Teacher quality matters. At a time when tinkering with school structures and changes to accountability frameworks appear to be having diminishing returns to outcomes for learners, nations around the world are placing a forensic focus on how to improve the everyday practices of teachers.
Although there is a general consensus that great teaching requires a combination of subject, pedagogical and behavioural knowledge and interpersonal skills, there is less agreement on how to achieve this combination across a large and increasingly diverse workforce. As with most aspects of school reforms there are tensions, philosophical and pragmatic, about whether centralism or autonomy is the best route to success.
Our research on teachers and teaching has explored these tensions and developed new design principles and recommendations that can influence policy and practice.
