GETTING TEACHER MIGRATION & MOBILITY RIGHT
CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS In an increasingly globalised world, migration is a part of the human condition, and teacher migration is an inevitable part of that story. As this report has demonstrated, how teachers move and how they are treated in their home and host countries matters a great deal. The three hiring models profiled have distinct characteristics and implications, and although they may at times overlap, delineating them aids in the formulation of coherent end effective policy. International teacher exchanges, when structured properly, are a highly desirable form of professional mobility. Such programmes elevate the status of the teaching profession by providing rich professional development and opportunities to reflect on the craft of teaching. Importantly, by targeting experienced teachers, they can also serve to refresh and reinvigorate career educators. In the ideal model of reciprocal exchange, students on all sides of the teacher flows benefit equally from the new perspectives and approaches brought into their classrooms. The value of such programmes has long been realised, with the ILO and UNESCO embedding support for authentic exchange into their 1966 Recommendations Concerning the Status of Teachers. Unfortunately, too few opportunities for such high calibre exchange are available to teachers today, and many of those that do exist are threatened by austerity budget cuts. Language and curricular programmes that seek to diversify course offerings also have an important role to play in preparing students for a global knowledge economy. Such programmes take many forms, with some countries importing language expertise and other countries exporting it as a form of popular diplomacy. While promoting crosscultural awareness and foreign language acquisition are laudable goals, some of these programmes undervalue the need for pedagogical training in their teacher selection criteria. Moreover, the many examples outlined in this report reveal that there can be a perceived hierarchy of value placed on native fluency from certain parts of the world which leads to discriminatory levels of pay and conditions. Shortage hiring from abroad generates a host of issues related to workers’ rights, teacher professionalism and education quality in both source and destination countries. Unfortunately, the majority of teacher migration in the world today is responding to labour market supply and demand, rather than purposefully internationalising the profession or the curriculum. In analysing the purported teacher shortages around the world, it must be said that most shortages are created. They come about not due to a lack of willing teachers,
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