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  • 17.12.2021

13th Policy Dialogue Forum - Resource Pack

The 13th Policy Dialogue Forum took place from 2-3 December 2021 in Kigali, Rwanda and on-line. Jointly organized by the TTF Secretariat, and the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Rwanda, the...
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Blog
  • 16.12.2021

How learning through play helped teachers support children’s wellbeing as schools reopened

As children returned to school after pandemic-related closures, many teachers found that play helped to ease them back into a learning routine. Their experiences add to mounting evidence from research on how learning through play can develop skills such as creativity and collaboration.

Teachers and experts shared their perspectives in a session at the 13th Policy Dialogue Forum on innovation organised by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, in Kigali, Rwanda earlier this month. Watch the session on replay here.

What is learning through play?

Ruth Mbabazi, from Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)’s Let’s Learn through Play programme, explained: “Play is joyful – children express themselves with pleasure. Play is socially interactive – children communicate, they build relationships, they can work together. Play is iterative – they test and retest what they know, by investigating different concepts.”

“There is evidence that these characteristics help children to learn better and deeper”, added Lieve Leroy from VVOB - education for development. “Learning is not just acquiring academic knowledge and skills, but stimulating the development of a diverse set of domains such as emotional, social, physical skills. Play facilitates such holistic development.”

During lockdowns, many children lost opportunities to play. In the session, teachers shared how play-based learning had been critical in rebuilding mental wellbeing, enabling them to express their imagination and curiosity again, and develop persistence and dispute resolution.

In the words of teacher Eric Ndayishimiye: “Play-based approaches created space for collaboration. They helped to encourage self-regulation by controlling one’s behaviour, emotions and thoughts in pursuit of long-term goals.”

But while parents instinctively understand the value of learning through play for very young children, not everyone understands that this applies equally across all levels of education. Parents often support play in preschool, but resist teachers’ attempts to introduce it at primary level and above. 

Bringing parents onboard

When schools were closed, play with parents helped children to continue to learn at home. As Hugh Delaney from UNICEF Rwanda explained, “As schools reopen, a shared understanding of learning through play can strengthen interactions with parents, and be an entry point to engage parents more in the education of their children.” 

This was also preparing children for future shocks. By playing with children, parents help them develop a breadth of skills such as planning, self-monitoring, self-control,  time management and self-regulation. These all help to contribute to the resilience of a child, so they are less affected by crises.

Finding the right way to reach parents is key. Lieve Leroy recounted VVOB’s experience of working with the Women’s Union in Vietnam to get communities to support teachers to introduce more play-based classroom learning.

Teachers also need the support of a wider policy environment – from local to national level, from curriculum development to teacher training to budgeting to inspection and assessment. This requires a shift in mindset, away from the traditional idea that teachers are masters of knowledge, and towards seeing them rather as facilitators of learning. It requires all actors to see children as competent actors in their education, rather than empty vessels.

Teachers at the session noted the importance of explicitly relating a shared vision of child development to the education system and curriculum. Support for participative processes to develop tools for learning through play that reflect local experiences and cultural heritage was also highlighted.

 

Teaching the technique 

Key questions include whether to make play-based learning optional or compulsory, what in-service training is needed, and how to assess child competencies more broadly than literacy and numeracy.

As Lieve Leroy added: “Teachers need an environment where they can make mistakes, where they can try things out and feel safe to do so. Inspection and assessment need to be aligned with that approach.”

Session participants discussed the role of technological innovation, with consensus that it can be valuable in enhancing learning through play. Animations, multimedia and gamification can bring concepts to life and allow children to learn willingly and unconsciously.

Clement Kabiligi, of the Imbuto Foundation, noted how well-designed apps give children the right incentives: “The apps recognize and praise children for getting answers right, but even when they fail to get the right answers, they don’t get frustrated because the apps creatively motivate them to try again until the answers are correct.”

Back to the basics of play

However, there was also agreement that technology is not essential to learning through play. In the words of Emmanuel Murenzi, of the International Education Exchange (IEE): “You don’t have to have gadgets. I play hide and seek with my kids… . We help parents to understand, let’s go back to the basics – games, songs, sports, all that.”

Session participants identified the competencies teachers need to implement learning through play. Clement Kabiligi mentioned being funny, as “without fun, play-based learning would look like just a checklist of things, it wouldn’t be engaging at all”. David Rugaaju, of Right to Play, gave examples such as “the ability to create a playful environment” and “knowing how to allow the child to have agency to lead in their learning process”.

To develop these competencies, teachers need effective support and an enabling environment,which means everyone around them – from institutional stakeholders to parents in communities – must be sensitised to the importance of learning through play.

