The fragility, complexity and interdependence of the global ecosystem of teacher professional learning

Following its publication in March 2024, the UNESCO ‘Global Report on Teachers’ has gained considerable traction across the globe. It highlights the significant challenge ahead if we are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 of inclusive, equitable and quality education for all by 2030. Resulting headlines from news outlets across the world have warned of an impending crisis: ‘World needs 44 m more teachers in order to educate every child, report finds’ (Guardian, UK); ‘Where The Global Teacher Shortage Is Hitting Hardest’ (Forbes News, US); ‘UNESCO warns of global learning crisis. UN-backed study found that 57 million children lack formal education, particularly in South and West Asia’ (Al Jazeera, Qatar).

These news articles have emphasised the worrying extent of global teacher shortages and reported on the various reasons for this situation: retirements as a result of ageing populations, disillusionment resulting in attrition, and a need for additional new teachers to meet targets for providing universal primary and secondary education across the globe. However, the full report title – ‘Global Report on Teachers: Addressing teacher shortages and transforming the profession’ – contains a two-pronged sub-title which not only emphasises shortages, but also points to consideration of solutions too, highlighting a need to transform the profession in order to make it attractive, sustainable and impactful. This is not simply a one-problem fix requiring more new teachers, but an invitation to consider how the whole ecosystem of teacher education and professional learning might work more coherently within and across borders.

While it is easy to look at the immediacy of the problem in terms of recruiting new teachers into teacher education or training programmes, the report itself takes a more holistic view: ‘this report advocates for dignifying, diversifying, and valorising the teaching profession. It emphasizes the importance of improved working conditions, enhanced professional development, and increased teacher involvement in decision-making to bridge the gap’ (UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 2024, p. 1). Thus, while headlines focus on the crisis of mass teacher shortages, the report itself makes clear links between attracting, retaining and sustaining teachers in the profession, acknowledging that appropriate, accessible and relevant professional learning opportunities throughout a teacher’s career are key to this.

This interconnectedness between teacher recruitment, initial teacher education and ongoing professional learning is important, but so too is the interconnectedness between local and global perspectives, policies and practices in teacher education and professional learning. The dilemmas associated with designing teacher learning for the universal versus designing it for the particular are often debated. And while the phrase ‘context matters’ is regularly heard in relation to teaching and teacher learning, the boundaries of ‘context’ are rarely clearly definable; our contexts are simultaneously global and local. The fact that we are talking about teacher shortages and the transformation of the profession across the globe is a clear example of our increasingly globalised existence. As Goodwin, (2020, p. 6) writes, ‘This is the reach and the reality of globalisation – what happens “there” to “them” now affects what happens “here” to “us.”’ What the UNESCO report demonstrates, though, is that while impacts can be felt across the globe, they are not experienced equally by everyone in every place. Teacher shortages are disproportionally felt in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 5.6 million replacement teachers and 9.4 million new teachers will be required to meet the 2030 target. This represents a staggering 178% of the 2022 teacher stock in that area.

While the UNESCO report allows us to see variations in global regions, there exists considerable difference within individual countries too. We know, for example, that teacher shortages are felt much more keenly in remote and rural areas and in schools in areas of high poverty. In schools already disadvantaged through the impact of poverty, Wei et al. (2009) report on the significant impact of high-quality professional learning, referring to their finding that ‘several national studies on what distinguishes high-performing, high-poverty schools from their lower-performing counterparts consistently identify effective schoolwide collaborative professional learning as critical to the school’s success’ (p. ii). Professional learning is, therefore, not only an issue of quality in education, but also an issue of social justice; its importance cannot be overstated.

It is easy to see how efforts and resources might therefore be prioritised towards teacher recruitment and initial preparation, but the link between attracting and recruiting teacher and retaining them clearly points to a need to think beyond this initial stage. Professional learning, especially that which links coherently with initial preparation, is absolutely central to the teacher learning ecosystem, and Professional Development in Education plays a small, but important role in that regard. It is sometimes difficult to see how our own individual pieces of research are making any in-roads in what sometimes feel like overwhelmingly large, intractable issues relating to quality and equity in education, but if we think of each piece as a crucial contribution to the wider ecosystem then we can see the purpose and impact of our work more clearly.

Professional Development in Education creates a space to bring together these individual pieces of work, where the sum is greater than the parts. We acknowledge the need to share, theorise and understand both the particular local contexts and practices of professional learning and the more universal, global dimensions. The push by neoliberal research measurement practices for ‘international’ research with global reach means that sometimes local/national research can be seen as less valuable. It is important to delineate between issues of quality and context, that is, not all local research is necessarily ‘parochial’ or lower quality, and not all internationally focused research is necessarily of high quality just by virtue of its geographic span. I want to make a plea here for diversity and eclecticism in context, reach, approach and methodological approach. The challenges outlined in the UNESCO report are indeed serious and significant, but the work published in Professional Development in Education plays its part in contributing to good professional learning of educators, thereby playing a small but important part in addressing challenges associated with global teacher shortages. We thank our authors, reviewers and readers for playing their respective parts in the global ecosystem of teacher professional learning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).