Join the Teacher Task Force and UNESCO for two panel discussions at the CIES Conference 2024. The event is open to CIES members only. Consult the official webpage here.
11 March , 8:00 to 9:30am Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Stanford
Teacher occupational wellbeing (TWB)—“how teachers feel and function in their jobs” (Falk et al., 2019)—is a critical and urgent issue. In the best of times, teaching is a demanding profession (Greenberg, Brown and Abenavoli, 2016), but after the global school closures precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching has become one of the most stressful professions (Steiner and Woo, 2021). This stress can lead to burnout and professional attrition (Borg, Riding and Falzon, 1991; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2018). Low levels of teacher wellbeing have been associated with higher rates of turnover in the profession, as well as absenteeism (Ingersoll, 2003; Albulescu, Tuşer and Sulea, 2018). On the other hand, high levels of wellbeing for teachers are associated with teachers staying longer in the profession because of increased self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Collie, Shapka and Perry, 2012; Zee and Koomen, 2016). This is especially important in light of global teacher shortages. By some estimates, the global education community will need to recruit about 24 million primary school teachers by 2030 to meet the growing need for classroom instruction and learning, with 14% of this recruitment being for new teaching positions and the rest needing to fill gaps being left by teachers who retire or leave the profession (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2016). This teacher shortage is especially acute in Sub-Saharan Africa where 70% of countries face current teacher shortages, a trend that will continue unless there are dramatic system-level changes to teacher hiring and retention policies and practices (Ibid).
While there has been a growing body of research on teacher wellbeing, what it means, and how it functions, there is a dearth of knowledge of what teacher wellbeing actually looks like for educators in low-resource and fragile contexts (D’Sa et al., 2023; Falk, Shephard, & Mendenhall, 2022; Kirk & Winthrop, 2013; Wolf et al., 2015). More importantly, there is a need to more fully understand how teachers in these contexts understand their own wellbeing and the factors that support or hinder it. Indeed, several recent efforts to provide a framework for TWB (Brandt & Lopes Cardozo, 2023; Falk et al., 2019; McCallum et al., 2017; Viac & Fraser, 2020) have used a multidimensional perspective that has focused on external and internal factors in the settings and systems around the teacher. But these different factors can manifest differently, and affect teachers differentially, depending on the social, cultural, and historical context within which teachers work. Indeed, factors at different levels of the ecological system “can increase a teacher’s risk for negative wellbeing outcomes or their propensity toward positive wellbeing outcomes depending on the context in which the teacher lives and works.” (Falk et al., 2019; p.10). Hence, understanding not just what factors affect teachers but how they manifest and interact with each other in different contexts is important if we are to constructively address teachers’ wellbeing in low resource and crisis contexts. This is especially important as teachers continue to be on the frontlines of delivering life-saving and sustaining knowledge and skills to children and youth in complex and uncertain times, often protesting the status quo to re-imagine a more just and inclusive future for their learners. Teachers take on this work with limited support and in increasingly politically-charged and contested environments.
This panel aims to deepen our understanding of TWB in low-resource and crisis contexts to better comprehend how teachers make meaning of TWB, how different assets and factors around teachers affect their wellbeing, and how to address TWB in a manner that respects the agency of teachers in the process. Spanning Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and South America and the Caribbean, the four papers examine how policies and practices of teacher management and teacher professional development alongside teachers’ lived experiences in their schools and communities influence their professional wellbeing. The papers draw on qualitative and quantitative methodologies to privilege teachers’ perspectives and promote their experiences as essential evidence in better understanding, and ultimately supporting, teacher wellbeing in low-resource, forced displacement, and conflict-affected contexts.
The first paper in this panel focuses on teacher management policies concerning teacher salary and benefits in South Sudan and Uganda. Drawing on nearly 200 interviews with refugee and national teachers in both countries, this paper demonstrates how low and irregular salaries exacerbate the challenges teachers’ face meeting their own and their families’ basic needs and contribute to teachers’ declining status in society. While this drives many teachers to leave the profession, others persist in the profession due to their strong vocation and desire to give back to their communities. In the second paper, we pivot our focus to examine the ways in which teachers’ work can serve as a protective factor for their wellbeing in contexts of forced displacement. Drawing from a mixed methods study with 555 refugee teachers in Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh), this paper illustrates how the support and respect teachers receive from their community due to their role as educators enhance their sense of professional wellbeing. Designing contextually-relevant measures of teacher wellbeing is the focus of the third paper, which compares teacher’s conceptions of TWB across four different contexts and discusses how these differences and similarities are incorporated in the measurement of TWB in Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, and Liberia. The last paper then focuses on the relationship between teacher professional development (TPD) and teacher wellbeing. Exploring the implementation of a TWB intervention in Uganda, this paper demonstrates how to design a TPD intervention in partnership with teachers in Uganda, including the methods used to ensure that the intervention is relevant and responsive for teachers’ needs.