Photo credit: Save the Children

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Meeting document
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  • 15.11.2021
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13th Policy Dialogue Forum - Programme

The 13th Policy Dialogue Forum will take place from 2-3 December 2021 in Kigali, Rwanda and on-line. Jointly organized by the TTF Secretariat, and the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Rwanda...
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Blog
  • 11.11.2021

The Futures of Teaching - Rethinking teachers’ role in the renewal of education

Author: Inés Dussel* was one of the contributors to the flagship UNESCO report, "Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education" launched yesterday and author of a TTF background paper on “The Futures of Teaching”.

In 2021, humanity is at a critical inflection point. Facing enormous challenges – the climate crisis, radical technological change, democratic instability, the automation of work, and gigantic population shifts – we need, urgently, to create futures that are unlike our pasts. Teachers have a key role to play in this essential effort.

The Futures of Education initiative, launched by UNESCO in November 2019, proposes a new social contract in which education is viewed as a public and common good, which nurtures hope, imagination and action for a common future. The initiative seeks to mobilize ideas and action towards an educational change that can respond to the world’s enormous challenges.

Since the initiative’s launch, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need for change. School closures and the accompanying rush towards remote education have shown that inequality of resources, infrastructure and outcomes persists. They have also given rise to a reconsideration of teachers’ role in fostering student learning and well-being.

As the pandemic has illustrated, conversations about the futures of teaching tend to focus on technological change, but there is much more to teaching than digital transformation. Teaching demands knowledge, competence, care and sensibility. Teachers are central to the mission of education to promote intellectual and affective autonomy, and to make common knowledge public and available to all.

Therefore, the new social contract must centre on teachers. In doing so, it must account for the paradoxes and challenges that teachers face as specialized agents. Teaching is not simply an individualistic endeavour depending solely on personal strengths or weaknesses; it is a heavily contextualized practice, institutionally defined and regulated. These rules and definitions are not consistent: current educational contexts make conflicting demands of teachers, which could impact on teaching’s potential futures. So, conversations about the futures of teaching need to avoid idealized and voluntaristic ideals of teaching and should instead focus on concrete working conditions, institutional support networks, pedagogical demands, and necessary competences and knowledge.

The clash between conflicting requirements cannot be resolved by individual teachers, nor can it be bridged solely by improving teaching strategies or promoting digital inclusivity. It must be addressed institutionally and through public policies that set regulations to protect and care for a common future.

The think piece, The futures of teaching, discusses some of the paradoxes and conflicting demands teachers face:

  • Inclusive educational policies may be insufficiently supported and rely excessively on individual teachers’ actions and responsibility.
  • Openness to the involvement of communities and families in teaching can give rise to different and even incompatible priorities.
  • New educational ideals such as student-centred pedagogies cannot always be accommodated in current working conditions.
  • An increase in regulations, along with new pedagogical frameworks, may overburden teachers by placing too many demands on performance.
  • Digital transformation opens up new possibilities but also involves new risks, such as the massive delegation and reduction of knowledge into gigantic platforms that manage data.
  • The ecological crisis necessitates promoting a collective consciousness of the planet that actively cares for the diversity of life, but policies aim to maintain business as usual.
  • In all these tensions and demands, the gendered nature of teachers’ work needs to be taken into account, since it affects the organization of work time, tasks and burdens.

It is not a surprise that in many countries there is an increasing shortage of teachers and in others there is a growing sense of burnout and disenchantment with the teaching profession.  On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the relevance of teachers’ work and the need for expert guidance to support students’ learnings and well-being.

What can be done, then, to foster the role of teachers as central educational agents in the renewal of education? Here are some recommendations for policy-makers and stakeholders that should be implemented urgently, in order to help teachers to become a leading force in the renewal of education:

  1. An open social dialogue must be promoted to develop cooperative solutions to the complex issues that are at stake in the futures of teaching.
  2. Working conditions for teachers must be improved, not only by paying teachers appropriately, but also by ensuring adequate class sizes, school safety, symbolic recognition and legitimacy, and institutional support. 
  3. Consistent policy and institutional responses must be developed to organize collective networks to tackle complex pedagogical issues.
  4. Better balance is needed between administrative and pedagogical requirements, including by accounting for unpaid work outside school settings such as engagement with communities.
  5. Teachers’ labour statutes and workloads should be thoroughly reviewed, in a gender-sensitive way, to align them with new educational goals and to expand the diversity of the teaching profession.
  6. Competence, training and engagement with school programmes, including mentoring novice teachers, leading subject areas or cycles, and organizing educational services, should all be taken into account in the design of teachers’ career paths.
  7. To enhance recruitment, policies should target novice teachers through establishing induction programmes with more experienced colleagues. Policies should also provide assistance for mid-career teachers who have become disenchanted with their work.
  8. Teacher education needs to be rethought to address the challenges and disruptions pointed out by UNESCO’s Futures of Education Initiative. Curricula should include new and increasingly salient topics and realities such as environmental change and activism, democratic and ethical education, gender equality and diversity, digital critical skills and epistemic and intergenerational dialogues about our common futures. Methods should include clinical approaches and seek to anticipate real contexts of practice.
  9. Teacher education can no longer underestimate the relevance of digital culture; without diminishing the role of the teacher, digital media needs to be included not only as a means for distance training but also as a topic for study.

