Is Teaching a Vocation: The Distribution of Higher Qualified New Teachers by Challenge of UK High...
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Is Teaching a Vocation: The Distribution of Higher Qualified New Teachers by Challenge
of UK High Schools
Dr John Brown Institute of Education
Research Papers in Education (In press) Vol 30,1 2014
Quality of teachers determines the quality of education
Every child should have a fairly even chance of being taught by high quality teachers
“Every child taught by a high quality teacher” mandated legislation in US No Child Left Behind
Distribution of high quality teachers likely to be uneven across schools
High levels of geographic/social segregation in UK schools concentrates disadvantaged pupils in some schools creating conditions which may deter many teachers
Allen, Burgess, & Mayo, 2012 Experienced staff more likely to leave challenging
schools Challenging schools tend to employ younger teachers
Higher quality teachers unlikely to be distributed evenly between schools
Aversion to challenging schools has always thought to be held in check by vocation motivation Many teachers are thought to be attracted to
challenging environments to provide fair educational opportunities
However, the extent teachers seek challenging schools has never been measured
Vocational motivation never been tested
Measuring teacher effectiveness is highly problematic
Robust methods involve measuring the amount of progress pupils when taught by one teacher
No access to this arrangement of data Next best available Proxy measure, something
related to teaching quality Teacher academic qualifications thought to be
important in ability to teach
How to identify higher quality teachers
United States studies: The selectivity of the University attended - Summers
& Wolfe, 1977; Ehrenberg & Brewer, 1994) Grades achieved to enter university - Ferguson &
Ladd, 1996; Ferguson R. F., 1991 Degrees subject taken and grade achieved -
Aaronson, Barrow, & Sander, 2007; Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007
All found significant impact of academic achievement on teacher effectiveness
Teachers academic qualifications known to be related to teaching effectiveness
Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) age 4 level of qualification is among the most important factors predicting outcomes - Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2004
…importance of teachers academic qualifications…is reflected in the value education professionals place on qualifications in teacher hiring decisions,
“…a reasonable basis for documenting systematic inequity in the distribution of teacher quality” pp2 (Miller & Chait, 2008).
Teacher Qualifications important in hiring decisions
“…one of the few features common to all the world’s most successful education systems are very high academic qualifications required to become a teacher” - Barber, 2007; OECD, 2003; Tikly, 2013; Auguste, Kihn, & Miller, 2010
So what kinds of schools do our higher qualified new teachers choose to work in?
Other indications of the importance of teachers academic qualifications
All newly qualified teachers in England over three years 2006 to 2009 n = 37,039
First Degree subject and degree result grade Employment history
Qualification Measure - Average entrance requirement (UCAS tariff) over three years to enter the teachers degree subject
This study - Teachers Data
Multiplied by the grade they achieved in this degree. Fourth Class Honours = 1, Third Class Honours = 2, Other Award Pass = 3, Lower Second Class Honours = 4, Upper Second Class Honours = 5, First Class Honours = 6.
