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

Abstract

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.