UNICEF Mongolia - Teachers College Columbia University

CHAPTER 6: TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS
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CHAPTER 6: TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS
The effecveness of teaching may ulmately only be assessed, comparavely that is, by comparing
student outcomes in Mongolia with that in other countries. Mongolia has not yet parcipated in these
kind of IEA or OECD-type of studies (TIMSS, PISA) and earlier regional and internaonal studies (such as
MLA) are by now dated.
In the absence from such reliable, internaonal comparave measures, this study has resorted to posing
a few key quesons that relate to teacher effecveness:
(1) What percentage of teachers serve as substute teachers, that is, teach subjects for which they
were not trained?
(2) What are the licensing criteria and quality assurance mechanisms?
(3) How and for which groups of teachers is in-service teacher training provided?
This last chapter briefly addresses these three issues in an aempt to shed light on some of the key
aspects of teacher effecveness.
6.1. THE SUBSTITUTION OF TEACHERS AND NON-LICENSED
TEACHERS
TEACHERS IN MONGOLIA: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON RECRUITMENT INTO TEACHING,
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND RETENTION OF TEACHERS
There are three groups of teachers who work as non-licensed teachers in Mongolia:
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Young teachers: New teachers who graduated from pre-service teacher educaon
and have only taught for one or two years. In most cases, they are granted a teaching
license aer subming relevant documents for review (see secon 6.2.).
Non-teachers: Professionals with a higher educaon degree who switched to the
teaching profession (e.g., economist who teaches math).
Teachers with another subject specializaon: Teachers who teach subjects for which
they had no teacher training (e.g., math teacher who teaches biology).
The teachers in the groups 2 and 3 are considered—in internaonal terminology—substute teachers.
Substute teachers have become an object of great scruny in the TIMSS and PISA studies, specifically
in the PISA 2006 study that dealt with science literacy. There is globally a shortage of math and science
teachers, and schools in many countries substute the teachers for these subjects with other teachers
who did not have training in math or science. It is believed that the quality of instrucon suffers if a
subject is taught by a non-specialist or by a substute teacher. The poor results of students in Kyrgyzstan
in the PISA 2006 study, for example, were directly linked to a shortage of science teachers. Schools in
Kyrgyzstan—but also in any country where there is a shortage—compensate for the shortage by hiring
non-specialist substute teachers. Apart from teacher shortages, there exist, however, other reasons for
hiring substute teachers.
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