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Motoko Akiba is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at Florida State University. Dr. Akiba received her B.A. from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and a dual-title Ph.D. in Educational Theory & Policy and Comparative & International Education from Pennsylvania State University-University Park. Her research focuses on teacher policy and reform topics, such as professional development, compensation and performance-related pay, and multicultural teacher education. She is an author of the book, Improving teacher quality: The U.S. teaching force in global context (Teachers College Press, 2009). Her published journal articles appear in Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Education Policy, and Comparative Education Review, and Compare among others. Dr. Akiba is serving as an Associate Editor of Educational Researcher from 2012 to 2015. She is also a recipient of the NSF Early Career Award Grant, NAEP secondary analysis grant, and AERA dissertation and research grants.

These are headlines of news articles in a national newspaper in a country outside of the United States. The media coverage of teacher scandals increased since 2001, reaching the highest 89 cases in 2004. The teachers in this country, the readers would conclude, have serious problems. They would wonder what is wrong with these teachers and speculate that teaching is not a well-respected or well-paid occupation in this country.

Purpose – The study examined: (1) the implementation of the 2009 Teacher License Renewal Policy (TLRP) by a large national university; (2) teachers’ responses to the TLRP, which requires teachers to take university courses to renew their licenses, and (3) completion rates for license renewal in 2011 and 2012.Methodology – This mixed-method study is based on: (1) a case study of TLRP implementation that involved observations of TLRP courses and interviews of instructors, TLRP steering committee members, and participating teachers at a large national university; and (2) a survey of 365 teachers who took the TLRP courses at this university.Findings – The data showed that the university's successful implementation of the TLRP was largely influenced by the existence of “boundary practice” – a shared system that connects multiple organizations and groups implementing the policy. Lesson Study, as a shared system of teaching and learning improvement in Japan, guided the development of high-quality TLRP courses and teachers’ respect for university courses based on research knowledge. As a result, while teachers were dissatisfied with the policy requirement of renewing teacher licenses, they were satisfied with their learning experiences through the TLRP courses, which also influenced their opinions about the policy itself.Value – This is the first empirical study that examined the implementation and impact of the TLRP in Japan. It highlights the importance of a shared system for teaching and learning improvement for supporting a teacher reform implementation.

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

From the implementations and outcomes of teacher reforms examined in these 10 countries with diverse historical, political, and social contexts, three themes emerged that deserve attention and elaboration. These themes are: (1) involvement of and coordination among key stakeholders in decision-making and implementation processes, (2) clarity and coherence in policy design, and (3) capacity for implementing the reform.

Teacher effectiveness and teacher quality have become the focus of intense international attention and national concern. Dozens of nations are implementing a diverse set of strategies that aim to improve the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers. These efforts have not been well coordinated, and as the authors in this volume show, core constructs of quality have not been well defined. In this introductory chapter, we discuss why teachers are now “under the microscope” of policymaker’s attention and elaborate how the chapters in this volume identify particularly fruitful avenues for further study. The assembled chapters address two complex questions: (1) what existing cross-national measures of teacher effectiveness and teacher quality are most promising and how can these be aligned to maximize their research potential? and (2) what core constructs of teacher quality or effectiveness are missing from the evidence-base, and how can cross-national comparative research help refine these? To investigate these questions, the chapters in this volume address different aspects of “quality.” While quality may be politically contested, there is a significant need to continue to articulate a truly global perspective on teacher quality. The authors look at a wide range of aspects of quality in order to advance thinking about teacher education, instructional quality and workforce or organizational conditions that affect quality; to analyze instruments, tools, or measures used to assess quality; and identify what measures need to be developed further. We also note how scholarly study of the spread of transnational teacher reforms has failed to keep pace with national policy changes regarding teacher quality, and advance a more general theory of the forces affecting national policymakers.

At the start of the millennium, a great sea change in educational policy moved teachers to the center of global policy discussions about how to reform and improve education (OECD, 2005). Ignored, dismissed as relevant, or even characterized as impediments to reform in previous decades, teachers are now routinely portrayed as the key to providing quality instruction. The quality of the national teaching force is recognized as a major factor in any nation’s attempts to improve its overall educational performance. Teachers, one might argue, are finally getting the attention they deserve.