The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 will be holding its 12th Policy Dialogue Forum from 8 – 11 December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Organised in cooperation with the UAE Ministry of Education and the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance, the Forum will be looking at the “Futures of Teaching”.

One of the Teacher Task Force’s main concern is the world’s ability to recruit and retain more than 69 million teachers needed in primary and secondary school, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. If we do not, we will not achieve inclusive equitable education for all by 2030.

However, with our rapidly changing world, getting teachers into classrooms is not the only issue anymore. We need to ensure they are ready to face new generations of learners and the challenges awaiting them.

Why did the Teacher Task Force choose this theme?

Climate change. Migration and displacement. The rise of intolerance. The digital revolution.

With all the changes the world is facing, the global education community decided to launch a new initiative, the "Futures of Education: Learning to Become”, to reimagine how education and knowledge can contribute to the global common good.

Teaching in the 21st century has become an incredibly challenging and complex profession. Teachers share the tremendous responsibility of preparing future generations to address these challenges. 

Teachers need help to meet this challenge and responsibility. They need to be prepared and supported to teach skills, knowledge, and values relevant to the changing world, including digital technologies and artificial intelligence, relevant interpersonal skills, new methods of learning, and socio-emotional development. 

What will be discussed?

The 12th Policy Dialogue Forum will focus on how the Futures of Education influences the future(s) of teaching. The discussions will be organised around thematic areas to shed light on various ways teaching would evolve in conjunction with the times.

With the emergence of new trends in learning, teachers, and most importantly teacher education and preparation, need to adapt to the disruption caused by the advancement of technology as a teaching and learning tool. Moreover, technology is not just changing the skills students need to develop, but also the way they approach and acquire knowledge as well as were they learn.

The addition of a digital component to the learning environment has sparked a growing recognition of the need to change teaching practices and transformed the educational. Indeed, the tradition of a teacher standing in front of a class imparting knowledge is being more and more challenged by the xxx of putting the learner at the centre and encouraging their greater autonomy in the learning process.

In a world where intolerance and inequalities are also rising, teachers need to teach principles and values such as tolerance. While the causes of education inequalities are linked to many factors, teachers and educators can still play a transformational role in the classroom. The global education community and national governments needs to look at the skills, dispositions and knowledge necessary for the diverse classrooms of tomorrow.

What will the Forum look like? 

Around 300 education stakeholders from around the world will gather in Dubai to reflect on and discuss their visions of teaching to respond to the new challenges facing teachers. 

The Forum will allow the collection and consolidation of insights on the futures of teaching, including the identification and framing of emerging trends, good practices, questions and challenges related to the learning-teaching process and their implications for teacher education and continuous professional development.

His Excellency Hussain Ibrahim Al Hammadi will host a Ministerial round table, bringing together ministers of education from all region, to share their innovative reforms they have initiated to improve teacher training, address inequalities and introduce technological and other innovations.

They will be joined by education experts, academics, researchers, school leaders, teachers and NGO/CSO representatives from around the world who will also share their perspectives on the future of teaching and shape recommendations to national governments on how to improve teacher education to better prepare teachers for the future.

At its annual meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, from 5-9 November, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 adopted a declaration focused on ensuring that teacher issues stay at the centre of the global education agenda.

Through this declaration, the Teacher Task Force reinforces its vision that at the heart of the right to education is a highly-valued, qualified, and well-trained teaching profession. It therefore recommends that:

• International partners should intensify efforts to develop robust definitions and classifications of qualified and trained teachers and strengthen cooperation and reporting mechanisms to ensure full monitoring of Sustainable Development Goal target 4c.
• Governments should ensure adequate financing for all public goods, including the teacher workforce, and this should be achieved primarily through domestic resource mobilization based on socially just fiscal policies, rigorous measures against corruption and illegal financial flows, efficient and effective teacher policies and deployment practices, developed with the full involvement of teachers and their organisations, and continued focus on external resource mobilization to complement domestic resources for countries.

Moreover, the dual focus of the Education 2030 agenda on equity and learning puts teachers at the heart of policy responses that should foster equal participation and learning globally. Teachers can be an impactful equalizing force to overcome unequal life chances from birth. The massive recruitment of new teachers, particularly in least develop countries, with little or no training is a real cause for concern.

The Teacher Task Force also expressed its concern over the fact that teacher education has not kept pace with preparing new teachers to face the rapid changes in globalization, migration, demographic change, and technological advances that will mark the future of education.

Furthermore, teacher education in this increasing complex world must be forward-looking and prepare teachers who are continuous learners themselves. It must enable teachers to think about the kind of education that is meaningful and relevant to young people’s needs in the different 21st century’s learning environment.

The Teacher Task Force acknowledges the ever-growing importance of Information and Communication Technologies in education. However, technology should be treated as a supportive tool for teachers and not a replacement. Teacher education should therefore empower teachers to use technologies to support learning within a holistic and human-centred educational framework.

The Teacher Task Force also called attention to the fact that teacher education needs to be seen as career-long education and special attention should be paid to the nature of teachers’ professional development, competency frameworks, curriculum development and professional learning communities/communities of practice. As teaching is a knowledge-based profession, teachers and trainers should be supported to continually update their knowledge base.

Through this declaration, the Teacher Task Force advocates for a teacher education that allows teachers to prepare learners to manage change and to be able to shape a just and equitable future, leaving no one behind.

You can download the full declaration in English, French, Spanish or Arabic here.