5/2016

Also see the spanish version: Informe de un grupo de expertos sobre el rol docente. Hoja informativa 5/2016

On 27 July 2015 Norway’s Minister of Education and Research appointed an expert panel to look into the role of the teacher in the education system. The group was due to report back by 15 August 2016. The panel was chaired by Professor Thomas Dahl, and the work of the panel resulted in the publication of the book “On the Role of the Teacher” on 20 June 2016. This fact sheet summarises the main findings in the report.

The purpose of the review was to obtain information in order to gain an insight into the current role of teachers seen from an historic perspective. The mandate given to the panel was to provide a presentation and an analysis of (1) how the teacher’s role and the teaching profession have developed over time, (2) how the role is currently being practised, and (3) how to strengthen and further develop the role.

Part of the reason for appointing the panel was the suggestion that key players in the education system perceive the state of our schools differently – particularly with regard to the role of the modern teacher.

What is the key message of the report?

Teachers play a crucial role in the knowledge society. Their task of giving pupils the best possible academic and personal starting point for participating in society has given teachers a very special role and a very special responsibility. Bearing in mind the strong emphasis on the social importance of the teaching profession, there have been frequent questions about whether teachers are doing a good enough job. Professionalisation has been the answer to the desire to make teachers better.
A key aspect of the panel’s work has been the relationship between professionalisation from above and professionalisation from within. The report states that is not a question of either or but of finding a good balance and identifying measures to enable professionalisation to take place. It claims that policies that fail to support the teachers’ professional learning communities will not serve any purpose.

Professionalisation and professional learning communities

Over the last couple of decades there has been some discord within the profession over being professionalised from above – by central and local government – versus being professionalised from within – by the profession itself. The professional learning community amongst teachers was severely weakened during the 1980s and 90s. The authorities abandoned long-standing consultation processes with the profession, and teachers’ unions prioritised battles over pay and working time over maintaining professional and ethical standards. The calls for professionalisation that have been made since the turn of the century have largely led to professionalisation from above. According to the expert panel, the aim has been to compensate for the lack of professionalisation from within. It is claimed that teachers have not been given a chance to develop their own standards for ensuring quality of professional practice, and that the teachers themselves have perhaps not taken the opportunities available to them.

The expert panel stresses the importance of having a professional learning community that can help develop a professional knowledge base and actively engage in developing our schools in partnership with school management, local education authorities and external stakeholders. The panel argues that the professional learning community could serve as a communications channel between individual teachers and the demands and expectations of the profession on the part of the authorities and society at large.

Strengthening professional learning communities

The expert panel takes the view that professional learning communities can play an important role in changing and developing our schools. For that reason, particular attention should be paid to the organisation and content of these professional learning communities, not only in individual schools, but locally, regionally and nationally.

In order to boost the professional learning communities, the panel recommends the following:

• Working time required at school should increasingly be spent on activities designed to strengthen the quality of the teaching.
• Strengthen teams within schools.
• Strengthen the role of school leaders as mentors for professional practitioners.
• Ensure that working time required at school is increasingly spent on activities that raise the quality of the teaching.
• Enable additional platforms for co-operation across schools and municipalities.
• Teachers should proactively engage in professional learning communities across different schools.
• The teaching profession should sustain a dialogue with the school’s stakeholders such as parents, the local community and employers.

Differentiating tasks

The expert panel claims that teachers are being overwhelmed by expectations and that their working day is becoming increasingly complex. The panel therefore feels that schools should recruit additional resources in order to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse pupil population. Inviting other professions into schools better enables teachers to concentrate on their teaching. The panel recommends the following measures:

• More professions should be recruited into schools.
• Explore the possibility of increased differentiation of the teaching role.

