Comparative research on teachers and teacher education: global perspectives to inform UNESCO’s SDG 4 agenda

ABSTRACT

Increasing the supply of qualified teachers is a priority in many nations as a prerequisite to accomplishing UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by the year 2030. Questions remain however concerning definitions and measurement of the intended global indicators. In this article, I argue that the work of the comparative research community has the potential to inform and enrich UNESCO’s SDG 4 indicators agenda concerning teachers, but this would require moving from a focus on easy to measure indicators such as teacher qualifications to more meaningful and valid indicators such as teacher qualities, and the quality of their education – a neglected area in the SDG 4 targets. Using evidence from two cross-national studies of mathematics education I propose that engagement with comparative education research may help to re-imagine a sustainable and high-quality teaching-and-teacher education project globally.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO SDG 4
• teacher education
• indicators and metrics
• evaluation research
• teachers
• comparative international studies
• mathematics education research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Here I must acknowledge that I served as director and Principal Investigator of these two studies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Teresa Tatto

Maria Teresa Tatto is a Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, and the Southwest Borderlands Professor of Comparative Education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Previously she was a professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Teacher Education. She has authored several articles, books, and chapters. Two of her most recent publications include: Tatto, M.T., and Menter, I. (Eds.). (2019). Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Learning to Teach: A Cross-National Study. London: Bloomsbury Academic, and Tatto, M.T., Burn, K., Menter, I., Mutton, T., & Thompson, I. (2018). Learning to teach in England and the United States: The evolution of policy and practice. Abingdon, England: Routledge. Dr. Tatto has served as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Teacher Education, and as a guest editor for the Oxford Review of Education and the International Journal of Educational Research. She is a former president of the Comparative and International Education Society. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, England, and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Tatto studies the effects of educational policy on school and teacher education systems.