Impact of Trainee Teachers on School Achievement May 15, 2007

Training and Development Agency

The Impact of Trainee Teacherson School Achievement

A review of research

Author

Steve Hurd

Centre for Research & Development in Teacher Education

The Open University

Adviser

Professor Hilary Constable

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Marion Jones of Liverpool John Moores University and Michèle Dean of The Open University who have given valuable feedback during the writing of this paper.

May 5, 2007

36


Impact of Trainee Teachers on School Achievement May 15, 2007

The Impact of Trainee Teacherson School Achievement

Headlines

· Most of the research on teacher education focuses on its effectiveness rather than its impact of schools.

· It is widely believed that school-based teacher education could have an impact on:

o Test and examination results

o Inspection outcomes

o Other intermediate outcomes

· Trainees can have a positive impact by boosting school resources in financial terms, by providing more adult helpers in the classroom, and by bringing new knowledge and skills.

· The main negative effects relate to the impact on teachers’ workloads. This is accentuated when schools have to cope with a trainee experiencing problems.

· The majority of school coordinators and mentors, especially in primary schools, believes that the presence of trainees improves the climate of learning in the classroom.

· A statistical comparison reveals that training-active schools achieve higher test scores at both Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 than the schools that are not involved in school-based training.

· Statistical analysis shows that in secondary schools that host more than 7 trainees per placement, additional trainees bring about further gains in average Key Stage 3 scores, even after allowance has been made for ability, social and school characteristics.

· Lower numbers of trainees are associated with a half-point depression of average Key Stage 3 results. This is likely to reflect differences in the way trainees are managed in schools that are reluctant participants in ITE.

· Trainee numbers have no significant impact on GCSE and A-level points or on Key Stage 3 to GCSE value added. This probably reflects the fact that most teaching by secondary trainees is at Key Stage 3 level.

· Inspectors make comments on school-based ITE in only a small proportion of their reports. When they do ITE is looked upon entirely favourably.

· There are many intermediate benefits from school participation in ITE. These include opportunities for host teachers to reflect upon and improve their own practice, a platform for professional learning especially through links with HEI, and benefits in terms of teacher retention and recruitment.

· Priority areas for further research relate to:

o Managing weaker trainees;

o Total teaching hours and the mix of class contact;

o The allocation of trainees e.g. over-concentration on non-examination classes;

o Selection of mentors with appropriate skills and experience.

· Tentative policy recommendations for improving the impact of trainees on school achievement are:

o Reduce total class contact and the portion of whole-class teaching;

o Explore ways to reduce the adverse impact of trainees experiencing problems;

o Assess the school-based component of teacher education within the school inspection;

o Urge the Dfes to collect data on trainee teachers as part of PLASC data collection, in order to facilitate future research.

1. Introduction

Current teacher training requires a significant and substantial input from schools and not all school leaders are convinced that there is an overall gain. For new schools to be recruited and for schools currently involved in initial teacher education (ITE) to be retained the case for being involved in training needs to be made and supported with evidence. This paper reviews the literature currently available on this matter and attempts to identify what is missing. The papers reviewed cover both primary and secondary training, as well as undergraduate, postgraduate and Graduate Training Programme (entirely school-based) models.

Whether or not having trainees makes schools better or worse is a genuine issue and one that matters to school leaders, teachers, parents and teacher trainers and above all to pupils. On the face of it there are aspects that would seem to make them better. Trainees increase the number of adult helpers in a school. They open up additional opportunities for differentiated group work, learning away from school premises and other teacher-intensive styles of learning. Trainees enrich schools with the knowledge and skills they bring from a wide diversity of educational and work experiences. Mentor interaction with trainees stimulates reflection and improvements in their own classroom practice. School ITE involvement also helps staff recruitment by providing an opportunity to vet potential new recruits, especially in shortage areas.

