The Role of Education Faculties in Promoting High Quality Education
  • "The teacher is the single most important element of the learning process at the school level that can be most easily and effectively supported through public and professional investments. The local school district or education authority,  is the most vital agency responsible for hiring teachers and providing positive work environments and opportunities for ongoing professional development in cooperation with their local teacher unions.
  • Faculties or schools of education are the single most important element of the workforce development process that creates a pool of qualified, effective and dedicated teachers for local education authorities and education systems. Initial teacher education programs recruit candidates into the profession, provide and certify their initial training and additional qualifications, help to induct and retain teachers in the system, provide timely and relevant research on teaching and learning to guide curriculum development and implementation as well as other school and professional practices. Education faculties offer career pathways for recruiting prospective teachers from or to serve minority, isolated and disadvantaged communities or for upgrading the skills and capacities of those assigned to teach without adequate preparation due to ad-hoc or short-term strategies responding to emergency or other circumstances."  (From McCall, D., Eloff, I., O’Meara, J.G.  (2023).  The Global Agenda for Quality Education: the critical role of Faculties of Education.  In: Villanueva, S.A. & Huber, T. (Eds).  Global Citizenship Education at TAMIU: Elevating Education at the Frontera.  Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 express a universal commitment towards sustainable development that includes various global goals to improve quality education, good health and well-being, gender equality, economic growth, climate action, life on land and below water, clean water and clean energy, innovation, the eradication of poverty and hunger, the reduction of inequality as well as peace, justice and strong institutions.  The 17th sustainable development goal (SDG) presents the goal of ‘partnerships for the goals. 

This paper seeks to reflect the views of the recently established Global Network of Deans of Education (GNDE) as an exemplar for crafting new partnerships to support the attainment of SDG4 that focuses on Quality Education.  The notion of ‘coherence’ is utilized as a conceptual marker to present the emerging network.  Four drivers, i.e. focus, collaboration, learning, accountability, are applied to illuminate the potential of a global education deans’ network to address educational challenges and optimize opportunities to support learning.

Read the full paper here.
A global network...
  • led by regional and national associations
  • linked with global networks concerned with education
  • offering faculty leaders an opportunity to collaborate and contribute
  • promoting equity and educational success through selected global initiatives

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                                    GNDE Mission: Learning, Teaching, Research, Community