The Global Report on the Status of Teachers 2021
The 2015 and 2018 Reports This report is indebted to the first two reports commissioned by Education International. The main findings of the first report, the 2015 Global Status of Teachers and the Teaching Profession Report, were that teacher status was related to aspects of quality education, that pay and conditions are important determinants, and that CPD is critical in advancing the status of teachers (Symeonidis, 2015). Significantly, the 2015 Report provided a conceptual model that has informed subsequent investigations, namely that status is multi-layered, made up of multiple contextual layers from social/ government to individual, and is always dynamic. Table 1 below, taken from work by Hargreaves and Flutter (2013), animated the 2015 Report and captures the multiple vectors and contexts that feed into status and render it an evolving, dynamic composite of structures, material effects and intangible beliefs. Table 1. Conceptual framework to show proximal contexts (school, local/regional) and more distal contexts (teaching force, education system and national government), and issues at each level CONTEXTUAL LAYER
ISSUES RELEVANT TO STATUS
Society/Government
- History, economic and political stability - Demand, supply and source of teachers - Control and regulation of profession, curriculum, assessment - Pay and conditions - Accountability/inspections/monitoring - Media – national press
Education system
- Longevity - Stability - Complexity (phases, public/private)
Teaching force
- Recruitment (entry qualifications) - Retention - Initial training - Continuing Professional Development - Voice
Regional/ Local arrangements
- Cooperation or competition - Links with local schools - Relationship with community
Own school
- Internal relations – with colleagues, assistants, and leadership - Leadership style – democratic, hierarchical, autocratic - Sense of trust and responsibility - Relations with parents - Resources and facilities
Individual teacher
- Own qualifications, motivation and self-efficacy: teacher identity - Relationship with pupils, parents, colleagues - Sense of autonomy, ownership, belonging - Feeling trusted and valued - Personal responsibilities
Source: Hargreaves and Flutter (2013, p. 39)
A key part of this diagram is that status and identity are related, that the idea of having, or holding, a positive professional identity, is always influenced by the contextual 11
