Striving for Quality in Education: Quality Early Education Program (QEEP) Meeting, Belgrade, 6-8 December 2007

December 2007

ISSA member NGO Directors and QEEP National Coordinators met for three days in Belgrade to discuss QEEP’s current and future work to promote quality in education. Building upon internationally recognized definitions of quality in teaching, working within national systems of education, improving support for professional development, and ways of improving of pedagogical practices were among the key questions discussed during the meeting. 

The first day was devoted to learning from each other about different forms of mentoring, work with Ministries of Education and local education authorities at the policy level, and how to connect with other organizations to promote quality. Aigly Zafeirakou, Education Specialist from the World Bank, also gave a presentation on a global perspective of quality in Early Childhood Education and Care Services.

To provide support for the professional development of teachers, a majority of the ISSA member NGOs have created decentralized systems of mentoring in their countries, where mentors work on regional, school-to-school, or intra-school levels. In addition, they provide specific trainings and workshops for school directors and/or deputy directors, teachers, school psychologists, heads of methodological commissions, and others who have traditionally worked in a mentoring capacity in the school system. Many of the NGOs have also succeeded in involving and training staff in re-training institutes, as well as school inspectors. Several NGOs have also developed distance and on-line learning systems.

In order to influence the policy level, many ISSA member NGOs have been included in the work of different task forces organized by Ministries of Education.  This work has involved reforming teacher attestation systems, contributing to the development of national education strategies and national preschool and/or primary school curricula, national standards for child outcomes, requirements for teacher competencies and national teacher standards, teacher professional development models,  etc.

Members shared success stories about the connections established with other organizations and groups to promote quality in teaching, such as UNICEF and the World Bank, national media, parent groups, teacher training institutes, universities, etc. Through a mini-workshop, Ken Phillips from NGO Futures (USA), helped participants broaden their thinking about ways to cooperate with different stakeholders to promote ideas and also to build institutional capacity and sustainability of the organization.

One day of the meeting was devoted to the professional development of the country representatives. Prof. Ferre Laevers and Julia Moon from the Centre for Experiential Education at the University of Lueven, Belgium presented the Centre’s program on the well-being and involvement of children as keys in quality in early childhood education. They also introduced the inspiring and challenging philosophical Process-oriented Self-evaluation Instrument for Care Settings. Participants practiced scoring well-being and involvement in video clips and followed up with discussions about where those in the video clips could have improved.

During the meeting, participants were updated on the progress of the revision of the ISSA Pedagogical Standards and next steps for implementation and use of the Standards were discussed. All present agreed on the importance of incorporating all available current research in the field into the revised Standards, which will serve as guidelines for member NGOs in their work in promoting quality in teaching and education in general.

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