Finally, the effort to imagine the futures of teaching should be used to open up public conversations about the expectations and realities of teaching – about the anxieties and fears that teachers experience, but also about the potential for teaching to act as a source of hope and transformation. The futures of teaching should become part of broad social dialogues that foster teachers’ force and engagement in the renewal of education, and in the construction of better futures for all.

*Inés Dussel is Professor and Researcher at the Department of Educational Research, Center for Advanced Research and Studies (DIE-CINVESTAV), Mexico City.

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this article do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO and the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

Photo credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com 

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News
  • 05.10.2021

Teachers at the heart of education recovery: What does the latest data tell us about the state of the world’s teachers?

After more than 18 months of variable school closures and remote and hybrid teaching, World Teachers’ Day in 2021 is celebrating teachers and affirming their critical role in maintaining education as a vital service to all children as well as a fundamental human right.

To better inform education stakeholders’ decisions and policy-making, it is essential to understand the state of the world’s teachers through timely measurement and the use of internationally comparable statistics to identify gaps and opportunities. So, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 has published a World Teachers’ Day 2021 Factsheet as well as a policy brief based on the recent findings of the Trends in International Mathematics and Sciences Study (TIMSS) report* to shed more light on teacher needs, and the need for teachers.

The data in these documents reflect a dire need to reassess the importance of teachers and raise the profile of the profession. In 2016, a projected 69 million additional teachers were needed to ensure universal primary and secondary education by 2030 (SDG target 4.1), and much more must be done to improve teachers’ qualifications, working conditions and status. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has not passed, which means pandemic-related needs persist, including teacher vaccination and professional development for the expanded use of remote or hybrid teaching now and in the future. Efforts must be made to ensure that addressing these needs does not take place at the expense of the progress that has been made so far.

To ensure education recovery, more teachers are needed in many countries

Although the total number of primary and secondary teachers worldwide increased by 41% between 2000 and 2020, there are still too few teachers to meet current and expanding needs. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where 4.1 million more teachers are currently needed to achieve universal primary and secondary education: almost 1 million in primary and 3.3 million in secondary education. Action to address this shortage is needed urgently, since, as new Teacher Task Force research shows, the gap is projected to increase to 11.2 million teachers by 2025 and 15 million by 2030, based on increasing school-aged populations and replacements needed due to teacher attrition. Needs are greatest in Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Niger and the United Republic of Tanzania, where more than 5% annual growth in the number of teachers is needed just to meet the targets of full primary and secondary enrolment by 2030.

Teacher attrition (teachers choosing to leave the profession) remains a significant contributing factor to the teacher gap in many countries. Teachers abandon their profession for a complex variety of reasons, including low social recognition of their work, lack of opportunities for professional development, insufficient promotion prospects and difficult working conditions. Over a five-year period, primary-level teacher attrition was as high as 22% in Guinea, 17% in Sierra Leone, 16% in Mauritania and 13% in Benin.

While COVID-19’s effects on teacher attrition are not yet clear, in many contexts the pandemic has led to calls for additional teachers to be recruited to ease school reopening, putting further strain on limited financial and other resources. In 2021, however, a global survey by UNESCO/UNICEF/World Bank/OECD on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures revealed that just 31% of 103 countries recruited additional teachers for school reopening, ranging from about half of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to just one-quarter in sub-Saharan Africa, of which most were southern African countries.

More needs to be done to improve teachers’ qualifications 

International comparisons of teacher qualifications are difficult, since teacher training standards and programmes differ widely and have varying entry prerequisites, duration and content. More and better indicators to measure and monitor the multiple dimensions of teacher qualifications need to be developed in order to understand the quality of teachers, their capacity to perform in the classroom and their needs for additional training and continuing professional development (CPD).

