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Event
  • 24.06.2021

The best investment – Supporting teachers in COVID-19 recovery and beyond

Watch the replay here.

Ensuring qualified and motivated teachers in every classroom is the single-most important school-based determinant of quality education and learning outcomes. However, around the world, not only are there not enough teachers, but large numbers have not received sufficient training and lack minimum qualifications. The COVID-19 crisis also shone the light on the need for sustained and increased domestic and international financing and investment in teachers and teaching as the basis of education systems. Teachers must be better prepared to ensure that a generation of learners is not lost.

The side event will present new findings from research carried out by the Teacher Task Force addressing the following questions:

  • How can we identify and tackle the persistent and unresolved global teacher shortages which are jeopardising the future of millions of learners, in particular the most disadvantaged?
  • How much is needed to support teachers in the aftermath of the crisis, in particular in training in ICTs and blended learning, remedial learning as well as to support teachers’ safety and well-being?
  • How to create space in domestic budgets, as well as leverage international funds to support quality teaching, including addressing questions such as teacher motivation, career progression and retention?

Read the concept note.

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This event is organized on the sidelines of the Global Education Summit: Financing GPE 2021-2025 in the framework of the Teacher Task Force #InvestInTeachers campaign.

English, French and Spanish interpretation will be provided.

Register here: https://unesco-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0kcuitrD4vGNNKdYt3tvuShdYXBW8hib1K

Event
  • 17.02.2023

The Supply Side of Teacher Labor Markets in Low- and Middle-lncome Countries

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?