Organizer: Barbara Tournier, UNESCO-IIEP
Discussant: Beatrice Avalos, University of Chile
Chair: Dr Naureen Durrani, University of Sussex
- Teacher career reforms: learning from country experiences, Barbara Tournier
- Teacher career pathways in the Western Cape (South Africa), Yusuf Sayed & Tarryn De Kock (presenter)
- Teacher career pathways in New York City, Lucy Crehan
This symposium will present research conducted in countries that have introduced policies to widen advancement opportunities available to teachers throughout their careers in an effort to make the profession more attractive and to support the ongoing professional growth and development of teachers. It is linked to this conference’s sub-theme on enabling teachers and more particularly to the question of how teachers can be sustainably motivated to improve student learning outcomes and their own professional development. In so doing it highlights specific policies and their effects on teacher professional well-being and motivation.
The previous EFA and MDG agendas as well as the current SDG 2030 agenda calls for an increase in the supply of suitably qualified and motivated teachers. Yet the challenge is how to make teaching an attractive and rewarding profession, especially in developing countries, where the workforce considerably expanded over recent decades, often at the expense of lower entry qualifications and the recruitment of non-professional teachers. This has contributed to a certain ‘de-professionalization’ of the profession and lessened the appeal of teaching as a valued occupation.
In this context, we report on on-going research about the ‘professionalization of teaching’ and argue that teacher career structures may represent a powerful leverage to improve teacher attraction, retention and motivation, and ultimately student learning. In fact, many governments are looking for ways to diversify teacher career structures and to widen career advancement opportunities. However, it is difficult to find detailed documentation about the organization of teacher careers, how they are managed, and their effects at the country-level.
Building on research about teacher motivation this project sought to distinguish between different teacher career models and to focus on those offering the best perspectives for teacher professional autonomy and growth essential for job satisfaction and motivation. The symposium will take as a starting point a review of the existing research evidence related to the organization of teachers’ careers in a wide range of countries and present a typology of career models that characterize the organization and management of teacher careers today.
Three papers will be presented following a brief introduction and overview of the research. The first one relates to the results of a mapping exercise conducted in 2016 in eight countries from diverse income levels having undertaken teacher career reforms and specific implementation challenges to consider before embarking on what are technically complex and resource-intensive reforms. Next, the findings from two ongoing case-studies, New York City (USA) and the Western Cape (South Africa) will be shared by the researchers for the first time.
New York City has a fully functioning teacher career structure in which teachers are assigned new classroom-based roles, different responsibilities and additional pay. South Africa has developed career pathways to encourage horizontal and vertical mobility of teachers along with other policies that seek to motivate and incentivize teachers to enhance quality.
More specifically, the research will provide insights on teachers’ perception of changes in their career structure and whether this had positive effects in four key domains susceptible to increase motivation: sense of increased autonomy, sense of recognition, teacher learning, and support/relatedness. The results of the research will be further enriched by the discussant who contributed to designing the teacher career reform in Chile.