13 March, 1:30 to 2:30pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Ashe Auditorium
Speakers: Carlos Vargas - Chief, UNESCO’s Section for Teacher Development and Teacher Task Force Secretariat, David Edwards (Education International), Amita Chudgar, Martial Dembele, Beatrice Avalos and Jordan Naidoo.
Around the globe, education systems are facing major challenges regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers. This Dialogue panel discusses the nature of this global crisis in education, focusing attention specifically on the Transforming Education Summit (TES) convened by the United Nations Secretary-General, in September 2022. The Secretary-General’s vision statement at the TES made clear that a fundamental change was needed regarding the role and the treatment of teachers. It is in this context that a High-Level Panel (HLP) on the Teaching Profession was established to produce a new vision and a set of recommendations on the teaching profession for the benefit of teachers, students, parents, and education systems worldwide. This Dialogue IV panel brings together colleagues who were closely involved with the HLP since its inception, and members of the expert group whose knowledge and expertise informed the HLP deliberations. These groups of colleagues will each share unique insights emerging from the process of convening the HLP, the deliberations of HLP, and the resultant report and recommendations.
Teachers have an essential part to play in building a better future in sub-Saharan Africa. To play that part well, they need to be supported and empowered through good policy and robust social dialogue.
From 20 to 23 June 2023, the UNESCO Section for Teacher Development and the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (Teacher Task Force, TTF), in collaboration with the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity-Building in Africa (IICBA) and the Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA), conducted two training workshops in Lusaka to help address the challenges faced by teachers in Zambia. The first workshop built capacity among members of the ministerial technical committee selected to lead the development of a comprehensive teacher policy. The second focused on institutionalizing social dialogue and empowering teachers and their unions to more actively participate in policy development.
These workshops followed a national stakeholder consultative meeting on the status of teachers, organized in December 2022, at which the Minister of Education launched the National Framework for Social Dialogue for Teachers, and during which participants began deliberations on the development process for a new teacher policy. After this successful beginning, the June workshops brought together key stakeholders, including representatives from the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Teaching Service Commission, the Teaching Council of Zambia, teacher unions, civil society organizations and development partners, to collectively work towards strengthening the teaching profession to improve the quality of education. The workshops were led by UNESCO's Section for Teacher Development and the TTF and funded through UNESCO’s Capacity Development for Education (CapED) Programme that has been active since 2003 with a focus on least developed countries, currently financed by Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
Teachers play a crucial role in shaping the future of Zambia, but the country is grappling with challenges such as teacher shortages, declining interest in joining the profession and low teacher morale. To better position the MoE to attract, develop and retain quality teachers, the government solicited UNESCO’s support in February 2022 to develop a comprehensive teacher policy and accompanying implementation guidelines and tools. The first workshop in June 2023 was carried out to help drive that mission forward. On the urgent need for high-quality teachers, Joel Kamoko, Permanent Secretary for Educational Services at the Ministry of Education of Zambia, said, ‘The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers [as] teachers provide the power of education to today’s learners, thereby giving them the possibility for a better future ahead.’
The training made use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide to provide guidance on designing a comprehensive teacher policy tailored to Zambia’s specific needs. Carlos Vargas, Head of the Secretariat of the Teacher Task Force and Chief of Section for Teacher Development at UNESCO, spoke about the potential of the workshop to drive change, saying, ‘The development of a comprehensive teacher policy is vital for addressing the issues hindering teacher quality and availability in Zambia. By supporting the Technical Committee members, we are taking a significant step towards ensuring quality education for all.’
The workshop took a participatory approach, with presentations made by UNESCO, TTF, IICBA, MoE, Education International and local education stakeholders. Speakers covered the importance of contextualizing policy and unpacked the different dimensions impacting the teaching profession, including recruitment and retention, teacher education, deployment, teacher career structures, working conditions, remuneration, standards, accountability and school governance. The main steps for developing and validating a teacher policy were also discussed. Through group discussions and plenary sessions, technical committee members had in-depth conversations and shared insights on key teacher challenges, potential policy actions and solutions and current opportunities on which to build in developing the country’s first national comprehensive teacher policy.
