Search by topic
Looking to the future
Following publication of his much-awaited review, Graham Donaldson maps out his vision of the future of teaching in Scotland.
President Obama said in his State of the Union address: "In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives - it's how we make a living".
Continuous improvement and raising standards are not simply worthy aspirations but necessities if our young people are to thrive in an increasingly complex, interconnected and highly competitive national and international environment. Education is vital both for its own intrinsic worth and as one of the main pillars of wealth creation in the knowledge age.
That is the context for my report on teacher education, 'Teaching Scotland's Future'. The title was chosen with care to highlight both the importance of education generally to Scotland's future and to place high-quality teaching at the heart of ensuring high-quality education for all our young people.
I have been very encouraged by the serious and constructive response which the report has received.
The pervasive theme of the report is that we need high-quality people if we are to achieve high-quality outcomes for all our young people. Teaching is complex and challenging and demands the highest standards of professional commitment and expertise. Good teachers are constant problem solvers, drawing on insights from personal reflection, debates with colleagues and the findings of research and scholarship in order to serve the diverse needs of the young people in their charge.
We need to attract able and committed people to seek a career in teaching; select the best from those who apply; give them a satisfying and intellectually challenging early experience, and then support career-long professional growth and development. The report covers all these stages and its main themes are coherence, partnership, relevance, quality and efficiency.
In Scotland, we are fortunate in having a strong pool of well-qualified applicants for a career in teaching. We must select the best candidates from that pool. High academic standards are essential, but I have recommended that strong values and social, interpersonal and communication skills are also important. Assessment centres, which are commonplace in selection for many occupations, should be used to assess the full range of attributes necessary for teaching today and tomorrow. As part of that process, we should ensure that those entering the profession have the kind of high levels of personal competence in literacy and numeracy which will be needed if we are to raise standards in these fundamental skills across the school population.
Teacher education needs to be seen as the progressive, career-long development of the fundamental capacities which underpin high-quality teaching now and in the future. At present there is often little relationship between initial teacher education, induction, and continuing professional development. Within initial teacher education, schools and universities play at best complementary roles, within which teaching 'practice' is often seen as separate from the more academic study in the university. We need to establish a much stronger and more enduring relationship between the school and the university within which universities play a much greater role in the professional development of teachers throughout their careers. Recommendations covering the mentoring and assessment of students, the planning of Initial Teacher Education and induction as a continuous experience, and the availability of Masters' credits within CPD are all part of strengthening that partnership.
The current framework of standards developed by GTC Scotland is already internationally respected and encompasses the key aspects of professional practice. However, I believe that we need a further set which captures the essential contribution which professional growth through experience makes to teaching and the broader life of a school. Such a set of standards would provide a constructive point of reference for professional review and development, and help to entrench expectations and entitlements as careers develop.
We also need to make maximum use of what we already have. Time is at a premium in hard-pressed schools and we cannot afford to use it on unproductive or poor quality professional development. Current inconsistencies in quality must be addressed both in initial teacher education and in subsequent professional development. That means being very clear about what matters both to the individual teacher and collectively as a response to local and national priorities. It means taking personal responsibility for your own learning and making much more use of the expertise which exists locally. It also means using high-quality external contributions selectively to inject challenge and fresh thinking as part of planned local development.
As yet, we only have glimpses of the impact which technology will have on learning as the 21st century unfolds. Teaching will change as technology transforms the ways in which young people access learning. Equally, technology has the potential to transform professional development. Access to high-quality resources, ease of networking with colleagues, microteaching etc are all features of current practice but their penetration throughout education remains very limited. We need to harness technology in imaginative ways which maximise efficiency and allow collective approaches to development to thrive.
We need a teaching profession which itself engages with change directly; weighing up benefits carefully and ensuring that the test of educational gain for young people is always to the fore. Professional learning should be an integral part of that process, drawing on the best of emerging research and scholarship and working in a collegiate environment where a school staff sees itself as a team of educators collectively responsible for the education of successive generations of young people.
We have huge strengths upon which to build. We also face significant challenges as we improve education and raise standards in the face of a very constrained financial environment. Much of what I am proposing in my report does not require new resource but a rethinking of how we use what we already have. The McCrone Report set out a vision of teaching in the 21st century and Curriculum for Excellence builds on that vision.
I see my report as a further contribution to realising the aspiration of a teaching profession which, to paraphrase President Obama, sees innovation as how "...it makes a living".