This insight note contributes to the growing body of knowledge on teaching practices that foster student learning and achievement by analysing in-depth qualitative data from classroom observations and teacher interviews. Much of the research on teachers and teaching in development literature focuses on observable and quantified factors, including qualifications and training. But simply being qualified (with a university degree in education or subject areas), or trained in certain ways (eg coaching versus in-service) explains very little of the variation in learning outcomes (Kane and Staiger, 2008; Wößmann, 2003; Das and Bau, 2020). Teaching is a complex set of practices that draw on teachers’ beliefs about learning, their prior experiences, their content and pedagogical knowledge and repertoire, and their commitment and personality. Recent research in the educational development literature has turned to examining teaching practices, including content knowledge, pedagogical practices and teacher-student interactions, primarily through quantitative data from knowledge tests and classroom observations of practices (see Bruns, De Gregorio and Taut, 2016; Filmer, Molina and Wane, 2020; Glewwe et al, in progress). Other studies, such as TIMSS, the OECD and a few World Bank studies have used classroom videos to further explain high inference factors of teachers’ (Gallimore and Hiebert, 2000; Tomáš and Seidel, 2013).

A recent study comparing various classroom observation tools used in Tanzanian schools found that the domain of specific instructional activities, such as teacher interactions with students or providing feedback, are related to student learning (Filmer, Molina and Wane, 2020). While regression analysis in this study showed that domains from any one instrument only explained a small amount of the variance on test scores, more dimensions resulting from putting the data together from the different observation tools could explain up to 20% of the variation in test scores.

Another recent study from Pakistan argues that observed teacher characteristics account for less than 5% of the variation in teacher value added (Das and Bau, 2020). These studies suggests that research is needed to capture data that reveal the complexity of how teaching practices affect learning performance and experiences. In this note, the authors draw on data from a qualitative study of classroom observations in Vietnam to analyse more deeply these instructional practices. While they examined teachers’ beliefs, engagement with students, their teaching of content and their classroom environment, they found that teaching metacognitive knowledge and strategies was a critical component in classrooms with high learning outcomes.