The Future Teacher Kit: Making Teacher Professional Development Opportunities Accessible

• In Event: Qualified Teaching Workforce - Opportunities and Challenges for Applying Edtech Solutions in Low-resource Settings

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a global need for professional development opportunities for teachers. In addition to basic pedagogical skills, teachers particularly lack digital competencies. To enable teachers to act as catalysts for an inclusive, sustainable, and gender-equitable society, they need access to training in these specific areas. At the same time, teachers have been using widely scaled technologies for years, such as mobile phones and messaging systems like WhatsApp, to share information, content, and support each other. These low-tech, widely available, teacher-adopted, and cost-effective technologies offer education systems the potential to quickly reach a large number of teachers.
To tap into this potential, in 2021, GIZ, on behalf of BMZ, developed the Future Teacher Kit (FTK) in collaboration with UNESCO and 1,500 teachers.
The FTK harnesses the potential of low-tech tools already widely adopted by teachers, such as mobile phones and messaging systems. It offers a high-quality, hands-on training experience and fosters the development of sustainable communities of practice for mutual support and knowledge exchange. The FTK is a scalable solution that provides education systems with a low-tech, low-cost, but high-impact answer to two major challenges: the qualification of large numbers of teachers and the enhancement of teacher motivation.
The FTK training currently offers seven modules: 1) Foundational Teaching Skills; 2) Digital Teaching Skills; 3) 21st Century Skills; 4) Education for Sustainable Development; 5) Artificial Intelligence (AI); 6) Gender transformative Pedagogy; and 7) Teaching in Conflict and Crisis Contexts.
BMZ and UNESCO piloted the FTK training in the Caribbean in 2021/2022. GIZ then scaled the FTK to vocational schools in Botswana. There, 721 teachers and 70 ambassadors utilized the FTK training, with 86% of teachers successfully completing all 15 lessons. A total of 93.4% of Botswanan teachers were satisfied with the training. UNESCO is currently scaling the FTK training in Jamaica. In the first phase, 520 teachers were trained. Since the fall of 2023, around 1,000 more teachers have been trained, thanks in part to a partnership with UNICEF: By using UNICEF's platform 'Rapid Pro', the training content can be delivered to a large number of teachers simultaneously. In 2024, the Future Teacher Kit will also be deployed in Ethiopia as part of STEP (Sustainable Training and Education Programme). The BMZ-funded program uses the Future Teacher Kit modules to build a community of practice for trainers. Implementations in Chile with the KODEA Foundation, as well as in Ecuador, are planned.

Author

• Eilean von Lautz-Cauzanet, GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)