"Teachers lack academic freedom." The teacher phenomenon in education: how are they working?

“Teachers lack academic freedom.” The teacher phenomenon in education, how are they working?

In the 3rd episode of the podcast, the teacher phenomenon was analyzed. Who is a teacher in education? What is their role? What should a quality teacher be like? How is the pedagogical field working in Uzbekistan? To find answers to such questions, this time permanent education expert Komil Jalilov, educator Shokir Tursun, and the rector of the Abdulla Avloniy National Institute of Pedagogical Mastery Abduvali Ismoilov were invited to the studio.

— Komil aka, the topic we always address first in our podcasts is theory. If we talk about this first, who is a teacher and what role do they perform?

— Komil Jalilov:

Before answering the question of who a teacher is, whether we like it or not, we have to refer to the previous episodes of our podcast. Because education is still a holistic system. If you remember in the previous podcasts, we talked about the philosophy of education and methodology, that is, what educational philosophies and methodological approaches exist in teaching. Back then, we said that the 3 important components of education are interconnected and must work in this harmony.

Now, when we ask who a teacher is, they stand at the center of this system. Because it is the teacher who directly implements the curricula or the philosophy of education in the classroom. That is, no matter what goals education faces, the extent to which these goals are achieved is directly decided by the teacher; they perform the role of the most fundamental figure.

When asking what the teacher's role is, here we return to philosophies again. Based on the philosophy of education, roles are defined differently. In general, we divided educational philosophies into several approaches. In traditional philosophies, the goal is more about delivering knowledge, skills, or values considered important for society to the student.

In this, students are in a passive role, that is, in the role of receivers and absorbers of information. The teacher, on the other hand, appears as a deliverer of information, that is, as some kind of expert. In the second approach, progressive philosophies were put forward.

Here, more attention is paid to developing the student's personality, critical and creative thinking, and other skills, and forming them as an active individual. In this, the teacher appears as a facilitator, that is, not someone who delivers knowledge in a ready-made form to the student, but as a guide who creates conditions for acquiring this knowledge.

They give questions and assignments, and students form their knowledge by answering these questions and performing the tasks set by the teacher. The third, even more progressive philosophy clearly emerged in the 1950s–1960s of the last century, which is reconstructionism, meaning it is connected with rebuilding society.

In this, schools begin to conclude that it is not enough to prepare a student only for a democratic society and make them an active citizen. Here, the student is prepared not only as an active citizen but also as a person who can see the flaws in society. That is, tomorrow, after graduating from school, they must be ready to change society as an active member.

The teacher should be more of a partner engaging in dialogue. They try to explain where what problems exist, and what can be corrected and how. In general, whether we like it or not, the teacher's role varies based on the goal.

Of course, it is not necessary to cling to a single philosophy of education and say that a teacher must do only this or only that. Because within subjects, the goal of a single day's lesson can be different. Depending on this, the teacher's role also changes.

A teacher should not be limited only to providing knowledge. If yesterday the teacher was viewed as the source of knowledge, today knowledge can be obtained not only from the teacher but also from artificial intelligence and the internet. Opportunities have expanded. Therefore, the teacher's role is also changing.

Previously, if a teacher was limited only to delivering information from the textbook, today this is not enough. They are having to teach the student how to think and reflect, and explaining how much they need to apply the acquired knowledge in practice is also becoming important. Therefore, a teacher must constantly work on themselves and pay special attention to their professional development.

At this point, I think we should also list the opportunities provided by the state. For a teacher to be dedicated to their profession and perform their role well, they first of all needed conditions. Where were our teachers 10 years ago? At those times, they did not even have time to think about the quality of school education, because they were busy with work that did not belong to them.

Today, conditions have been created, attention has been paid to schools, and a new professional development system has been created. If a teacher lacks knowledge, it has reached a level where this becomes clearly visible. Now they are constantly working on themselves, developing, and trying to become good educators.

— Abduvali aka, if I may interrupt you here, we will talk about this again. There are also questions about how adequate the conditions actually are, that is, whether they meet the demand, and whether quality teachers are being trained. Which of the theories listed by Komil aka do you think is currently being met in practice?

— Abduvali Ismoilov:

Now, as Komil aka himself said, it is difficult to say that we are in either this or that theory, of course. The teacher's activity is changing. If previously they were a provider of knowledge, now they are transitioning to the role of a facilitator. To transition to the role of a facilitator, it would be more correct to say that we are on the path of reconstruction and development.

Because it is difficult to say that we have reached a modern developed model. But, of course, we are on this path. Answers to questions such as what it is like to be a facilitator in the professional development system, that is, with what methods reflection is taught, or what methods are needed to teach critical thinking, are being taught in professional development.

Teachers are learning this and trying to apply it in their activities. I think we are on the path to introducing the most modern models. We are all striving for this. The teacher will also reach this model sooner or later.

— Shokir aka, in international experience, there are countries with strong education systems. In countries with such systems, who is a teacher and what role is defined for them to perform?

— Shokir Tursun:

Personally, for me, a teacher has 3 types of roles. The first is designing education. First of all, answers must be developed to the questions of what the child will learn, when they will learn, and how they will learn. The second role is diagnosing the learning process.

That is, this is not assessment; by diagnosing, it means analyzing where the problems are, where the children are unable to learn, and for what reason the problem is arising. Of course, solutions to this are agreed upon with a consortium, that is, with the team.