On the other hand, there are aspects of school-based ITE that might worsen school outcomes. Supporting trainees may increase staff workloads and divert effort away from the needs of pupils. The problems are accentuated when schools receive a weak trainee, but even good trainees can make mistakes that adversely affect the climate of learning.

The sums schools receive from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) for hosting trainees are relatively modest. However, where it is used to augment departmental budgets it can transform learning resource provision for the benefit of all school students, whether exposed to trainee teachers or not. Schools with larger numbers of trainees have more to gain. Professional issues seminars, a standard feature of school-based training, are delivered to larger groups of trainees with commensurate staffing economies. There can also be benefits to departments that take more than one trainee, as there are opportunities for shared preparation, teaching and mutual ‘trainee to trainee’ support and evaluation of teaching performance. This can relieve pressure on the teacher-mentor and facilitate livelier mentor tutorials.

As trainees move further into their period of school practice they take on greater responsibility for whole-class teaching, which progressively frees up teachers’ time for other activities, including devoting more time to examination classes. In schools that have a long track record of involvement with ITE, senior managers have become adept at regulating the number and distribution of trainee teachers among departments in order to prevent adverse effects on teacher work loads and student learning.

In the following sections we review the research evidence. There are plenty of anecdotal accounts and some research but it is less clear what it all adds up to; the balance sheet is not clear and this is what this review is about. The review was conducted in a relatively short time frame so we have concentrated, almost exclusively, on British research revealed by searches of the British Education Index (BEI) and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) databases for publications since 1992. Further references were identified from within search result publications and from direct searches of the main journals on teacher education, professional development and educational research. The aim has been to draw together sources of evidence on the impact of ITE on schools in order to inform colleagues in schools, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and elsewhere with an interest in teacher education. As a large proportion of the literature on ITE focuses on its impact on continuing professional development (CPD) this has been grouped separately from papers outlining wider aspects of the costs and benefits to schools of ITE involvement.

2. The overall impact of school-based ITE

The following articles contain research findings on the impact of ITE involvement and the practice of hosting trainee teachers on schools. As the papers do not separate easily into distinct focus issues they have been arranged in date order. This shows clearly how the debate has developed.

Shaw (1992) attempted to measure the direct resource costs to schools of being involved in ITE. He drew upon his personal experience as a head of two large secondary schools; a national survey of initial teacher education made by the Modes of Teacher Education team (Barrett, 1992) and the results of a survey of senior teachers in 25 schools. Writing at the very beginning of the new school-based model, he aggregated the time costs of teachers’ involvement in ITE. The time commitments included attending HEI-based training, briefing and observing trainees, meeting HEI tutors during school visits, writing reports on trainees and dealing with problems, plus associated secretarial time. When the cost of reprographics and other materials was added, the total resource costs came to over £1,250 per trainee in 1992, more than many schools received from their HEI partners. However, Shaw acknowledged that there were also substantial benefits to schools that had to be weighed in the balance.

Tangible benefits came partly in the form of income for hosting trainees, but to these must be added the non-financial resources and training provided by partner HEIs. Respondents appreciated the fact that trainees brought in wider benefits in the form of the latest curriculum development, novel teaching methods and new subject knowledge. However, intangible benefits such as higher job satisfaction and professional development were regarded as even more important. Many respondents noted that trainees bring enthusiasm and fresh ideas – they are a “breath of fresh air”. Shaw concluded that, in tangible terms, costs probably outweigh the benefits, but the intangible benefits more than make up for this.

Bressoux (1996) conducted studies in France to assess the relative effectiveness of beginning teachers in primary schools from all over France in comparison with their more experienced colleagues. This is very relevant to assessing the impact on classes of a trainee replacing a more experience teacher during spells of whole-class teaching. The study by Bressoux included 65 newly qualified teachers (NQTs) and 96 experienced teachers with lengths of service ranging from 7 to 35 years. The study found that the NQTs were often just as effective in the classroom as the more experienced teacher they were replacing. The research compared the effects of NQTs and experienced teachers on the performance of French primary pupils in mathematics and language. The study used pupil-level data. It found that, in mathematics, pupil test scores showed small but significant gains when taught by experienced rather than newly qualified teachers, although in language the differences were insignificant.

