An Effective Solution To The Teacher Shortage

On April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia experienced the largest series of volcanic eruptions in human history. The smoke was so thick that global temperatures dropped and the world had no summer in 1816, causing crop shortages and livestock deaths.

This crisis made humanity realize it could not depend on horses as the only means of transportation. So, Karl von Drais invented the bicycle in 1817, and Robert Anderson invented the horseless electric carriage in 1832. Trains, invented in 1804, started transporting passengers in the 1830s. For a long time, horses coexisted with these alternatives only to eventually be replaced by faster, affordable, and more efficient transportation solutions.

Not all innovations come about because of a crisis, but hiccups certainly help us realize what needs to change. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how vulnerable education systems are. Two years later, the results are learning loss, overworked teachers, a teacher shortage, an emotional toll on students and educators, and so on. Moreover, this generation of students will experience a significant income impact in their lifetime.

Most school systems have been creative about solving the teacher shortage issue with solutions like lowering experience and degree requirements, combining classrooms, shortening weeks, raising salaries, slowing down retirements, and offering retention and recruitment bonuses, to name a few. These solutions have merit, but will they solve the cause of the problem by doing more of the same? I say no. As Albert Einstein quipped, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

So, I propose we start from one pillar that can pave the way for a system’s upgrade: to develop students learning autonomy, or their ability to function with minimal external guidance. Learning autonomy doesn't require a new curriculum, more teachers, insane investments, updated school policies, or the newest app, because it starts from something every student already has: a brain. When students become self-directed learners, they can learn anywhere, anytime, with the available resources, having teachers as guidance to develop skills for life.

Learning autonomy shifts the system from a curriculum-centered and resource-dependent to a student-centered approach, solving learning loss, decreasing the amount teachers are overworked, and improving socioemotional skills. When we focus on content, we require external resources, such as technology or specific textbooks. When we focus on learning skills, we require a brain.

Among various benefits of learning autonomy, here are three:

1 It Focuses on Skills Development
You need 10,000 hours to be an expert on anything (A. Ericsson, R. Pool, 2016). From kindergarten through 12th-grade, students spend 16,800 hours sitting and waiting for the next instruction. What can we expect from them when they leave high school? Follow their dreams? Be prepared for life?

Learning autonomy comprises six learning process steps to which teachers can plug in any subject. Thus, while students are learning the curriculum, they are also developing skills and practicing them for 16,800 hours, coached by their teachers. The more students practice these skills, the more they become a habit, and the more they will enjoy the process.

You learned to walk many years ago, and since then, you can go where you want because of this skill. Walking is a process stored in your brain, so you can do it without even thinking about it. You don’t THINK you can do it – you KNOW you can do it. Our goal with autonomous learning is the same thing: store the learning process in students’ brains to the point that they can learn anything without even thinking about it. Isn’t that the whole purpose of education?

For example, the first step is to set goals and plan. Something like, "complete two reading activities and one concept map in the next hour." Simple, right? Small successes increase students’ belief that they can accomplish whatever goal they set, which boosts their intrinsic motivation and enables them to personalize their own learning experience. Students understand that effort brings the rewards they want.

There is a bigger reason to shift from curriculum-centered to skills development: 45% of domestic and international companies are increasingly choosing candidates by their skills first rather than a college degree, which has grown by 20% since 2019. We must prepare students for this new reality, and learning autonomy is a feasible, affordable, and scalable solution to do so.

2 It Solves the Teacher Shortage
We can’t change the fact that many teacher positions will not be filled this year. But what we can do is explore how to work with fewer teachers while still setting up students for success. When students are self-directed, teachers can support many students simultaneously because it distributes the work among everyone. It shifts from teachers’ sole responsibility to teach to students’ responsibility to learn.

In addition to that, we must pay attention to the next generation of teachers as Gen Z enters the workforce. They want quality of life and work purpose rather than high salaries. Gen Z represents 20.35% of the U.S. population, 20% in the U.K., and 26% worldwide. They dislike long hours and high stress, which are today’s teacher reality. Learning autonomy caters to Gen Z’s wants. It makes the teaching profession attractive to them because it deliberately develops human potential through collaborative work with students, which is definitively more affordable for education systems compared to compensation increases.

3 It Can Coexist With Current Solutions
As transportation innovations in the 1800s coexisted with horses, learning autonomy can coexist with the current curriculum, resources, and education policies. All school systems must do at this time is to train teachers. As teachers and students gain confidence in the learning process and results start piling in, policymakers can update policies accordingly. Teachers worldwide can learn to develop their students’ learning autonomy because it is independent of the context, as it starts from what every student already has: a brain.

Education systems are open to solutions after the pandemic. Let’s take advantage of this great excuse to rethink education and set our students for success. I snowclone Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign motto with a tweak: “It’s the learning process, stupid!” The more our human capital possesses in-demand skills and capabilities, the more we will have economic prosperity and productivity, and the more we will evolve as humankind.

Erika Twani (www.erikatwani.com), author of Becoming Einstein’s Teacher: Awakening the Genius in Your Students, is co-founder and CEO of Learning One to One, where, along with experts, she explores ways to foster human achievement through Relational Learning. Before co-founding Learning One to One, Twani was Microsoft’s education industry director for Multi-Country Americas. Twani has advised government officials and education leaders worldwide on the use of technology in education, has written various articles on the topic, is a TEDx speaker, and has worked with public and private schools to guide the practical use of Relational Learning. She led Learning One to One into five countries in the first year alone, touching the lives of more than 100,000 students every year.