And the third, the most important, which we can say is somewhat lacking, is inspiring motivation. That is, there is the issue of inspiring internal motivation in the child to acquire knowledge. We can also call it raising interest in the subject. But in general, across the entire system.

I believe that a teacher who performs these 3 roles will be the ideal teacher in any of the philosophies listed above. Now, if you ask whether there are such teachers in practice, there are few in Uzbekistan. You have to search. Even if you find them, such teachers are expensive. Because the system does not allow the first role, that is, the design stage.

— Komil Jalilov:

If you allow me, I would like to add something here. Based on several roles listed just now, I wanted to focus on the process of designing education. The most commonly used term in English is instructional design. This means designing the teaching process.

Design here is used in the sense of planning. To give a simple example, to make something, you first draw its blueprint at least on paper, right?! A blueprint is needed to be able to see how I want to achieve the final result and what is needed for this.

It should be the same in education, that is, there must be a question of what kind of student we want to produce, what kind of person we see after certain quarters, years, or in general after 11 years. Once there is an answer to this question, education can be designed, that is, what needs to be done to lead to this is developed.

Just now Shokir is saying that the education system does not give teachers this opportunity; if you remember, we talked about this last time too, that is, whether we like it or not, in many cases the education system, especially the state education system, has restricted the teacher. I mean academic freedom.

For example, there is no opportunity to choose the textbook or the topic. Officials have defined this. They give something called a calendar plan; whether you like it or not, you teach the given topic, you cannot change it. If an inspector comes and you are teaching another topic instead of the given one, you will face problems.

If the system defines your every step, functions undergo atrophy, that is, after functions are not used, they slowly begin to disappear. For example, if a person does not walk on their feet for a long time, they forget what walking is.

This is a similar process; if a teacher does not design education in practice, they forget it and work only with ready-made material. As a result, another major risk arises: they see the main function of the material as just delivering this material.

In my view, especially in the state education system, the main role of teachers is viewed as teaching the textbook, as if whether children understand it or not is not important. Because we do not allow the function of designing education, this function crumbles by itself, and along with it, adjacent functions also continue to disappear.

That is, we are saying facilitator, but to reach that, a teacher must go through 3 stages. For example, if I wrote a textbook, I wrote it with my own worldview.

Such textbooks cannot cover 6 million children studying in more than 10 thousand schools. This is absolutely impossible. Abduvali aka, maybe you will also confirm this, I have found neither the legal basis nor the logic for why going through the textbook is mandatory.

That is, going through the curriculum is mandatory for the teacher, but I do not understand the part where teaching exactly the topic in the textbook and making them do the assignments in the textbook is mandatory.

— Abduvali Ismoilov:

I wanted to emphasize the results of the TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey — a large-scale international study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that assesses the activities, working conditions, and learning environment of teachers and school principals) study conducted among teachers. According to the results of the study conducted in 2024, there are very big shifts and several positive aspects in education.

Several positive situations have been seen regarding teachers' satisfaction with their profession and salary, and their rising status in society; at the same time, there is one interesting aspect: the teacher's autonomy to carry out their activity is not quite sufficient. That is, they are not independent. I agree with Komil aka's words; it became known that the teacher's authority to conduct lessons is limited.

This also showed a lower indicator in the study. Currently, education is on the path of development. I think we should also think about this in the next stage. True, currently the teacher has no opportunity to choose the textbook; the time to choose will also come. For this, we need to raise the question of what an ideal textbook would be like. With a very big effort, a new textbook is being introduced through the experience of Singapore and Finland.

In the next stage, as the person responsible for professional development, together with our team, we introduced the methods of teaching this. That is, we delivered the methods in the new textbooks adopted in 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 to teachers in the professional development system. Teachers were quite happy about this.

They accepted it with great interest, happily saying, "no, good methods, good experiences have entered, if we learn this, it will really help our lesson." In 2024–2025, a professional development program of 116 hours for natural sciences and 106 hours for mathematics was introduced. The process of introducing textbooks has not reached the end, that is, it has not yet reached the 11th grade. Let it reach the end. I think after it reaches the end, we might also reach the opportunity to choose.

Because in practice, we observe the opposite of this more often.

— Abduvali Ismoilov:

No, I don't know if we will focus on this later or not. But at the international level, the largest study to analyze the activity of a teacher is TALIS. At the national level, a better study than this has not yet come out. According to its results, 95 percent of the participating educators showed that they are satisfied with their profession today. This is also a good signal for us.

— Shokir Tursun: It might look like a cosmic number, but if you think about why it is so, they compare it with the previous and current times. They do not compare it with the ideal. That is, they take the average. To be more precise, they feel satisfied because it is better than before.

— Komil Jalilov:

They compare it with, say, not coming back from cotton fields for months 10 years ago or performing other tasks not specific to them. True, compared to before, it is much better now, but in my view, when taking the results of TALIS or similar studies, one should approach with a bit of caution. In English, there is a concept called self-reporting, which means describing oneself or evaluating oneself. This skill is not very well developed, not only in teachers but in general as a society. That is, when we evaluate ourselves, we often either overstate it too much or understate it too much. It is very difficult for us to give a correct evaluation. Especially those working in state structures, in my view, approach filling out questionnaires of this form very cautiously and answer more based on what is expected of them, rather than from their personal observations or their personal evaluation.

True, for example, there may also be directors who say "fill it out beautifully," we do not deny that either. But even in the absence of such a situation, they still think more about what answer is expected of me.