Teacher Education: Strategies for Success

Abstract

Teacher Education Partners Meeting, Vancouver, 28 July 2009, Attended by representatives of ComSec (Caroline Pontefract); Hewlett Foundation (Cathy Nicholson); TESSA (Freda Wolfenden, Jophus Amanuah-Mensah); UNESCO (Lucio Sia); UNICEF (Cream Wright); and COL (Asha Kanwar, May Li, Abdurrahman Umar, John Daniel, and Desmond Bermingham (on attachment)). Teacher Education: Strategies for Success, Welcoming remarks by Sir John Daniel // Our purpose in these two days is to update our views on teacher education by sharing experiences and perspectives. I hope that we can then identify a few areas where we can achieve more by working in partnerships – either bilateral or multilateral – than by working solo. I confess to a very personal interest in the outcomes of this meeting. I am completing the manuscript of a book which focuses on two activities that seem to me essential for achieving Education for All. // The first is open schooling. We shall never cope with the surge of pupils towards secondary education, which is the direct result of the steady success of the push for Universal Primary Education (UPE), without using different methods. Of these open schooling is the most promising. // The second, of course, is teacher education. I argue that we will not complete the drive to UPE, still less make progress towards universal secondary education, without new approaches to teacher education. The numbers of teachers required are simply too big for business as usual.