Keys to quality teaching?

On August 20th, the OECD published what it called "Keys to Quality Education." I must warn that I'm not exactly overconfident about international educational institutions. The same Andreas Schleicher, director of the PISA tests, who in 2018 assured us that the name of Finland had become synonymous with excellence in education, in 2023 declared to Financial Times"We don't know if Finland has been part of the solution or part of the problem." I'd add that a few months ago I attended a press conference given by a Minister of Education from a Central American country who had been a senior official at UNESCO. She had no problem stating emphatically: "Content is no longer important. Why study, for example, the planets, if they change every year? What we should study is the influence of the planets on our lives!" A few days later, I met with her in her office. I asked her if I should congratulate her, since her country was considered by the OECD to be one of the most equitable in the world. "But our results are very low!" she replied. "Yes, they are very low, but they are uniform." And it was true. 75% of students in that country fall into the bottom two bands of the PISA results.

Let's go to the OECD's "Keys to Quality Teaching" (the tortured syntax is their sole responsibility).

The first is "ensuring cognitive engagement," which would entail creating "the conditions for students to present sufficient and sustained effort that allows them to persist in understanding a complex idea or solving challenging, unstructured problems." For this key to be effective, teachers must ensure "appropriate levels of challenge," incorporating "meaningful contexts and connections to the real world," facilitating "opportunities for students to experiment for themselves," and providing multiple approaches and representations that foster "metacognition." One patiently reads this ponderous prose, and just when one thinks one has had enough of it, one encounters this shocker: "Cognitive engagement can seem enigmatic, as it is difficult to observe." Can you imagine if this newspaper were to choose the five best restaurants in Barcelona and, after placing one of them first, added that its quality "is enigmatic and difficult to observe?"

The second key is to "develop quality disciplinary content," but it is added that this task is not easy, due to "the complexity of developing quality disciplinary content."

The third is "providing socio-emotional support," but this key is also characterized by its "complexity."

Let's continue. The fourth is to "encourage classroom interaction" through "questions and answers," but it's necessary to keep in mind the "complexity" of the challenge.

The fifth and final one, "using formative assessment and feedback," is a "complex" task, especially "in large and diverse classrooms."

Following these key points, despite their enigmatic complexity, would be the way to move "toward more evidence-based teaching," because "the practices examined have shown a causal impact on students' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes." However, the need for further "additional research" is added, because "quality teaching does not depend solely on the teacher: factors such as class size, curriculum design, and overall school climate play a crucial role in determining what types of practices teachers can implement in the classroom."

However, the reference to student effort and "quality disciplinary content" is appreciated. In my opinion, there is no technological substitute for hard work, and it seems increasingly clear that the competency-based discourse is exhausted and that we must return to the centrality of the curriculum.

I explained all this last Wednesday to the teachers of a large school, the Institut Ferran Casablancas in Sabadell, with the intention of encouraging them to develop a pedagogical culture of reflective practices that allows them to learn from their own experience, from their successes and their failures. This is, truly, what matters. Precisely because the confusion among educational administrators is real, we must hone our ability to detect problems in our schools and seek solutions. As Pamela Snow recently said, "Children need teachers to be the adults in the classroom."