Participants also benefited from experiences shared by speakers from other countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have developed comprehensive teacher policies using the Teacher Policy Development Guide with UNESCO and TTF support. These speakers included Jonathan Kamwana, Commissioner of Teacher Education, Training and Development at Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports, and Yaw Ankomah, Senior Lecturer in Educational Planning and Leadership at the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration at the University of Cape Coast, who was a member of the technical committee for Ghana’s comprehensive teacher policy.
By the end of the workshop, committee members had enhanced their technical capacities, gained a better understanding of teacher challenges and acquired knowledge on framing a comprehensive teacher policy. The training also facilitated the identification of a roadmap with milestones for policy development, including the definition of a diagnostic study on teacher issues. A report summarizing the workshop’s outcomes will serve as a valuable resource for reference and basis for further collaboration.
Social dialogue that brings together government institutions, employers, teachers and their organizations in genuine exchange is essential to creating a teacher policy that addresses the concerns of all stakeholders. Therefore, building on the launch of Zambia’s new National Framework for Teacher Social Dialogue last year, the second workshop aimed to strengthen social dialogue by building the technical and organizational capacity of teacher unions and education sector personnel.
According to Permanent Secretary Joel Kamoko, ‘Social dialogue is a vital mechanism for achieving quality education for all. Teachers are responsible for implementing educational reforms, and their engagement in social dialogue contributes to the achievement of key aspects of educational objectives and policies, including teachers’ professional development programmes.’
At the workshop, national and international consultants and UNESCO representatives made presentations, providing a platform to discuss the importance of social dialogue in improving the teaching profession’s status and the quality of teaching, in alignment with the Education 2030 agenda. Participants gained insights into effective responses and lessons from other national social dialogue frameworks. Gender issues, especially ways to promote equality and equity within the teaching profession, provided another key topic.
The training workshop on social dialogue marks a significant milestone in promoting meaningful engagement between education stakeholders and giving teachers a voice in shaping education policies. Through this effort, Zambia is taking a crucial step towards fostering a conducive teaching and learning environment, improving the teaching profession and enhancing teacher quality and working conditions.
On the workshop’s potential impact, Carlos Vargas said, ‘By empowering teachers and education sector personnel through enhanced social dialogue, we can collectively work towards improving the teaching profession and creating an environment that supports quality education for all.’
Both workshops represented important steps towards addressing the challenges faced by teachers and improving the education landscape in the country. By promoting collaboration, inclusivity and the exchange of ideas, these workshops have paved the way for a more equitable, high-quality education system in Zambia.
Moving forward, UNESCO will provide assistance in Zambia to conduct a comprehensive diagnostic study as part of the teacher policy development process. Following the launch of the National Framework for Teacher Social Dialogue in 2022, a pilot programme on social dialogue has been successfully conducted in two specific provinces, benefiting 200 teachers. UNESCO will continue its support to define the implementation of the framework before its nationwide rollout.
For more information about UNESCO’s work on teachers, click here. To explore related resources and materials on teacher policy and social dialogue, follow the links below:
Education International and UNESCO-IICBA are jointly organizing a webinar entitled "Social Dialogue: Promoting Quality Education and Decent Working Conditions for Teachers in Africa" , to be held on 29th June 2023, from 9:00am to 11:00am GMT/Accra Time.
The discussion will centre around a framework for social dialogues proposed by Education International to promote quality education and decent working conditions for teachers in Africa. The webinar aims to:
Dr Carlos Vargas, Head of the Secretariat of the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, will participate in a panel discussion focussing on country and partner perspectives on social dialogue.
The purpose of this in-person national meeting is to create awareness about the teacher policy framework developed with UNESCO and IICBA’s support through the Capacity Development for Education Programme (CapED), foster national ownership, ensure sustainability in implementation, and to engage stakeholders in the key issues and the roadmap for the development of the comprehensive teacher policy in Zambia.
As part of the meeting organized by the Teacher Council of Zambia with CapED’s support, the Teacher Task Force will present its Teacher Policy Development Guide - a key reference designed to assist national decision-makers and education officials to develop evidence-informed national teacher policies as integrated components of national education sector plans or policies, aligned to national development plans and strategies.
The following are the specific objectives of this joint meeting: