Secondary School Teachers and Education Quality: A framework of policy options for teacher education and professional development

Resumen

Qualified secondary school teachers are becoming a precious commodity in many developed and developing countries. They tend to be the hardest segment for the teaching profession to attract, the most expensive to educate and the most difficult to retain in schools. The numbers of unqualified teachers tend to be much higher for secondary than for primary education in almost every developing country. And the attrition rates of secondary education teachers are the highest in the teaching profession, especially for male teachers and for those in high-demand areas, such as mathematics, science and technology (OECD, 2004). In such a difficult context, this paper sets out with the assumption that there is a deep – and perhaps increasing – gap between the new key competencies which every secondary school graduate is supposed to master in the knowledge society and the teaching competencies with which teachers are “equipped” after they graduate from universities and/or teacher training institutions. In the current scenario of strong pressure for the democratization of secondary education all over the world, such a gap appears to be the most critical bottleneck for the expansion of quality secondary education. Based on the analysis of secondary school teacher training policies and practices in six developing countries (Chile, Mexico, Ghana, Senegal, Cambodia and Vietnam) (Moreno, 2005), the paper concludes proposing a policy framework and policy options for teacher training and teacher development which could also be useful for developed countries.