by Clarissa Hardcastle

The question of how to reform education always comes around to teachers: how to train them, how to assess them, how to pay them, how to keep them—and the list goes on.

The United States isn’t alone in grappling with these issues. Education ministers throughout the world are faced with these same questions. Because of this, education leaders came together to share ideas and best practices at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession.

Delegations comprised of education ministers, leaders of national teachers' organizations, and other teacher leaders from countries and regions with high-performing and rapidly improving education systems gathered in New York City in March 2012.

This year's theme, Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders, examined how to improve teacher preparation and school leader development to better address the needs of 21st century learning environments and changing expectations.

Participating countries and regions included Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

A webcast of the opening and closing events can be viewed online. Also available are PDF files of the 2011 and 2012 International Summit Reports, an article about the first Summit’s ideals and motivation as seen by the world’s leaders in education, and a two-part summary (Part 1; Part 2) of the Summit’s conclusions as written by Vivien Stewart, Asia Society's Senior Advisor for Education and author of A World-Class Education: Learning from International Models of Excellence and Innovation.

Asia Society was a partner on this event along with the U.S. Department of Education, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Education International (EI) the global federation of teacher unions, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), National Education Association (NEA), and public broadcaster WNET.

Clarissa Hardcastle is a strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association.

International Reading Association Annual Convention