Emphasises teachers gaining high grades at university in subjects that have higher entrance requirements
Taking into account teachers performance when at University
School Attainment at age 11 and 16: average points score over three years
School Income Disadvantage: average percentage of pupils eligible for state welfare benefits
School Progress (Value Added): average point score improvement between age 11 and age 16
over three years School Attainment progress accounting for pupils’
advantages and disadvantages (Contextual value added): average point score improvement between age 11 and age 16
over three years adjusted for income disadvantage, ethnicity, Language
Method - Schools Challenge
Teachers qualifications were significantly correlated with each school characteristic investigated
Results
Correlations between New Teachers Qualifications and school characteristics
e.g. a strong attraction to one kind of schools may produce an overall correlation when there is equal attraction to other kinds of schools
Possibly new teachers are strongly attracted to the highest attaining schools, - but are equally attracted to schools with different levels attainment
But correlations can be misleading
To test whether new teachers attraction to schools were consistent across all levels of characteristics Characteristics divided into 20% groups (quintiles) Analysis of variance was used to test whether there
was any difference in the qualifications of new teacher working in schools with different levels of characteristic
To test whether qualifications differed between any quintile and another other quintile Tukeys Post Hoc tests were carried out
Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of
attainment at age 16
Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of
attainment at age 11
Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of
Income Deprivation
Significant differences in the qualifications of new teachers in schools with different quintiles of
Progress age 11 to 16
Interpreting recruitment relating to school progress is problematic As some schools achieve high progress with
higher attainers Others achieve high progress with lower
attainers very different kinds of schools will have the
same progress
The relationship between new teachers qualifications and schools
progress
To test whether higher qualified teacher more often find employment in schools that different progress with different attainers Schools categorised by high and low progress and
attainment High = >.5 SD above the average over three years Low = <.-5 SD below the average over three years
High Progress with High Intake Attainment Low Progress with High Intake Attainment High Progress with Low Intake Attainment Low Progress with Low Intake Attainment
ANOVA F (3, 15,083) = 133.5, p<.001, Sig highest teacher quals - High Progress High Intake
Attainment Sig higher teacher quals - Low Progress High Intake
Attainment Than both
High Progress Low Intake Attainment Low Progress Low Intake Attainment
No sig dif teacher quals between High Progress Low Intake Attainment Low Progress Low Intake Attainment
Differences in qualifications of new teachers working in schools with high and low levels of
attainment and progress
Higher qual teachers more often worked in schools with high progress with high attainers than any other kind of school
Higher qual teachers more often worked in schools with low progress with high attainers than high progress with low attainers Suggesting that attainment levels of schools is
more important to new teachers than the progress they achieve
contextual progress cannot distinguish between progress with advantaged or with disadvantaged
So, schools were categorised same way as progress High Progress High Affluence Low Progress High Affluence High Progress Low Affluence Low Progress Low Affluence
Contextual progress
Sig highest teacher quals - High Progress High Affluence
Sig higher teacher quals - Low Progress High Affluence
Than both High Progress Low Affluence Low Progress Low Affluence
Sig higher teacher quals - High Progress Low Affluence than Low Progress Low Affluence
Results
Higher qualified new teachers more often sort employment in schools that achieve high progress with advantaged pupils i.e. some of the school that achieve some of
the highest absolute academic standards They are next most attracted to schools that
achieve low progress with advantaged pupils i.e. least challenging pedagogic and socio-
economically deprived schools
Higher qualified teachers are more attracted to schools with the least demanding professional/pedagogic and socio-economic conditions than schools that reduce educational inequalities
Analysis so far is informative of the strength of association between qualifications and school characteristics
But does not tell us the size of the imbalance in terms of number of teachers over or under-represented in schools
The size of recruitment imbalances between less challenging and more
challenging schools
If the top quintile highest qualified teachers were distributed evenly between school quintiles , 20% of them would work in schools in each quintile
the percentage actually employed in each quintile was subtracted by the hypothetical amount (20%) if they were even distributed
To provide a measure of the total imbalance across all schools the difference in each quintile was summed
The size of recruitment imbalance
The size of recruitment imbalances between schools with higher and lower
attainment
Affluence
Progress and Contextual Progress
Top 20% highest qualified new teachers were Over represented in higher attaining schools
by 18.3% Over represented in more affluent schools by
14% Recruitment of higher qualified new teachers
is imbalanced in favour of high attaining and affluent schools by around 1/5 and 1/6 of the new teachers workforce
Size of recruitment imbalance
Challenging schools tend to hire more new teachers lose more of their experienced staff - Allen et al (2012)
Therefore estimate of overall imbalance in whole teaching profession likely to be underestimated by any perspective based on new teachers
Discussion
Higher qualified new teachers more often seek and find employment in schools with higher levels of attainment that achieve the highest academic standards with some of most able and advantaged
They are more attracted to schools with the least challenging conditions, both pedagogically and socio-economically – than schools which narrow the gap
Conclusion
Challenging schools recruit from a restricted pool of new teachers
The size of the imbalance is large– possibly around 20% of the teacher workforce
Insofar as we feel teacher academic qualifications are important indications of the quality of teachers…
… these results indicate it will not be possible for challenging schools to narrow the gap as challenging schools recruiting less able teachers will not catch up with school recruiting more able teachers