Teachers are buckling under pressure, education experts say

Teachers are facing unsustainable demands as Iceland’s education system struggles with declining performance, education experts told mbl.is.

Results from the PISA assessment show that only around 2 to 4 per cent of students in Iceland are high performers. The results also show little difference in ability between students within individual schools or between schools.

Haukur Arason, an associate professor at the University of Iceland’s School of Education, said the pattern was partly linked to the country’s education policy.

“We have focused on equalising outcomes instead of ensuring equal opportunities,” he said.

Arason appeared on mbl.is’s Dagmál programme earlier this week with Sigríður Ólafsdóttir, an associate professor at the University of Iceland’s School of Education and a literacy specialist. They discussed the PISA results, what had gone wrong and how to respond to the negative development.

Ólafsdóttir said teachers’ workload also had to be considered, as it had increased with the addition of more responsibilities. Teachers also needed teaching methods that produced results.

“Teachers are simply buckling under the pressure. We say that teachers should be trusted, but we do not trust that they have learned the teaching methods needed to meet this responsibility. That is not their fault,” Ólafsdóttir said.

Arason said teachers had taken on many new roles in recent years beyond simply teaching children.

“There are endless demands on teachers. There is a strong tendency to assign issues to schools and teachers, asking them to deal with new subjects and imposing new requirements, including specialised services for individual students and individual student problems,” he said.

He said this was one reason teachers found it much more difficult to apply the effective methods available to them.

Ólafsdóttir said teachers needed effective tools and that they should no longer be expected to act as psychologists, sociologists and behavioural specialists. Arason added that those professionals needed to work in schools and handle their own responsibilities.

“Let us focus on the schools for the next three years and try it,” Ólafsdóttir said.