The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) aims to provide robust international indicators on teachers and teaching at the ISCED 2 level in order to help countries review and develop policies that would create conditions for effective schooling. An important dimension of school and teacher effectiveness involves the pedagogical aspects of teachers’ work, represented by teachers’ instructional beliefs and practices (OECD 2005a, 2005b).

TALIS 2008 results showed an inconsistency between teachers’ stated beliefs about teaching and their reported use of specific teaching practices (OECD 2009), raising some questions about the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices in teaching and how this is expressed in the TALIS survey. Constructivist beliefs prevailed in the majority of TALIS countries, represented by teachers’ agreement with statements like “Students should be allowed to think of solutions to practical problems themselves before the teacher shows them how they are solved”,“Students learn best by finding solutions to problems on their own”, and “The role of a teacher is to facilitate students’ own inquiry”. However, the data did not support an expected non-positive correlation between such constructivist beliefs and direct transmission beliefs like “Effective/good teachers demonstrate the correct way to solve a problem”, or “Instruction should be built around problems with clear, correct answers, and around ideas that most students can grasp quickly”.

Decomposition of the total variance in teachers’ preference of the constructivist and direct transmission teaching models to the three levels of teacher, school and country showed that 25% of the constructivist beliefs variance and 50% of the direct transmission beliefs variance was related to countries; there was a very small variance among schools, so the remaining variance was found at the teacher level.

A review of teacher practices on the basis of TALIS 2008 results revealed teachers’ preferences for structured instructional activities above student-oriented and/or enhanced activities; this finding was especially significant for the mathematics teachers participating in the survey (OECD 2009). However the TALIS reports (OECD 2009) have not linked this finding to student achievement data (like Lebens & Lebens, 2009, Germany), or international student achievement data as gathered by TIMSS 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2007 (which surveyed Grade 8 students, all of whom attended ISCED 2 schools) and/or PISA 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009 (which assessed 15-year-old students, some of whom were still attending ISCED 2 schools). 

The national analyses of the Slovak Republic data from PISA 2003 and 2006 (Korsnakova & Kovacova, 2010) revealed a slight negative correlation between students’ preferences for working in groups^[1] and their level of mathematical literacy (-0,11; SE 0,021)^[2], as well as different outcomes of certain teaching practices on the achievement results^[3] of different student groups. For example, students’ agreement with the statement “my teacher clearly explains the relevance of concepts to my life” was positively correlated with achievement for low-SES students, but negatively correlated with achievement for high-SES students.

[1] Classified as a student-oriented activity in TALIS 2008

[2] Q37 in the PISA 2003 Student Questionnaire

[3] Q34 in the PISA 2006 Student Questionnaire

http://rms.iea-dpc.org/# (for TIMSS data and related documentation) KORŠŇÁKOVÁ, P. & KOVÁČOVÁ, J.: Prax učiteľov slovenských škôl na nižšom sekundárnom stupni z pohľadu medzinárodného výskumu OECD TALIS 2008. Národná správa. Bratislava: NÚCEM 2010. 158 s. ISBN 978-80-970261-2-7 LEBENS, M. & LEBENS, P.: The Implications and Outcomes of Reform Mathematics for Low Achievers. In: Comparative Education, Teacher Training, Education Policy, Social Inclusion and Child Psychology, vol. 7, pp. 267-275, Sofia, Bulgaria 2009. ISBN: 978-954-9842-14-2 OECD (2005a): Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers. OECD 2005. ISBN 978-92-64-01802-6 OECD (2005b): Formative Assessment: Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms. OECD 2005. ISBN 978-92-64-00739-0 OECD (2009): Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments. First Results from TALIS. OECD 2009. ISBN 978-92-64-05605-3 OECD (2010): TALIS 2008 Technical Report. OECD 2010. ISBN 978-92-64-07985-4 SCHEERENS, J. et al.: Teachers´ Professional Development. Europe in international comparison. A secondary analysis based on the TALIS dataset. EU 2010. ISBN 978-92-15186-6