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UNESCO Office in Beirut (UBO) and the Arab Thought Foundation (ATF) have engaged for more than a decade in jointly supporting teachers in the Arab Region to develop their competencies in the service of quality education for all learners.

The joint efforts of UBO and ATF aim at supporting Arab States in implementing the Education Agenda 2030, especially regarding the supply of qualified and competent teachers (SDG4 - 4.c target) to all learners based on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning processes and outcomes. They are equally relevant to more recent developments and priorities set in the context of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) held last September in New York City, especially regarding Action Track 3 (Teachers) and the different important ensuing initiatives in support of transforming education for a better future, such as “Greening education”, the “Digital transformation of education”, enhancing “Foundational learning” and advancing “Gender Equality”, as well as transforming education systems to cope with crisis, invest in education more effectively and equitably, and empower young people.

During Phase I of their joint project “Partnership for Arab Educational Development”, also called Tarbiyah21, UBO established the Tarbiyah21 website with a view of documenting promising and innovative teaching and learning practices, so that teachers and teacher trainers can learn from one another and get inspired by state-of-the-art experiences in different Arab countries, and internationally.

In 2019, a second phase (Phase II) of the Tarbiyah21 project was put in motion, that is now coming to completion based on four main outcomes, i.e.:

• A revamped Tarbiyah21 website that includes the previous archive until 2011, as well as more recent articles grouped under different relevant topics (see https://www.tarbiyah21.org/);
• A monthly and event Tarbiyah21 Newsletter that is circulated in both Arabic and English to a broader community of practice of more than 13,000 subscribers;
• A Repository of Promising Teaching and Learning Practices that includes 130 templates representing contributions from teachers, teacher trainers, Ministries of Education, specialized centres, NGOs, UN organizations and other stakeholders on their initiatives and practices they consider promising in the light of some important criteria that have been shared with them through a Call for proposal published in September 2022;
• Teacher Guidance Notes (i.e., Teacher Brief) that encapsulates important lessons learned in the context of the COVID-19 crisis (and beyond) on what is needed for teachers to perform according to set and forward-looking expectations – and how teachers can be best supported based on appropriate training, resources, and incentives.  

Today’s event marks the completion of Phase II of the Tarbiyah21 project through two outstanding products, namely “the Repository of Promising Teaching and Learning Practices” and “the Teacher Guidance Notes” (Teacher Brief).

As partners and co-organizers of this event, we hope that such products focusing on teachers and their new roles in achieving quality education for all will stir further policy dialogue and will inspire many teachers and other stakeholders to become active agents of transformative education at different levels.

This launching’s objectives are threefold, namely:

1. To take stock of the main achievements of the joint UBO and ATF Tarbiyah21 project (Phase II);
2. To share more specifically two outstanding products of this project, namely (a) the Repository of Promising Teaching and Learning Practices; and (b) the Teacher Guidance Notes (Teacher Brief);
3. To raise awareness about the products and outcomes that different categories of stakeholders can use to build upon in view of promoting a teacher-empowering culture in the Arab Region.

It is expected that following the todays’ launching, different target groups (i.e., teachers, teacher trainers and Teacher Training institutions, policy and decision makers and other stakeholders) will have a better understanding of the project products and outcomes and of how they can benefit from.

At the same time, it is hoped that today’s event will constitute an invitation for further enhanced exchanges, sharing and working together in the context of the Arab Region.

While today’s event is providing an overview of the main achievements of the Tabiyah21 project over recent years (Phase II), its special focus lays on the two afore-mentioned products that we hope will become reference materials in our Region inspiring renewed efforts towards both enhanced teacher quality and effective teacher support.

1. Repository of Promising Teaching and Learning Practices (Repository).

The Repository comprises a compendium of 130 completed templates on innovative and promising teaching and learning practices that different categories of stakeholders contributed with as reflective practitioners based on self-reported experiences. Out of more than 300 submissions received, 30 not included in the Repository have been also selected to be uploaded on a special section of the Tarbiyah21 website.

The different examples/cases of promising teaching and learning practices have been clustered according to several main topics/focuses, among which are:

• Quality Teaching and Learning (with several sub-topics encompassing teacher roles in Curriculum, Learner-centred teaching methodologies, Skills development, Social and Emotional Learning/SEL, Education for sustainable Development (ESD)/Greening Education, Learning assessment and other, such as whole-school approaches (WSA).
• Digital transformation of education (integrating ICTs from a pedagogical perspective)
• Teacher professional development (TPD)
• Teachers as researchers/Grassroot education research
• Collaborative projects.

The afore-mentioned categories are relevant for several important priorities that teachers and other education stakeholders consider as critical for todays’ (and tomorrow’s) education quality, equity, and accountability. The templates shared in the Repository constitute an outstanding proof of the immense innovative potential teachers and other stakeholders of the Arab Region poses. At the same time, they constitute an invitation to further exchanges and sharing, as well as to policy dialogue on how to scale up such initiatives in meaningful and sustainable ways.

2. The Teacher Guidance Notes (i.e., Teacher Brief)

The Teacher Guidance Notes aimed at pulling together several important lessons drawn from the recent Covid-19 crisis, as well as from recent broader discussion about the roles of teachers in achieving education quality for all in an inclusive way.

Over recent years, we have all learned important lessons about the types of uncertainty education systems can face owing to crises, but also to the advancement of technologies and other social, economic, cultural, and political (mainly hard to predict) factors.

Teachers and teacher stakeholders are exposed in a user-friendly way to recent trends regarding the teaching profession, such as new expectations to teachers and the competencies teachers should develop/master to meet such expectations. At the same time, the Teacher Guidance Notes point to some effective ways in supporting teachers to perform better while catering for their (and their learners’) well-being in the context of safe, enabling, and friendly learner environments. It makes the case for empowering teachers timely based on cost-effective interventions that rely on learning from one another in the context of inspirational and supportive communities of practice. The Teacher Guidance Notes take equal stock of a wealth of resources for teachers, teacher trainers and other stakeholders that can be accessed in Arabic and other languages.