We all know that teachers matter. The trickier question is how we can better attract, train, support and motivate teachers throughout their careers in LMICs. It is clear from research across countries that simple bureaucratic measures, such as better qualifications, more training and higher pay will not be sufficient to make changes at scale for either teachers or the students that depend on them.
We need holistic approaches that tackle the barriers and amplify the opportunities that teachers face within the broader education systems they work in. But to develop these we first need to understand the systems that teachers operate within and engage with throughout their careers.
This symposium will invite a range of expert researchers and practitioners to project to the audience their image of teachers within an education system. This will draw on new bodies of evidence related to teacher incentives and accountability, data on teacher practice in the classroom, and innovative methodologies for networking teachers. Different perspectives of ‘teacher systems’ will be presented, including the classroom as a system within which the teacher is the pivotal actor, the institutional system of recruitment, deployment and training, and ecosystems of connected teachers.
After each presentation, panel members and the audience will have an opportunity to interrogate and propose extensions/amendments to each model. During this time a respondent will draw on these discussions to draw a diagram that captures these distinct approaches with the aim of presenting an overarching framework that will be presented to the session for a final plenary discussion.
“Pitchers”
Barbara Bruns (or another RISE researcher, tbc)
A picture of teachers as pivotal actors within classroom systems, drawing on classroom observation methodologies. This will refer to a paper written for the RISE programme and incorporate the RISE approach to education systems.
Sharath Jeevan
STiR partners with governments, teacher unions and NGOs to build teacher networks that can ignite and sustain the intrinsic motivation of teachers. They have moved beyond a simplistic “carrot and sticks” model of teacher motivation and instead focus on how to build up and support the mutually reinforcing system of intrinsic motivation.
Katherine Merseth (or another ELP systems researcher tbc)
Will draw on the findings from the systems diagnostic on the early learnig workforce in Tanzania under the Early Learning Partnership’s systems research programme.
Sally Gear DFID
Sally Gear as Head of Profession for Education will present a view of the teacher system drawing on programming experience and research findings across DFID’s portfolio.
