During the coronavirus pandemic, NCEE has been exploring how high-performing education systems have adapted to distance learning and how they are thinking long-term about future education redesign. As part of that effort, NCEE’s President and CEO Anthony Mackay recently moderated the 2020 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP). Convened by Education International, the Organisation for Economic Co-operations and Development (OECD), and Spain’s Ministry of Education, the virtual meeting brought together education leaders from government and teachers unions from 35 leading countries.
Four key themes emerged from the discussion:
- First, high-quality, mutually respectful collaboration between governments and the teaching profession has been essential to respond to the pandemic.
- Second, there have been many promising innovations that have emerged in response to the need for distance learning, but the pandemic has also reinforced the value of in-person schooling.
- Third, teacher collaboration has become even more essential as teachers have been forced to transition to unfamiliar virtual learning spaces, and policies to enable teachers to work together as professionals will be crucial.
- And fourth and most important, the pandemic has exposed longstanding inequities in education to a degree that has been eye-opening for all of us, and systems must adapt to become more inclusive and equitable moving forward.
A new report summarizes NCEE’s key takeaways from the 3-hour discussion of Ministers of Education and teachers’ union leaders. The report also contains short “Snapshots” which highlight what several of the participating jurisdictions have done to promote teacher professionalism, and the role their unions have played in that process.
For more, see: https://ncee.org/2020/09/istp-2020-report/
