THE TEACHING PROFESSION AMID CHANGES IN THE EDUCATIONAL ECOSYSTEMS

This chapter summarizes the main themes that emerged in the individual articles of the book. Even though the contexts of the presented countries differed, the primary questions from each were quite similar. Many reflections focused on teachers’ professional autonomy, their voice in reforms, and their pedagogical leadership in both centralized and decentralized systems. Solutions varied, depending on the system, but a common theme was that high expectations and many tensions related to teachers’ professional roles and their contributions to educational systems exist. Teachers’ work has expanded both in and outside classrooms along with the requirements to support students’ learning of twenty-first-century skills and competencies. Therefore, teachers need to learn new methods and establish new partnerships with other teachers and educational actors, including administrators. Teachers’ professional work requires autonomy and support. It also requires that their viewpoints be considered when reforms are planned so that they have opportunities to take leadership roles in and ownership of their own work. The chapter concludes by stating that teachers are part of educational ecosystems; therefore, we must identify, analyze, and manage educational systems and their subsystems and understand what comprises teachers’ roles within the systems. Teachers’ work depends on macrolevel systems as well as institutional cultures; however, they are also actors who influence those systems and processes.