Lesson study and Teacher Education in Mexico

1
Marcela santillánTenoch Cedillo

• Lesson study and Teacher Education in Mexico

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OECD orientations

• The analysis of different indicators of school,
  student achievement and teacher development in
  Mexico shows that there are important equity and
  quality challenges. There is agreement among
  different stakeholders within and outside Mexico
  that its educational achievement can be improved.
  
• Policy efforts aimed to improve the quality of
  education by
• raising student enrolments,
• increasing public expenditure in education,
• pursuing decentralization,
• introducing more assessment practices (student
  achievement tests in 2005),
• developing an incentive based system for
  teachers.

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Towards a more coherent policy

• The OECD Steering Group proposed the need to
  define the role of the teacher as a high level
  professional within the framework of a school
  rather than mainly as an individual teacher with
  a post.
• Teacher policy requires adopting a more coherent
  view of teachers and the policies and practices
  that surround them, rather than concentrating on
  specific issues. Only then can appropriate
  recommendations on specific issues such as
  teacher accreditation mechanisms or teacher
  training and development can be developed.

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• Providing systemic coherence
• Consolidate a common set of standards that good
  teachers may have and/or develop. This should be
  the reference for teacher initial education
  institutions, teacher continuous development,
  teacher evaluations and teacher certification and
  rewards mechanisms.
• Incentives
• The current career development structures or any
  potential new structure must provide stronger
  incentives that would improve equity and quality
  within the system.

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• Systemic quality assurance and evaluation
• Evaluate the certification and accreditation
  processes used and improve them. Accreditation
  centres could potentially be an option to measure
  other relevant aspects of teaching (e.g. language
  and communication skills).
• School autonomy
• Develop school autonomy progressively, for
  example, by initially giving schools a say on
  teacher selection processes.
• Establishing clear teacher accreditation and
  promotion

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• All new and vacant post should be open for fair
  competition.
• Efficiency of teacher allocation to schools
• To enhance the focus on schools, rather than on
  individual teachers, it is vital to explore new
  ways of matching the preferences of teachers and
  schools and reinforce structures and incentives
  to encourage experienced teachers to work in more
  challenging schools.

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• Ensuring a coherent strategy between teacher
  initial education and professional development
  Continuous training should not have to compensate
  for initial education instead it should
  complement it and be relevant to teacher and
  school needs. This requires striking the
  appropriate balance between initial teacher
  training and continuing teacher professional
  development. There appear to be around 34.000
  graduates annually from Normal schools, out of
  the approximately 1.3 million in service teachers
  who require skills upgrading. A greater focus
  will be required on the quality and quantity of
  continuing professional development, but efforts
  to improve initial training need to be made to
  ensure that future teachers have the appropriate
  skills. Among these efforts are

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• Strengthening the quality of initial teacher
  education Initial teacher training need to
  preselect high quality students and then give
  them the space, the time and the supports to
  master the knowledge, attitudes and skills
  required of the teacher in the knowledge society,
  including pedagogical training. This can require
  evaluating the current network of educational
  institutions providing this type of training and
  ensuring quality teachers, quality content and
  relevance. The accreditation mechanism applied
  can help set the standards by which initial
  teacher training can develop their teachers.

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A coherent long term view of teacher policy
focused on schools

• Investing in quality continuing teacher training.
  After an analysis of the status and skills of
  practicing teachers (OECD TALIS can be a useful
  tool), a better match between the needs of
  schools and teachers and training supply will be
  possible and revising the weight given to the
  training is important to ensure relevance to
  practice and high quality results. To strengthen
  provision, the development of regional education
  centers might be a possible alternative. But
  reforms will not work unless teachers are engaged
  in the reform processes.
• Exploring school based training and education
  strategies. New and more innovative effective
  training initiatives such as school based
  development peer efforts should be identified,
  recognized and supported.

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Current issues in the MexicanTeacher Education

• In 2007 the Ministry of Education call all Normal
  Schools in Mexico to participate in the creation
  of a community of professional practice aimed at
  refreshing the academic activity of the
  mathematics teacher educators. At the core of
  that activity is the Japanese Lesson Study with
  special emphasis on achieving a profound
  knowledge of school mathematics.
• 140 teacher educators from all over the country
  volunteered to participate in such community of
  professional practice.

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Current issues in the MexicanTeacher Education

• Since 2008 the members of the community of
  professional practice meet together four times a
  year in Mexico City. Each meeting lasts 20 hours
  split in three days.
•  
• As part of the strategy a site for online work
  has been created. Where a student teacher can
  enter the site and customized its own assessment,
  select the topic, how many questions wants to
  confront, its difficulty level, and the system
  will randomly create a personalized mathematics
  questionnaire. Besides, the system provides ample
  feedback once a questionnaire has been completed
  and keeps his record.

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Lesson Study movement in Mexico
On the context of APEC Lesson Study Project, the
Mexican Ministry of Education and the University
of Tsukuba set out a collaborative project to
enhance the lesson study movement for pre-service
and in-service teacher education in Mexico. The
project is focus on developing sharable teacher
education content deeply related with pedagogical
content knowledge and based on the theory for
teaching school mathematics developed in Japan.
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Lesson Study movement in Mexico
In 2008, the Mexican Ministry of Education and
University of Tsukuba implemented a lesson study
meeting in Mexico City. 200 teacher educators
observed Japanese teachers teaching to Mexican
elementary school students. After the lesson
studies, the participants discussed what is
lesson study and how it is meaningful for Mexican
teacher education.
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Lesson Study movement in Mexico

• Based on this collaboration, SEP and University
  of Tsukuba agreed to
• Translate into Spanish the English version of
  Japanese textbooks
• Held a workshop in Mexico City in 2009 and 2010,
  respectively.

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Thank you very much!