What can education systems learn from football?

 Assume you play football professionally. Your new group has an own approach to training. All players receive is a one-week rigorous training session prior to the season's commencement, during which a trainer instructs them on game strategies. While you may find some of the instructions useful, many are either unrelated to your ability level or unclear as to how you could use them in practice. There are no practice opportunities for you, and the team is without a coach.

Do you believe the effectiveness of this training philosophy? Why then do we think that instructors will benefit from this strategy? Shouldn't we give teachers the greatest assistance available if they are the single most significant school-based element influencing students' learning outcomes?

Do you believe the effectiveness of this training philosophy? Why then do we think that instructors will benefit from this strategy? Shouldn't we give teachers the greatest assistance available if they are the single most significant school-based element influencing students' learning outcomes?

Many educational institutions today do not provide instructors with excellent opportunities for professional development that will help them strengthen and enhance their teaching practices. It is common for teachers to not obtain adequate pre-service training, which leaves them unprepared to teach. Programs for in-service teacher professional development (TPD) have the potential to enhance the abilities of the current teaching corps in the educational system. Numerous nations allocate a significant portion of their education budget to these initiatives, yet thus far, most have proven to be relatively ineffectual.

According to recent study, student learning is more greatly enhanced by TPD programs that are subject-specific, feature lesson enactment, provide initial in-person training, and link participation to career incentives. However, 139 TPD programs in low- and middle-income nations were analyzed, and the results showed that little of the professional development teachers receive is in line with strategies linked to improved student performance. These strategies include the programs' high theoretical content, dearth of opportunities for practice, and scant follow-up. Just as we wouldn't anticipate that a lecture-based, one-time training model would be the most effective means of preparing football players for success, neither do the in-service professional development opportunities that many teachers currently receive help them enhance their instructional practices in the classroom.  

The global learning issue has been made worse by the COVID-19 epidemic, which has also highlighted the special responsibility instructors have for ensuring that pupils learn. Making sure all teachers have the resources they need to educate in the classroom successfully is more crucial now than it has ever been. It is imperative that nations build and construct their TPD systems with the goal of guaranteeing that all educators have access to excellent learning opportunities for practice improvement.

By enhancing in-service TPD, the World Bank's new Coach program seeks to expedite student learning. Teach, our open-access classroom observation tool, is enhanced by Coach, which is part of the Bank's bigger initiatives to improve teacher policy through the Global Platform for Successful Teachers. Coach uses the information Teach provides to determine the professional development needs of instructors and then customizes the support that Teach provides to help teachers become better educators. Coach includes a variety of support services to enhance the quality of teacher-student interactions, which is essential to enhancing student learning outcomes. These services can take the form of one-on-one coaching, group training sessions and workshops, or other approaches delivered through in-person, remote, or hybrid modalities.

Coach assists nations in replacing antiquated, inefficient in-service training and development programs with ones that draw on behavioral science and adult learning theories. Coach uses TPD based on evidence, which has been demonstrated to result in better teaching techniques. Coach aims to assist nations in developing and refining their TPD initiatives in order to get them closer to models that are:

Customized:

 A lot of programs these days take a one-size-fits-all stance, giving every teacher the same access to professional development opportunities. Coach ultimately uses data to discover, prioritize, and create learning opportunities for each teacher, moving toward a model where professional development options are matched to instructors' needs.

Practical:

A lot of programs nowadays are very theoretical and lecture-based, giving teachers little chance to put their newly acquired abilities into use. Coach shifts to a practical skills-based model that concentrates on what educators must accomplish in the classroom and provides several chances for them to put these new abilities into practice, get feedback, and get better. 

Concentrated: 

A lot of programs now emphasize a wide range of abilities and frequently don't provide instructors enough time to become proficient in new material. Rather than providing general instruction on a broad range of approaches, the coach works towards a model focused on mastery of a targeted set of two to three foundational teaching abilities at a time.

 

Ongoing:

 Programs frequently concentrate on giving teachers intense first training with little to no assistance after that. Through repeated cycles of observation and feedback as well as frequent, ongoing chances for follow-up training throughout the school year, Coach works toward a model focused on providing continuous assistance.

The Coach program takes a two-pronged approach to improve in-service TPD.

To begin with, the program entails giving direct, practical, and continuous technical support and direction to government counterparts in nations like as Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in order to enhance in-service teacher professional development (TPD) systems.

Second, the initiative will create materials and tools for pedagogical leaders and teachers, as well as free tools and resources for researchers, policymakers, and other system-level leaders, with the goal of offering advice on how to best support instructional progress.

This two-pronged strategy of producing global public goods and working within the nation informs one another, creating a continuous feedback loop between practice and evidence. We'll be highlighting some of the Coach materials and tools over the coming few weeks.

In order to improve TPD, governments, development partners, NGOs, scholars, and other stakeholders have long worked to establish a body of knowledge and insights that Coach aims to build upon. We are excited to absorb knowledge from successful and creative in-service TPD initiatives that have been or are being carried out globally.