Professional trust in teachers stressed

DOHA: The need for increased professional trust to support teachers in the global education community was discussed at a meeting in London co-hosted by World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) and Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

The gathering discussed the necessity of professional confidence to support the inclusion of innovative and effective teaching methods in primary and secondary school systems.

It also marked the release of the revised WISE-RSA report ‘Creative Public Leadership: How School System Leaders Can Create the Conditions for System-wide Innovation’.

The event was chaired by Stavros Yiannouka CEO WISE. According to him “unprecedented challenges” were becoming “more diverse more complex less sustainable and less equal” making reforms to the international education system more crucial.

He emphasised the updated report’s focus on “how to create public education systems that are conducive to widespread innovation and possess the capacities to adopt and scale innovations that are shown to work”.

The main authors of the report Joe Hallgarten Director Creative Learning and Development RSA and Valerie Hannon Director and Co-Founder Innovation Unit attended the event and spoke on their findings.

Hallgarten said the current reform models undervalue teacher professionalism and that international aid to developing countries has become linked to those countries’ ability to “successfully adopt the features of more Westernised schooling paradigms”.

He called for change to be “built on teacher empowerment” that “values the broader outcomes of creativity agency and well-being and works deeply with civil society as partners in learning”.

A panel of experts considered challenges of leading impactful research for concrete action and change and discussed ways to more effectively communicate and interact with policymakers school leaders educators and communities.

The discussion featured authors of three reports in the WISE Research Series — David Whitebread University of Cambridge lead author of Early Childhood Education; Janet Looney Director European Institute for Education and Social Policy co-author of Learning and Well-being; and Asmaa Al Fadala author of K-12 Reform in the GGG and Director of Research WISE.

Martin Bayliss Principal Holyhead School Birmingham UK also participated.The Peninsula