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DEFINITION
The process by which teachers engage in further education or training to refresh or upgrade their professional knowledge, skills and practices in the course of their employment.
UNESCO. 2019. Teacher Policy Development Guide. Paris: UNESCO.
EXAMPLE OF USE
The existence of diverse teacher education partners, when well regulated and monitored, may contribute to the development of stronger teacher education methodologies and pedagogical methods throughout a national teacher education system. In Mozambique, for example, 11 teacher training colleges run by ADPP Mozambique, a national non-governmental organization that is a member of the Humana People to People Federation, function alongside a network of state-run teacher training institutions (Humana People to People, 2013). They teach the same curriculum, and trainees take a common examination; the ADPP-run institutions are widely considered to have had a positive impact on the teacher education training methods employed by the state-run institutions ( UNESCO, 2019: 56)
UNESCO. 2019. Teacher Policy Development Guide. Paris: UNESCO.
Glossary
glossary
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DEFINITION
Inclusion is basically ensuring that every child, adolescent and youth is taken into consideration equally by the education system. It is about guaranteeing fair and quality learning conditions, processes, and outcomes for all.
Opertti, Renato. 2017. 15 clues to support the Education 2030 Agenda. Current and critical issues in the curriculum 14. Geneva: UNESCO-IBE.
EXAMPLE OF USE
Inclusive education does not mean dividing and separating students based on their “abilities”, nor physically integrating them into schools without adapting the infrastructure, curriculum, pedagogy and teacher roles. The focus should in fact be on the characteristics of each individual and how each person can learn more and better by being part of a collective learning space with peers and teachers.
Opertti, Renato. 2017. 15 clues to support the Education 2030 Agenda. Current and critical issues in the curriculum 14. Geneva: UNESCO-IBE.
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DEFINITION
An indicator may be defined as a tool that should make it possible both to have a sense of the state of an education system, and also to report on that state to the whole of the education community, in other words, to the whole of the country.
Sauvageot, Claude. 2003. Indicators for educational planning: a practical guide. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.EXAMPLE OF USE
In order to construct a good indicator, one must be able to identify the most interesting phenomena to measure. These will depend,inter alia, on the country’s choices as inspired by the objectives of its education policy. The relevance of some indicators is more universal and descriptive, but in every case their importance will depend on the context. The enrolment rate in primary education is a good indicator (Sauvageot, 2007: 17).
Sauvageot, Claude. 2003. Indicators for educational planning: a practical guide. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP.
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DEFINITION
To compensate for the unidimensional nature of each indicator, it is necessary to build a system of indicators, that is, a coherent set of indicators that together provide a valid representation of the condition of a particular education system, not just an ad hoc collection of readily available statistics. Ideally, an indicator system will provide information about how individual indicator components work together to produce an overall effect. In other words, the policy and interpretative value of all the information to be gained from a system of indicators is greater than the sum of its parts. To provide this overall picture, the selected indicators should be logically or empirically linked. The linkages should proceed from a model or framework that describes how the education system works. The model by itself permits the broader assessment of an indicator’s relevance (OECD/CERI, 1992: 15).
EXAMPLE OF USE
For most countries, the appearance of indicators and indicator systems in higher education constitutes a response to two policy objectives: exercising more rigorous monitoring in this field and, in times of fiscal restraint, establishing a more direct and observable link between funding and performance. The goal of using a system of indicators is to make the autonomy and diversification of higher education institutions compatible with accountability and effective management of these institutions. Indicators thus provide a means of not only external monitoring of these institutions by governments, but also internal monitoring of overall institutional goals or specific ones set by departments or service units (Martin and Sauvageot, 2009: 20).
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DEFINITION
Forms of learning that are intentional or deliberate but are not institutionalised. It is consequently less organized and structured than either formal or non-formal education. Informal learning may include learning activities that occur in the family, workplace, local community and daily life, on a self-directed, family-directed or socially-directed basis.
UIS. International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED 2011. Montreal: UIS, 2012.
EXAMPLE OF USE
In general, informal learning does not involve teaching by a second party, is not organized, and does not lead to a recognized credential. Informal learning, experience and practice are closely-related concepts. Without careful distinction, most life experiences can be viewed as involving informal learning, but clearly certain types of activities are more relevant than others when it comes to the formation of relevant competencies (Desjardins, Rubenson and Milana, 2006: 54).
Desjardins, Richard; Kjell Rubenson, and Marcella Milana. Unequal chances to participate in adult learning: international perspectives. Fundamentals of Educational Planning 83. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP, 2006.
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DEFINITION
Information and communication technologies (ICT) is defined as a diverse set of technological tools and resources used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information. These technological tools and resources include computers, the Internet (websites, blogs and emails), live broadcasting technologies (radio, television and webcasting), recorded broadcasting technologies (podcasting, audio and video players, and storage devices) and telephony (fixed or mobile, satellite, visio/video-conferencing, etc.).
UIS. 2009. Guide to measuring information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. Montreal: UIS.
EXAMPLE OF USE
We reaffirm that the most effective policy to integrate ICT in education is through whole school-based planning, teacher training and professional development. We highlight that the challenge is not only to develop ICT competency standards for teachers and prepare teachers to integrate ICT in their pedagogy, but also to offer continuous support and to provide them with the incentives and the professional motivation to unlock ICT to enhance the quality of learning. To incentivize teachers, governments and institutions are recommended to integrate the evaluation of the use of ICT by institutions and teachers into the systems and practices for monitoring the quality of learning. (2017 Qindago Statement: 4).
UNESCO. 2017. Qingdao Statement: strategies for leveraging ICT to achieve Education 2030. Paris: UNESCO.
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DEFINITION
A body that ensures that the official regulations applying to a particular type of institution or activity are obeyed.
EXAMPLE OF USE
Finally, in many countries, education authorities have been granting greater freedom to individual schools to manage their own affairs, or, as a result of being constantly required to negotiate with unions even small changes in practice, have been losing control over what goes on in schools. The erosion of the role of school inspectorates illustrates this trend (Kellaghan and Greaney, 2001: 31).
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DEFINITION
The internal efficiency of an educational system concerns the optimal use of resources (inputs) in producing its outputs. Assessments of internal efficiency are typically done for a specific level of education, say primary education, and the simplest indicator of internal efficiency is the unit cost of producing one unit of educational output, which may be a graduate of that level of education, or a student who has attained some minimum level of knowledge.
EXAMPLE OF USE
An example might be a proposal to restructure schools or universities and merge two institutions on the grounds that this will increase internal efficiency and reduce unit costs through economies of scale (Woodhall, 2004: 38).
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DEFINITION
[A study which aims to] collect and analyze valid cross-national information about student educational achievement (Beaton et al., 1999: 11)
EXAMPLE OF USE
In this way, educational researchers in participating countries keep abreast of the latest developments in research techniques, while reports of the international studies make the techniques available to researchers in non-participating countries (Beaton et al., 1999: 17).
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DEFINITION
Classification system designed to serve as an instrument for assembling, compiling and presenting comparable indicators and statistics of education both within countries and internationally. The system, introduced in 1976, was revised in 1997 and 2011.
EXAMPLE OF USE
Three levels of education are represented; namely below upper secondary, upper secondary and tertiary education, or their equivalent in vocational qualifi cations. These groups correspond to Level 2 or below, Level 3, and above Level 3 respectively on the International Standard Classifi cation of Education (ISCED) scale. They can be broadly thought of as low, intermediate and high levels (McIntosh, 2008: 19).