Introduction

In the first two sections of this book concerns about the quality of expanding education systems have been looked at from a number of perspectives. Teacher quality has been identified as a key element in improving the quality of learning. But quality is not an easy term to define. It is clearly something more than being qualified (although qualifications are used as a proxy for quality in much of the official documentation about the teaching profession). The third section of the book addresses the quality dimension of teachers and teaching through a range of research studies, each of which seeks to give more substance to any analyses of quality.