"ADEQUATE" - THIS IS HOW TEACHERS SELF-EVALUATE - WHAT THE TALIS 2024 INTERNATIONAL SURVEY SHOWS ABOUT CYPRUS - Filenews 23/3 by Evangelia Sizopoulou
The majority of teachers, especially those with several years of educational presence and experience, declare self-sufficiency, especially at high levels in various areas related to their professional presence in the classrooms. This is the basic picture that emerges from the results of the largest international survey TALIS 2024, which examines in depth the views and working conditions of teachers.
It is noted that in the main phase of the survey carried out during the period February – March 2024, with the participation of all public and private schools of Secondary General Education, Gymnasium Cycle (100 schools), the principals were selected from each school unit (Gymnasiums), a total of 100. Then, about 20 teachers from each school unit were randomly sampled. In schools with less than 30 teachers, all of them were selected. In the end, 99 principals and 1,793 teachers participated in the survey. The following results include only the views of teachers, as those of principals will be published in 2026. The implementation of the research in Cyprus was undertaken on behalf of the Ministry of Education, by the Centre for Educational Research and Evaluation (KEEA) of the Pedagogical Institute.
Regarding the results, among others, are:
>> In the chapter "Teacher Self-Sufficiency", the majority of teachers (over 80%) in Cyprus declare high self-sufficiency in most issues of teaching, evaluation and management of students. Higher self-sufficiency was reported in providing alternative explanations (for example, when students are confused, with a percentage of 96.3%), while lower in reducing discrepancies in performance among students (68.7%). The self-sufficiency of Cypriot teachers appeared to be related to their teaching experience, since teachers with more than ten years of experience reported higher levels of self-sufficiency than their colleagues with less than five years of experience.
In relation to teaching in multicultural environments, the majority of teachers (over 80%) feel confident that they can facilitate cooperation between children with different cultural/ethnic backgrounds, reduce ethnic stereotypes between them and raise awareness of cultural differences. A major challenge is to critically examine the curriculum to determine if it reinforces negative cultural stereotypes (67.0%).
In terms of implementing inclusive practices for children with special educational needs, teachers reported high levels of self-sufficiency at lower rates (less than 71%), while cooperation with other professionals for the design of educational programs (44.9%), adaptation of national assessments (49%), the involvement of parents/guardians in their children's school activities (39.4%) and the information of others who may be familiar with them were identified as the biggest challenges little for legislation and policy on the inclusion of children with special educational needs (38.5%).
>> "Teaching Practices": The teaching practices most often applied by teachers (more than 90%) are setting goals at the beginning of the lesson, providing students with explanations of what they are expected to learn, relating the new with the old topics and presenting a summary of the content. Less often they seem to apply practices that contribute to children's cognitive activation, such as assigning tasks for which there is no obvious solution (33.8%) or requiring critical thinking (69.6%), asking students to decide on their own the procedures for solving complex tasks (46.1%) or assigning work to small groups to find a common solution to a problem/task (43.1%). It is noted that the assignment of tasks that take at least a week to complete seems to be the practice applied by the lowest percentage of teachers (25.6%).
It also appears that teachers devote an average of 74.4% of their teaching time to teaching and learning and the rest of the time to administrative tasks (8.7%) and maintaining discipline in the classroom (15.8%). Here, too, it became apparent that teachers with more than ten years of teaching experience and teachers with high levels of self-sufficiency in teaching spend less time maintaining order in the classroom and more time teaching and learning.
How teachers position themselves on disorder and noise in classrooms
Another, equally interesting finding of TALIS 2024, concerns discipline in the classroom. In particular, less than 20% of teachers agree that there is a lot of annoying noise and disorder in their classroom (17.7%), they have to wait a long time for their students to calm down (12.5%), many children do not start working for a long time after the start of class (16.2%) and a lot of time is wasted because children interrupt the lesson (16%). Here, too, the more experienced teachers stated that there are less frequent discipline issues in their classroom. Also, teachers who participated in relevant training are more likely to succeed in managing student behaviour.
Regarding the degree of achievement of specific goals in relation to teaching, related to teaching clarity, cognitive activation, feedback, consolidation of new knowledge, adaptation of teaching to the different needs of students, support of students' social and emotional learning and classroom management, the majority of teachers (over 80%) stated that they achieve the above goals, In addition to the goal of supporting children's social and emotional learning, which is achieved to a lesser extent (74.6%). It also appeared that teachers with more than ten years of teaching experience and teachers with relevant training are more likely to achieve this goal.
>> "Student Assessment Practices": The assessment practices most often used by the majority of teachers are the provision of oral or written feedback to highlight areas for improvement, the observation of children when they are working on specific activities and the provision of direct feedback, and the use of assessment to examine whether they have learned the material presented. The practices they use less often are giving a grade (e.g. numerical score) to let students know how they performed compared to their classmates (48.4%) or asking children to rate their own progress (45.5%).
Regarding the data that have emerged from the survey, it is stated that the Ministry of Education will use them with the aim of implementing actions and establishing policies that will contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning, the more effective use of digital resources and tools in education and the empowerment of teachers through targeted professional learning interventions.
