Anouk (and everyone)
I know some of you personally but not all. I am Emeritus Professor of Education at the UK’s Open University where in 2005 I was the founding Director of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme which still thrives. I have worked on teacher education in all parts of the world (there is now a TESS-India) and currently I’m the education specialist on DFID’s Research Advisory Group.
My interest is teachers. Although everyone says teachers are important they are not always a priority for education policy systems. I attach the new DFID education policy. You’ll see a lot more attention now being given to teachers (which I have spent two years lobbying for) I have also attached a note I did for DFID on the reasons why teachers should be much more ‘centre stage’. This is an informal document, not for quoting from, but a statement of my ideas about teachers, and teacher education specifically. My main point is that existing assumptions about teacher education are conceptually wrong and logistically undeliverable. If we are to improve the quality of teaching (and give children/students a fair deal out of education) then we must change the model that puts most of the resources into initial training with incoherent subsequent opportunities for professional development. That is why I think we need well structures and much more sophisticated forms of school based teacher development. COL is doing great work in this respect and I’m contributing by working on a toolkit for such an approach.
It would be interesting to debate some of the ideas but hopefully when the technology is in place we can have a more interactive exchange of ideas. I’m writing this in Oxford (UK) and looking out of my window at a heavy snowstorm and a temperature of –5C. I envy many of you!
Best wishes for today, Bob
PS I meant to add that as part of the school based approach ‘learning outcomes’ need to be centre stage..but we need to make many of the specifications much simpler to use..if we could formulate fewer, more clearly articulated targets for outcomes then we can build more focussed SBTD around them..and at the primary level in many countries of interest to COL this means a tougher focus on literacy and basic numeracy, Bob