Many educational systems across the world have recently undergone or have been undergoing significant educational change in an effort to cope, inter alia, with increasing demands in student performance, teacher accountability and multicultural classrooms. As the responsibility of pupils’ learning is increasingly laid on teachers, efforts of educational change have often concentrated on teacher assessment and evaluation, teacher qualifications and teaching quality, with important implications for issues of teacher professionalism and professionalization. Therefore, the various processes and policies of educational change influence the way teachers experience and lead their day-to-day professional lives, as well as how they see themselves as professionals with important consequences for the implementation of educational change at the level of the classroom, the school, and the macro-level of educational policy.
The status, role, and participation of teachers during eras of change has been the subject of many debates around the world, amidst discussions of increasing teacher deprofessionalization and deskilling, and efforts for teacher reprofessionalization focusing, inter alia, on issues of teacher agency and autonomy: What do we mean when we talk about teacher professionalism? Who is the professional teacher? What kind of educational change should educational systems aspire to, for whom, and what does this mean for educators? How does change happen? How does it affect teachers? What kind of challenges and opportunities are there for educators caught in the midst of educational change?
This conference aims to bring together educators, policy makers, researchers and other stakeholders who may be interested in the field teacher professionalism and educational change. We invite participants to discuss and share experiences, research, or theoretical explorations on issues of teacher professionalism in eras of educational change that relate to current trends and challenges on educational policy, new technologies, learner diversity and the curriculum.
The conference is organized by the Department of Education of the European University Cyprus and will be held at the European University Cyprus on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th of September 2015. The conference will include plenary talks, symposia, parallel sessions, poster sessions, and workshops.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Dr. Adam Lefstein, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dr. Richard Race, University of Roehampton
Professor Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris, European University Cyprus
CONFERENCE THEMES:
1. Teacher professionalism and educational policy
2. New technologies, new era and teacher professionalism
3. Educational change for learner diversity
4. Issues of curriculum and pedagogy during educational change
More information can be found here.