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Empowering Teachers to Build a Better World

How Six Nations Support Teachers for 21st Century Education

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • © 2020

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Overview

  • Examines how teacher preparation is contributing to deeper learning and to the development of 21st century skills
  • Offers a comparative analysis of six national-level professional development programs for teachers
  • Provides rich and nuanced descriptions and analyses of how these programs are designed and implemented in practice
  • Examines what large, ambitious national teacher development programs have in common, and discusses how they can enrich established ideas about what works in teacher education

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Education (BRIEFSEDUCAT)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This open access book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals. 

This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students’ curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction.

The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers’ capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.

Reviews

“This book is a valuable resource to system leaders or policy makers keen to make change in their education or school system.” (Pak Tee Ng, Educational Research for Policy and Practice, Vol. 19, 2020)


Editors and Affiliations

  • Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

    Fernando M. Reimers

About the editor

Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of the International Education Policy Masters Program at Harvard University. An expert in the field of Global Education, his research and teaching focus on understanding how to educate children and youth so they can thrive in the 21st century. He is a member of UNESCO’s commission on the Futures of Education.
Recent books include Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century, Preparing Teachers to Educate Whole Students: An International Comparative Study, Letters to a New Minister of Education, Learning to Improve the World, Empowering Global Citizens, Empowering Students to Improve the World in Sixty Lessons, and Learning to Collaborate for the Global Common Good. 


Prof. Reimers serves on the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, where he chairs the strategic planning committee, andserves on the board of directors of multiple education organizations, including Facing History and Ourselves, Teach for All, and World Teach. 


In 2019, he received a Centennial Medal from the International Institute of Education for his work advancing international education. In 2017 he received the Global Citizen Award from the Committee on Teaching About the United Nations (CTAUN) for his work advancing global citizenship education. In 2015 he was appointed the C.J. Koh Visiting Professor of Education at the National Institute of Education in Singapore in recognition of his work in global education. He received an honorary doctorate from Emerson College for his work advancing human rights education, is a fellow of the International Academy of Education, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Bibliographic Information

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