This week, the International Summit on the Teaching Profession will convene in Berlin, Germany, March 3 & 4th. As John Bangs, senior consultant at Education International, explained in TES, the summit was started in 2011 by the US government and teacher unions. Each summit has “uniquely brought teacher union leaders and ministers of education together to discuss policies affecting the teaching profession.” These summits also bring together the host country, Education International (EI, the global federation of teacher unions), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Over these two days, representatives from 22 countries, including the US, Japan, Brazil, the UK, Canada, all Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, and New Zealand, will gather in Berlin to a number of themes related to “teachers’ professional learning and growth.” Country delegations will agree to practical next steps on teacher policy for the next year.
This year, the summit will focus not only on practical agreements but consistent implementation. For example, the OECD has initiated a debate on the competencies children need in 2030. EI proposes that governments and unions together define those competencies and look at their impact on the curriculum, assessment and teacher training.
To learn more, here is a link to Andreas Schleicher’s keynote presentation, and a blog post Schleicher published today – “We can do better on educational reform”. You can also follow along on Twitter with #istp2016. Here are a few standout tweets so far:
What teacher professionalism looks like in different countries @SchleicherOECD #ISTP2016 https://t.co/erpgDFSlLu pic.twitter.com/8XCXlsToZT
— OECD Education (@OECDEduSkills) March 3, 2016
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#istp2016 Canada Germany Switzerland have signed trilateral education agreement @eduint @JournalEdChange @HargreavesBC @BCLSOE
— Dennis Shirley (@dennisshirley) March 3, 2016
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Teachers and their unions are standing up for refugee children. For teachers there are no refugees, just children #istp2016
— Jelmer Evers (@jelmerevers) March 3, 2016
International Education News 