Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers
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ATTRACTING, DEVELOPING AND RETAINING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS Country Background Report for Norway OECD March 2003 Selma Therese Lyng and Jon Frode Blichfeldt Work Research Institute INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................... 6 SUMMARY................................................................................................................. 7 SECTION 1: NATIONAL CONTEXT........................................................................10 1.1 Basic facts about Norwegian Education......................................................................... 10 1.2 General comments on the basic principles..................................................................... 10 Equal opportunities for all .............................................................................................. 10 Meeting the requirements of the labour market ........................................................... 11 Economy and labour ........................................................................................................ 12 Cultural aspects................................................................................................................ 13 Living conditions and schooling...................................................................................... 14 SECTION 2: THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AND TEACHING WORK-FORCE................16 2.1 The structure of primary and secondary education ..................................................... 16 National Support Institutions.......................................................................................... 17 2.2 Major reforms and innovations in the last ten years .................................................... 17 2.3 The legal framework of education .................................................................................. 18 2.4 The organization of compulsory education (1st - 10th grade)...................................... 19 2.5 The organization of upper secondary education. .......................................................... 22 2.6 Systems of bargaining ...................................................................................................... 26 SECTION 3: ATTRACTING ABLE PEOPLE INTO THE TEACHING PROFESSION ..................................................................................................................................28 3.1 Major concerns................................................................................................................. 28 3.2 Data, trends and factors................................................................................................... 31 Main pathways by which people can become teachers:................................................ 31 Major trends / changes in the proportion of people entering by different pathways 32 Former teachers returning to school .............................................................................. 33 Reasons for choosing teacher education......................................................................... 33 3.3 Salaries and working conditions: teaching compared with similar professions......... 35 Salaries .............................................................................................................................. 35 1 Working conditions.......................................................................................................... 37 3.4 Policy initiatives and their impact .................................................................................. 38 Planned national initiatives ............................................................................................. 38 Implemented initiatives and “work in progress” .......................................................... 39 Additional possible initiatives ......................................................................................... 40 SECTION 4: EDUCATING, DEVELOPING AND CERTIFYING TEACHERS...........42 4.1 Initial teacher education .................................................................................................. 42 Major concerns and challenges....................................................................................... 42 Outline of the structure of initial teacher education..................................................... 44 General requirements for admission to teacher education:......................................... 46 Graduate requirements / certification............................................................................ 46 Employment qualifications.............................................................................................. 47 Restructuring teacher education..................................................................................... 50 Support programmes for new teachers.......................................................................... 52 4.2 Professional development and in-service training......................................................... 53 Outline of options and structure..................................................................................... 53 Reports on training options and effects.......................................................................... 55 SECTION 5: RECRUITMENT, SELECTION AND ALLOCATION OF TEACHERS 57 5.1 Recruitment ...................................................................................................................... 57 Recruitment of qualified teachers................................................................................... 57 Recruitment measures ..................................................................................................... 58 5.2 Selection and allocation of teachers................................................................................ 59 5.3 Some challenges............................................................................................................... 61 SECTION 6: RETAINING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS IN SCHOOL..........................63 6.1 Measures of effective teaching. ....................................................................................... 63 6.3. The use of local autonomy .............................................................................................. 65 6.4 Trends in the development of quality in education....................................................... 65 SECTION 7: CONCLUDING COMMENTS ..............................................................67 7.1 Comments related to the decentralisation of responsibility......................................... 67 7.2 Comments related to teacher competence ..................................................................... 68 7.3 Comments related to changes in the teacher’s role....................................................... 69 7.4 Comments on aspects of everyday teaching................................................................... 70 References ............................................................................................................................... 73 Appendix:GUIDELINES FOR THE COUNTRY BACKGROUND REPORTS ............ 77 2 3 INTRODUCTION This report is the Norwegian Country Background Report (CBR) produced for the OECD project “Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers”. 24 countries are contributing with similar Country Background Reports. According to the “Design and Implementation Plan for the Activity”1 the overall purpose of the OECD activity “Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers” is to provide policy makers with information and analysis to assist them in formulating and implementing teacher policies leading to quality teaching and learning at the school level. The activity is restricted to school systems at primary and secondary level. The Activity has several objectives: 1) to synthesise research on issues related to policies concerned with attracting, recruiting, retaining and developing effective teachers 2) to identify innovative and successful policy practices 3) to facilitate exchanges of lessons and experiences among countries 4) to identify policy options This task includes complementary analytical and thematic reviews of policies and experiences from membership countries as regards attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. The CBRs are to provide national, comparative backgrounds and contexts, and to be designed according to a relatively detailed set of guidelines as regards analytical / methodological frameworks, key issues and structure. We have followed the requested structure, which implies that the report consist of the following sections: 1) Section 1: National context 2) Section 2: The school system and teaching work force 3) Section 3: Attracting able people into the teaching work force 4) Section 4: Educating, developing and certifying teachers 5) Section 5: Recruiting, selecting and assigning tachers 6) Section 6: Retaining effective teachers The first two sections describe relevant aspects of the Norwegian context. In the sections 3-6 reviews are given of major concerns, data, trends, factors as regards the issues in question, as well as experiences with and opinions of various policy initiatives. Furthermore, we have added a Section 7 consisting of concluding comments as well as a tentative identification of issues of which further examination