We cannot directly extrapolate from this to the effectiveness of a trainee teacher in England, and it tells us nothing about the trajectory of improvement of trainees over the course of their training. So, it would be valuable to investigate whether the average effectiveness-gap of the broad body of trainee teachers is similarly small and also how the effectiveness of trainees differs between the upper and lower bands in general, and between training partnerships in particular. This may help us to improve the selection and induction of trainees.

Brooks and Barker (1997) also attempted to identify the tangible and intangible effects of school-based ITE. Their study included headteachers, school ITE coordinators (also called professional mentors), subject mentors and other class teachers who came into contact with trainees. Quantitative data was gathered by means of a questionnaire to 800 individuals in 200 schools drawn randomly from the partnership lists of 16 HEIs throughout England and Wales. The response rate was 51%. There were also 24 interviews in 8 secondary schools in central England. 90% of respondents commented upon the time burden of supervising trainees – many said it diverted them from other essential commitments and involved using break and after-school time. There were also concerns from mentors about the demands made by trainees on colleagues, who had no specific time allowance for supervision. The most frequently mentioned other substantial tangible cost was reprographics. Many respondents argued that payment from HEIs did not cover these extra costs, though the study did not gather data on how ITE money was distributed within schools, between central and subjects or departments. It did say, however, that the time problems were accentuated when mentors had to cope with a weak trainee.

Burton (1998) outlined the benefits to schools from working in partnership with an HEI training provider in the delivery of ITE. The evidence is drawn from her personal experience of one partnership and the findings of semi-structured interviews conducted by a colleague on the first three years of partnership arrangements in the college’s undergraduate teacher training programme. The author describes how university tutors play a valuable role in training school-based mentors, improving mentoring skills but also encouraging teachers to keep abreast of developments within subject pedagogy and the wider professional role of teachers.

Duquette (1998) conducted an interview-based study of 21 secondary mentor teachers in the University of Ottawa’s training partnership in Canada and reported the effects of school-based training from their perspective. Positive comments emphasised the impact on mentors’ reflectivity:

helps me reflect on my own teaching. Student teachers challenge me to continually look at and attempt to improve my own teaching (p.178).

On the other hand, the possibility of trainees diverting mentors’ efforts from the classroom was also reported:

Takes too much time…- planning, instructing, supervising, conferencing, disciplinary back-up, and providing resources (p.178).

Lee and Wilkes (1999) examined the impact of ITE on teaching and learning in primary schools in England. They sent a questionnaire to 462 primary headteachers and conducted 60 semi-structured interviews. The overwhelming majority (89.1%) of responding headteachers felt that hosting trainees enhanced the learning environment in the school:

student teachers can have a positive impact in the classroom. (p. 249)

The few negative comments (10.9% of respondents) came either from schools with small numbers of trainees, one or two, or were associated with a recent experience of hosting a weak or problem trainee. A number of interviewees remarked that trainee teachers quickly become indistinguishable from other colleagues. In general and importantly, they found that the larger the number of trainees in a school the more likely was the reaction to be positive. These findings are supported by a large-scale quantitative study reported later in this review (Hurd 2007).

A majority of teachers enjoyed their role as mentors and saw it as part of their professional responsibility to train the next generation of teachers. The primary teachers said trainees provided invaluable help with practical activities and support for individual learning needs. Some of the schools involved in this study refused to take trainees when an Ofsted inspection was due. 60% of respondents were worried that the presence of trainees might have an adverse impact on their Ofsted inspection, although many others felt that it would be advantageous. Many teachers said they would not ask trainees to take classes when inspectors were present in school. Lee and Wilkes found, in contradiction to this, that Ofsted reports often comment positively upon the learning benefits from hosting trainee teachers: