Scholars of comparative education have given a lot of attention to the demand side of teacher labor markets. We have asked how do policies attract teachers into the profession and then retain and motivate them once there. Given the importance of teachers in learning, attracting and retaining the best teachers is of critical importance. The effects of these policies, however, are influenced by a prior question: who becomes a teacher?

There is still a limited understanding of supply side factors that lead teachers to enter, stay in, or leave the profession. This broadly includes factors that explain why someone becomes and remains a teacher such as their personal background, demographics, education, attitudes, values, and professional motivations. Understanding the supply side factors is important not just in their own right but also because of the implications they may have for other teacher related practices and outcomes of interest to policy. For example, will a teacher education and training program yield expected results? If we wish to increase incentive for teachers, what would be the best way to do so given who enters the teaching profession?

This panel brings together a series of papers that engage in these questions across a number of country contexts including Burkina Faso, Colombia, India, South Africa, and Vietnam. We begin to provide tentative answers to questions about teacher selection through the analysis of large scale quantitative data. We hope that conversations sparked by these papers can begin to establish a research agenda that asks not only how can we attract the best teachers, but who becomes a teacher and why?

Together, the three papers bring evidence to bear from a wide geographic scope around the central question of who becomes a teacher. The panel looks to generate discussion around how we can further understand teacher selection and retention, and draw cross-national comparative lessons for this emerging research agenda.

More information here.

CIES 2023 - Improving Education for a More Equitable World

Comparative and international perspectives are essential to fulfilling the dream of educational equity. The CIES 2023 Annual Meeting will explore the following crucial questions: how should we critically look at and meet desired outcomes across time and space? What changes can bring about responsible and sustainable advancement in learning, teaching, and schooling? What implications may these changes have on individual systems, contexts, and the already vulnerable planet? And how may our endeavors help redefine comparative and international education in a way that reconnects it with contextualized educational policy and practice?

Read the press release here.

The Regional Teachers' Initiative for Africa is a European Commission flagship initiative that will invest EUR 100 million under the EU-Africa Global Gateway Investment Package in accelerating the training of new teachers for Sub-Saharan Africa and responding to its estimated need for 15 million new qualified teachers by 2030.

It brings together the European Union, the African Union, UNESCO, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 and EU Member States to support African partner countries in their efforts to achieve a more competent, motivated and inclusive teacher workforce to increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession and, ultimately, to improve learning outcomes in basic education. 

The Regional Teachers’ Initiative will focus on making teaching both an attractive job prospect for promising young professionals and a life-long learning experience. It puts an emphasis on teachers in basic education acquiring and transmitting digital and green skills – skills that future-proof students for the world of tomorrow, enable them to plug into the opportunities of the digital transformation, and engage them in the preservation of our planet. The initiative will also cover teaching in crisis contexts.

Team Europe brings together four EU Member States agencies (from France, Germany, Belgium and Finland) to create a new Teacher Regional Facility. Through the Facility, the programme makes available funding, expertise, capacity building and tools to strengthen the teacher profession and improve teacher professional development, specifically in digital and green skills, as well as to build evidence and research capacity.

The programme’s actions will be implemented at the continental, sub-regional and multi-country levels, mostly in Sub-Saharan African countries and with some activities open to North African countries.

The event is planned to be web streamed at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/2445181303.