UNESCO Almaty is sharing experience about the Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan (TLK) project with the other Central Asian countries

UNESCO Almaty Cluster Office and HertsCam Network organised a webinar to share experience about the Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan (TLK) project with the other Central Asian countries. The webinar was attended by more than 80 educationists, practitioners, researchers and teachers across the region. The project addresses all governments’ commitments to education reform through support for strategies to improve the quality of teacher education in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The webinar was opened by the Acting-Director of UNESCO in the region, Dr. Amir Pirić, who mentioned well known statement that the quality of education cannot be higher than the quality of its teachers.

Dr. David Frost of HertsCam Network provided framework and approach of non-positional teacher leadership and emphasised that education reforms can only be successful if they are led by teachers; empowering teachers and creating conducive environments for them to practice leadership are vital. He introduced the TLK initiative, which evidently enabled teaches to become agents of change in Kazakhstan. The results of evaluation were also presented by Dr. Gulmira Qanay of the Kazakh National Women’s Teacher Training University to reveal positive findings and feedback from teachers and school leaders. In the end of the webinar all participants of the webinar discussed how the teaching profession and teacher education can be transformed, and what are the ways forward for development of professional networks of teachers in the region. This meeting was a starting point for a regional collaboration on teacher leadership to support teachers as agents of change across the countries.

If you would like to learn more about the project you can view a recorded video, books and materials of the webinar here. If you are interested in introducing this initiative in your schools and countries, please write to email teacherleadershipca@gmail.com or n.teleshaliyev@unesco.org.