Teacher training

A number of steps have been taken in recent years to design teacher training programmes that meet the needs of schools and society and to better prepare the profession for the future. One key objective has been to raise professional standards and increase workload. Increased professional focus and research-based knowledge can help achieve this while also enabling new ways of integrating theory and practice. Master programmes may be one solution. The following recommendations are designed to increase the contributions made by teacher training programmes to the future role of teachers:

• Co-operation between higher education and schools should be strengthened.
• Co-operation over the supervision of newly qualified teachers should be strengthened.
• Co-operation over continuing professional development for teachers should be strengthened.
• The competencies and skills that students need in order to participate in a professional learning community should be strengthened.
• Explore opportunities for strengthening co-operation and integration between teacher training institutions and schools by allowing teachers with master’s degrees to split their working hours between school and teacher training institution.
• Look into the level and extent of centralised governance of teacher training institutions.
• Co-operation on research and development

The expert panel’s review of Norwegian research literature found that research subjects are largely based on political initiatives within the education sector and that evaluation and discussion linked to the execution and implementation of these initiatives are often at the centre of the research. Far fewer studies have looked at the teacher’s role from within and examined the teachers’ own experiences. As a result, this affects how students and teachers see the teacher’s role described in literature. On that basis, the expert panel has identified a need to bolster several aspects of research into the role of teachers. The panel has emphasised the following in particular:

• Teachers and research communities should co-operate on research and development.
• The amount of quantitative research should be increased.
• Research into how teachers organise their work and how different education stakeholders co-operate should be strengthened.
• More research into the development of schools and teaching.
• More research on education history.
• More publication in journals aimed at professional practice.

Policies for strengthening the teaching profession

The expert panel is interested in how the schools sector is governed and how we can support teachers’ and professional learning communities’ capacity for action and professional judgement. A number of measures have been introduced in recent years to develop schools and teachers. Yet the panel deems it a problem that teachers are being met by a multitude of conflicting expectations.

The panel should like to see a distribution of responsibilities whereby the authorities set a few overarching goals with associated quality indicators and where the profession is involved in setting targets locally. There is also a need for more honest and open communication concerning the problems and dilemmas that Norway’s comprehensive school system is facing and how challenging the teachers’ mandate is within this system. The teaching profession in Norway has a long-standing tradition of regulation by central government in terms of targets and content in which the profession is given responsibility for providing the best possible classroom teaching. Because teachers need to make numerous concrete choices in the classroom which it is neither possible nor desirable to programme, they need to be given freedom with responsibility in order to justify their choices based on professional standards and an up-to-date knowledge base. According to the panel, there is much to suggest that the profession is very much feeling this responsibility – perhaps more so now than in the past. This trend can also boost professionalisation from within as a requisite complement to professionalisation from above.

In order to improve governance of the sector, the expert panel recommends the following:

• Few but adequate and consensual targets should be set for the schools sector.
• A more open dialogue should be developed between the education authorities and schools about the tensions, dilemmas and conflicts that exist in our schools.
• There must be a balance between national and local quality assessment systems.
• We must gain acceptance for the teachers’ right to professional autonomy.
• The pace of reform should generally be slowed down.

The Union of Education Norway (UEN) believes that teachers must be given the support they need to allow them to be teachers

The report has been well received by the UEN. The panel’s use of the terms professionalisation from within and professionalisation from above are considered to be particularly useful when developing new policies to strengthen the role of teachers.

To the UEN, the essence of the report “On the Role of the Teacher” can be summed up in the phrase: “help teachers to be teachers”. By that we mean that development of the teaching profession must primarily take place from within, although local and central government have both a responsibility and an important role to play to allow this to happen. In other words, the authorities must support the teachers’ professionalisation from within rather than control it from above.

Sources

• Fagbokforlaget 2016: On the Role of the Teacher. A Knowledge Base.
• www.utdanningsforbundet.no 15 August 2016: “A welcome report on the role of the teacher”: www.utdanningsforbundet.no/Hovedmeny/Grunnskole/Nyheter/En-god-rapport-om-larerrollen