BRIEF Our vision is to revolutionize how education systems track and improve teaching quality. What is Teach? Teach is a free classroom observation tool that provides a window into one of the less explored and more important aspects of a student’s education: what goes on in the classroom. The tool is intended to be used in primary classrooms (grades 1-6) and was designed to help low- and middle-income countries track and improve teaching quality. Why is it important to measure teaching practices? The learning crisis is, at its core, a teaching crisis. A growing body of research indicates teaching is the most important school-based determinant of student learning. The difference between the impact of a weak and great teacher on student test scores is equivalent to one to two years of schooling. Moreover, evidence suggests several consecutive years of effective teaching can offset learning shortfalls and help students reach their full potential. Although better teaching practices are needed to tackle the learning crisis, most education systems in low-and middle-income countries do not regularly monitor them. How can Teach be used? Teach can be used as a tool as a tool for system diagnostic and for professional development. As a system diagnostic, Teach allows governments to monitor the effectiveness of their policies to improve teacher practices. As a professional development tool, Teach is  used to identify individual teachers’ strengths and weaknesses. The World Bank is currently developing Coach, which will help principals and coaches use the information from Teach to provide targeted feedback on how teachers can improve their classroom practices. What does Teach measure? Teach differs from other classroom observation tools in that it captures (i) the time teachers spend on learning and the extent to which students are on task, and (ii) the quality of teaching practices that help develop students’ socioemotional and cognitive skills. As part of the Time on Task component, 3 snapshots of 1–10 seconds are used to record both the teacher’s actions and the number of students who are on task throughout the observation. The Quality of Teaching Practices component, on the other hand, is organized into 3 primary areas as shown below: Classroom Culture, Instruction, and Socioemotional Skills. These areas have 9 corresponding elements that point to 28 behaviors. The behaviors are characterized as low, medium, or high, based on the evidence collected during the observation. These behavior scores are translated into a 5-point scale that quantifies teaching practices as captured in a series of two, 15-minute lesson observations. CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION: SOCIOEMOTIONAL CULTURE: SKILLS: The teacher instructs The teacher creates in a way that deepens The teacher fosters a culture that is student understanding socioemotional skills that conducive to learning. and encourages encourage students to The focus here is critical thought and succeed both inside and not on the teacher analysis. The focus outside the classroom. To correcting students’ here is not on content- develop students’ social negative behaviors specific methods of and emotional skills, the but rather the instruction, but rather, teacher instills autonomy, extent to which the the extent to which promotes perseverance, teacher creates a the teacher facilitates and fosters social and supportive learning the lesson, checks collaborative skills. environment and sets for understanding, positive behavioral provides feedback, and expectations. encourages students to think critically. Teach’s value proposition Teach holistically measures what happens in the classroom. It does so by considering not just time spent on learning but, more importantly, the quality of teaching practices. • Teach captures practices that nurture children’s cognitive and socioemotional skills. • Teach was developed with low- and middle-income countries in mind and can be contextualized for different settings. For instance, additional elements can be added at the request of the government and local video footage is used to train observers on the tool. • Teach includes a free complementary toolkit that helps teams conduct the training with a detailed script and training guide, collect data using a data collection app available in several languages, and clean and analyze data with automatized programs — including assessing the validity of Teach scores. A template report to communicate the results is also available. • Teach has been already applied in a dozen low- and middle-income countries and shown to be reliable. Emerging evidence indicates it is also a good predictor of student learning. Development and validation Before the launch of the tool, Teach underwent a rigorous development and validation process over a 2-year timeframe. A Technical Advisory Panel provided extensive feedback and inputs on the tool’s design. Teach was also piloted in over 1,000 classrooms across Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Uruguay, and tested with global video footage from 11 low- and middle-income countries. Analyses of the training data indicate that after only 4 days, almost 90% of participants passed the Teach Reliability Exam, which involves coding 3 videos reliably. Meaning, for each video, the participants scored within 1-point of the master codes, at least 80% of the time (Table 1). This feat was achieved by local observers who have a comparable level of education to the average citizen in their country and who had no previous experience conducting classroom observations. Table 1: Teach Reliability Exam pass rate COUNTRY N OF OBSERVERS PASS RATE Mozambique 46 74% Pakistan 53 96% Philippines 25 96% Uruguay 21 100% Raters also have high levels of inter-rater reliability. Results from field trials from 845 schools in Pakistan show that paired raters have 97% agreement within 1 point and 87% agreement within a half-point (Molina et al., 2018). The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) is .75 for the overall Teach score, indicating strong inter-rater reliability. Finally, teachers who display effective practices, as measured by Teach, are associated with students who achieve higher learning outcomes. What experts are saying about Teach “Teach is a magnificent example of research taken to the practical level with the possibility of providing enormous social value. This initiative turns research and evaluation into a clear improvement mechanism.” Eric Hanushek Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University “Before Teach, the lack of open source, flexible, easy-to-learn observational measures that can be used systematically in classrooms has stood as a major stumbling block in international efforts to improve education.” Sara Rimm-Kaufman Professor of Education, Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia “Teach represents a major innovation in our efforts to improve education for all. It will be catalytic for enhancing learning all around the world!” Oon-Seng Tan Director, Centre for Research in Child Development, National Institute of Education, Singapore “Teach is an essential resource for countries seeking to improve education results. It combines the best features of prior instruments into an all-in-one package.” Barbara Bruns Center for Global Development and Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University “Teach provides excellent guidance for observing and rating global classroom instruction. It is impressive not only for its comprehensiveness, but also its specificity, naming key classroom practices, and describing concrete examples of how those practices occur at different levels of quality.” Heather Hill Jerome T. Murphy Professor in Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Creator of the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI) instrument “Teach provides a practical tool for educators around the world who are serious about improving the quality of classroom practice.” Pam Grossman Dean and George and Diane Weiss Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; Creator of the Protocol for English Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO) instrument “Teach has clearly been designed with the realities of the Global South in mind. The clear explanations, well-crafted examples, and FAQs ease interpretation and ensure commonality of understanding between observers.” Sara Ruto Director, People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network Contact us at teach@worldbank.org and visit us at www.worldbank.org/education/teach