Globally, 83% of teachers at both primary and secondary level hold the minimum required qualifications to teach, but the situation differs by region: 97% of teachers at both levels are qualified in Central Asia, compared to 67% of primary and 61% of secondary teachers in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, regional figures hide wide variations between countries. In Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti and Mauritius, 100% of teachers hold the minimum required qualifications, compared to just 62% in Niger, 52% in Gabon, 27% in Sao Tome and Principe and 15% in Madagascar.

The TTF policy brief, based on TIMSS data, shows that teacher qualifications play an important role in learning outcomes. A multi-country analysis suggests that teachers who have a bachelor’s degree that included pedagogy, have participated in CPD and have at least 10 years’ experience are correlated with stronger learning achievement in many countries.

A bachelor’s degree was the most common qualification among teachers in the 64 high- and middle-income countries participating in TIMSS. Typically, teachers from higher-income countries have higher qualifications: 90% of grade 4 students in mathematics had a teacher with a post-graduate degree in Czechia, Germany, Finland, Poland and Slovakia. On the other hand, in some middle-income countries, including Armenia, Morocco and Pakistan, more than one-third of students had teachers who had only completed upper secondary education.

Teachers need support in addressing pandemic-related needs

Governments have struggled to support teachers in transitioning to remote and hybrid teaching models during school closures. Not only do teachers need training in how to use technologies, they also need specific support for distance learning pedagogies as well as emotional and psychosocial support. The joint UNESCO/UNICEF/World Bank/OECD survey shows that the most common support provided to teachers was instruction on distance education. Globally, 71% of countries provided instructions, ranging from 100% in Eastern and South-eastern Asia to 45% in Central and Southern Asia and 40% in sub-Saharan Africa. In comparison, teachers in just 42% of all countries were provided with ICT tools and internet access, ranging from 67% in Europe and Northern America and 56% in Latin America and the Caribbean to 22% in Eastern and South-eastern Asia and only 6% in sub-Saharan Africa.

The pandemic has precipitated a growing trend in distance education and technology integration in teaching, but according to the TIMSS report, CPD to support online education was inadequate in many countries before the crisis. Across countries, just 35% of grade 4 students had mathematics teachers who had been trained in technology integration.

Finally, for teachers to fully contribute to education recovery, their health and well-being must be strengthened and sustained. This includes prioritizing teachers during vaccination efforts. Currently, 71% of countries have included teachers in a priority group for vaccination (See Teacher prioritization map in COVID-19 vaccine rollout plans). Vaccination efforts are at different stages worldwide, but some countries which did not prioritize teachers have very low rates of fully vaccinated teachers – for example, 12% in Venezuela and 9% in Algeria. Teachers’ mental and emotional health must also be sustained, but just 6 in 10 countries globally and 3 in 10 in sub-Saharan Africa offered psychosocial support to help teachers deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has generated additional strain for teachers who, in many cases, already faced high workloads with inadequate support. To weather the crisis, and to meet the SDG 4 promise, more must urgently be done to give them the resources they need. 

Visual credit: © UNESCO with icons from Shutterstock.com

*The Trends in International Mathematics and Sciences Study (TIMSS) report is an international assessment of student achievement in mathematics and sciences, which contributes to understanding teacher quality and its role in student achievement through a set of indicators that contextualize teacher qualifications within students’ school environments. The new TTF policy brief is based on the latest TIMSS 2019 report, which covered 64 countries.

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Report
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  • 21.10.2021

The Global Report on the Status of Teachers

The status of teachers remains a concern in many jurisdictions. Teachers are aware that holding the same qualifications or levels of training as other professions does not bring the same status...
Event
  • 18.10.2021

EnlightED Hybrid Edition

ProFuturo is participating in enlightED Hybrid Edition, the largest international meeting on education, innovation and edtech, and we don't want you to miss it! Follow all the presentations and round tables and participate in the workshops of this fourth edition with an innovative hybrid format.

Over the three days of enlightED, a wide range of international experts will reflect on and share solutions regarding the education, innovation and digital gaps that have emerged as a result of the pandemic:

On the opening day of this fourth edition, on October 19, Magdalena Brier, general director of ProFuturo, will speak at 5:00 p.m. (CET) with Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach For All. The conversation on how to "Empower, train and advise teachers for the digital age" can be followed here.

Right after, at 5:25 PM (CET) ProFuturo organizes a round table on “How to achieve excellence and equity in education in a data-driven world” with Robert Hawkins, Global Director of Education Technology and Innovation, World Bank, and Wayne Holmes, Research Consultant and Professor, University College London. You can follow it here.

Both sessions will be held in English with translation into Spanish.

Finally, our participation in #enlightED 2021 will culminate on October 21st at 4:00 p.m. (CET) with the organization of a workshop (only in Spanish) aimed at teachers on how to incorporate Computational Thinking in the classroom. It will deepen our methodological proposal in Primary Education. Register in advance here to participate.

