A Study on the Applicability of ICALT for Comparing Teaching Skills between Secondary Schools in Korea and Mongolia

This chapter describes the contextual background of teacher and teaching quality in Mongolia through exploring teacher policies, and practices and challenges surrounding the teacher, followed by how curriculum sets the parameters for teaching behaviour. Students must finish a four-year teacher education program in Mongolia to become teachers. The government policy aims to increase the percentage of teachers who hold master’s degrees up to 70% by 2024; 15.8% of primary and secondary education teachers held a master’s degree as of 2020. The government requires teachers to attend mandatory training in their first, fifth and tenth teaching year. Besides these centralized trainings, the government is also reinforcing teachers’ professional development policies in the direction that supports and encourages local and school-based professional development based on teachers’ learning needs. Recently there has been a regulation of school self-monitoring and evaluation, including setting criteria on lesson management and quality to use for evaluation of teachers’ teaching skills and behaviour, via lesson observations. Teacher behaviour and pedagogical methods are articulated in the curriculum documents as well. The most recent education reform was aimed at a principle that is called the change of ‘Each and every child’. This was followed by curriculum revision with key concepts of inquiry-based learning, differentiating teaching (based on students’ developmental differences) and assessment of progress and learning skills. These changes, needless to say, require teachers to improve their pedagogical skills. Research shows that Mongolian teachers still have difficulty with devising differentiated activities for students at different levels of learning. In terms of context, it should be understood that teaching is regarded as a low paid profession in Mongolia. The government takes measures such as: offering scholarships to attract good students into teaching profession; and providing salary supplements and local subsidies.

Effective Teaching in Mongolia: Policies, Practices and Challenges

Adiyasuren,

Galindev

2023

Secondary Education Teachers’ Effective Teaching Behaviour Across Five Countries: Does it Change Over Time?

Maulana,

Bruscato,

Helms-Lorenz

et al. 2023

Over the last decade, a limited number of studies have documented changes in effective teaching behaviour in secondary education over time. However, the studies are rather fragmented and heterogeneous in terms of measurements, contexts, and time intervals.This study aims to investigate changes in secondary school teachers’ teaching behaviour over time, by using a uniform observation instrument in five contrasting national contexts. The study focuses on the examination of inter- and intra-individual differences in teachers’ effective teaching behaviour across Indonesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Africa, and the Netherlands. A total of 3158 teachers across the five countries participated in this study. Their classroom lessons were observed by trained observers in the natural classroom setting longitudinally using a uniform observation measure called International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT). Results show that, in general, between-schools, between-teachers, and within-teacher differences are visible, with some degree of variations in proportion depending on the country and the type of teaching behaviour. Within-teacher differences are consistently large across countries. This provides evidence regarding the dynamic characteristics (i.e., change) of teaching behaviour cross-nationally. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Exploring How Teachers’ Personal Characteristics, Teaching Behaviors and Contextual Factors Are Related to Differentiated Instruction in the Classroom: A Cross-National Perspective

Smale-Jacobse,

Moorer,

Maulana

et al. 2023

Internationally, differentiated instruction (DI) is suggested as a teaching approach that can help teachers to meet the varying learning needs of students in the classroom. However, not all teachers reach a high level of implementation. Personal characteristics of the teacher as well as teaching quality may affect the degree and quality of DI. In addition, several classroom-, school-, and country characteristics may affect DI practices. In this chapter, literature is reviewed about personal factors, teaching characteristics and contextual factors influencing DI. Findings from the literature are connected to analyses of classroom observation-data collected in six countries including Indonesia, the Netherlands, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Korea and Spain. The chapter aims to contribute to insights into factors related to DI and into differences in these associations between the six countries. This chapter concludes by discussing scientific and practical implications.