Good morning and a warm welcome to all as we gather to begin this four-day event bringing together representatives of ministries of education and teacher training institutions from eight Pacific Island countries. The topic of discussion for the next four days is of course the Pacific Regional Teacher Standards, reviewed, renewed and endorsed as one of the key activities under the Pacific Regional Education Framework.
For those who don’t know me, I am Michelle Belisle, Director of the Educational Quality and Assessment Programme, a division of the Pacific Community and I am honoured to be invited to present opening remarks today, even though I am unable to join you in person.
The idea of a shared understanding of expected teacher competencies around the region is not new. The Teacher Standards document that we are focusing on this week has been around in one form or another for over a dozen years and the review and revision of the Standards was carried out from 2019 through 2023. As you will hear later this morning, the process was complex, inclusive and collaborative and I know many who are present in the room today have been involved in that process at various stages.
The title of this week’s event is a sub-regional workshop and I want to focus for a minute on the word workshop. A workshop is a single event; a few hours over a few days that are marked by a start and a finish. But we all know the event itself does not stand alone. The “work” in workshop doesn’t just happen over the four days together. As you will know from the agenda that was shared prior to your coming here today, and from the preparations that were asked of each of you, the next four days are laid out as a series of opportunities to learn from one another and develop a shared understanding of the Regional Teacher Standards and their potential impact on Teacher Education programs around the region.
Ahead of this week, participants were asked to reflect on several questions posed by the organisers and bring presentations to be shared over the first few sessions of the program. We will hear from Teacher Training Institutions, Ministries of Education and technical experts from SPC and from the Australian Council for Educational Research. A colleague of mine several years ago used the analogy of an hourglass. There is a wide part of the hourglass on the top – that represents all the work and thinking participants do in preparation for the workshop. The workshop itself is the narrow part in the middle and what we do afterwards, when we return to our roles and take the outcomes of the workshop into our daily work and share them with others, that is the wide bottom part of the hourglass.
This week we will all work together to make the most of the short time we have together. The SPC team has often heard me open sessions with what I call “five working assumptions” and I think it is appropriate to share those now. The first assumption is that everyone brings wisdom. Each of you here today, regardless of your official title or role, and precisely because of your experiences, knowledge and expertise, brings specific wisdom to the conversation that no one else can bring. That in turn leads to the second assumption, that we need everyone’s wisdom for the wisest result. Not just the majority opinion, not just the input of the most senior members of the group, not just the ideas of the “experts” but everyone’s wisdom to get to the best result.
The third working assumption is that there are no wrong answers – when you engage with the group and share thoughts and ideas, there are no wrong answers but by the same token, there are no right answers either. That really circles back to the first two assumptions – and to the fourth assumption, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and in listening to one another and engaging in dialogue we learn from one another, and each expand our own knowledge and understanding in the process.
That brings me to the fifth and final working assumption, that everyone deserves to hear and to be heard. As we work through the program for the week, understanding the background to the Regional Teacher Standards that brings us to where we are today, hearing from Teacher Training Institutions about their efforts in targeting teacher quality in their teacher education programs, and hearing from ministries of education about some of the challenges they face with respect to teacher quality, together we will work to understand how the Teacher Standards map to teacher education programs in the region. All week, but particularly in the activities on Thursday and Friday, I urge everyone to engage fully and honestly, remembering the working assumptions as we work to understand how the regional teacher standards will impact and inform teacher education in the Pacific and plan next steps and a way forward as to how to incorporate the standards into our work as ministries and teacher training institutions over the coming weeks and months.
I wish you all the best for the next four very interesting and informative days and hope that you enjoy the time together.
Watch the video of the speech here!