Check out the full enlightED Hybrid Edition 2021 schedule.

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News
  • 12.10.2021

Understanding the role of teacher qualifications in student achievement

As the single most important in-school factor influencing student achievement, understanding the role of teacher quality is key to advocating for quality education for all. Yet, tracking teacher qualifications at the international level is difficult, as a wide-ranging set of indicators to measure and monitor its multiple dimensions is lacking.

Last week, on World Teachers' Day, the Teacher Task Force released a new policy brief: “Qualified teachers urgently needed – What TIMSS data reveal about teacher training and student learning”, which unpacks teacher qualifications through indicators such as teachers’ initial education, continuing professional development and cumulative experience from The Trends in International Mathematics and Sciences Study (TIMSS) 2019*.

Key findings

Initial teacher education:

  • A bachelor’s degree was the most common qualification for teachers in the study. However, teachers in higher-income countries have higher qualifications. In several European countries more than 90% of students had a teacher with a post-graduate degree, while in some middle-income countries more than one-third of students had teachers whom had only completed upper secondary education. 

Programme major and specialization:

  • Most teachers completed majors related to pedagogy. On average, this was the case for three quarters of grade 4 students in mathematics. However, this covers a wide range: 90% or more students in European countries compared to fewer than two-thirds of students in some developing countries.

Continuing professional development (CPD):

  • More grade 8 teachers than grade 4 teachers participated in CPD. Between 40% and 60% of students in grade 8 were taught by teachers participating in CPD compared to between 30% and 40% of students in grade 4.

Continuing professional development by type:

  • CPD that supports online and inclusive education was inadequate. 46% of grade 4 students in mathematics had teachers whom were recently trained on content while just 35% had teachers whom were trained on technology integration. Similarly, 59% of grade 8 students in science had teachers whom were trained on pedagogy while just 44% had teachers whom were trained to address individual needs.

Teachers’ previous experience:

  • Years of teaching experience varies substantially. On average, teachers had 17 years of experience in grade 4 and 16 years in grade 8. In some European countries 70% of students had teachers with 20 or more years of experience while in some middle-income countries about one-quarter of students were taught by teachers with 5 or fewer years.

Teacher qualifications and student learning:

  • In general, teachers with higher qualifications, more pedagogical training and more than 10 years of teaching experience were linked to higher learning achievement.

Policy Recommendations

While it is important to acknowledge the complexity of factors that influence student achievement, this policy brief offers the following general recommendations for policy-makers to strengthen teacher qualifications.

  1. Enhancing the quality of initial teacher education is crucial to improve teacher qualifications. Minimum standards for teachers should be increased to at least a bachelors’ degree or equivalent, while teacher training programmes should include training in pedagogy, specific subject-matter expertise, and other skills. Pre-service teachers’ training should also include practicum experiences led by experienced teachers to help them integrate theoretical knowledge into their teaching practice. 
  2. In-service teachers lacking formal training should be supported through frequent continuing professional development (CPD) interventions leading towards professionalization. They also require a rigorous induction period and continuous mentoring.
  3. While all teachers need more and better access to regular and equitable CPD interventions, COVID-19 related school closures underline teachers’ need for targeted training in technology integration to support remote teaching and in addressing individual needs to support inclusive education.
  4. Experienced teachers can play an essential leadership role in peer training, coaching, monitoring and contributing to formative evaluations of novice teachers. Incentives should be built into career paths to ensure teachers remain in the profession.
  5. It is critical to include the input of teachers and their representatives through social dialogue in defining their training and other professional needs.
  6. The new International Standard Classification of teacher training programmes (ISCED-T), which is being developed by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), will provide a new classification system for teacher education programmes to shed light on the teacher qualifications discussed in this policy brief. It will help to generate new indicators of teacher quality that can be used to measure and benchmark progress towards the achievement of the SDG4.c teacher-related target as well as for analysis in the achievement of the overall SDG4 target on education and other Sustainable Development Goals.

*The Trends in International Mathematics and Sciences Study (TIMSS), an international assessment of student achievement in mathematics and sciences, contributes to understanding teacher quality and its role in student achievement through a set of indicators that contextualize teacher qualifications within school environments. This new TTF policy brief is based on the latest TIMSS 2019 report, which gathered data about grade 4 and 8 mathematics and science teachers in 64 countries. The policy brief also examines the TIMSS student achievement data, comparing student learning across groups based on teacher qualifications in an attempt to establish relationships and draw conclusions about the complex role of teacher’s qualifications on learning.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com/Olga Kuzmina.

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