One of the major challenges of education at the beginning of the 21st century is the constant updating of teachers skills at all levels. The UNESCO Associated Schools Project is committed to focusing on the teacher as a crucial stakeholder in the journey toward quality Education For All. Teachers have crucial roles to play in preparing young people to face the future with confidence but to build it with purpose and responsibility. There is an urgent need for societies to shift from narrow nationalism to universalism, from cultural prejudice to tolerance and pluralism and from autocracy to democracy.

In-service Training for Teachers Reading Skills.

Participating in the Associated Schools Project enables teachers to acquire new skills in creativity, problem solving and communication so as to make all this possible. However, to have any chance of effecting change, teachers must obtain the skills of change agentry.

In a bid to effect change, ASPnet empowers teachers to intervene in the following areas:

Innovations in educational resource materials and curricula
Today’s teachers are faced with a huge challenge of helping schools providing traditional type of education to respond to new emerging requirements like education for sustainable development. Teachers need to know and be able to apply a variety of teaching techniques to prepare students to meet the challenges of a complex and interdependent world. They must be able to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses and plan instructional programs that help students make progress. The ASPnet enables teachers to be a part of the movement to create new innovative educational approaches.

Some major educational innovations of ASPnet in relation to quality education include the Peace Pack, the World Heritage Education kit for secondary school teachers. The ASPnet is vital in helping teachers to translate concepts such as Education for Sustainable Development into practical activities that can be carried out in the community thereby enhancing young people’s contribution to solving societal problems.

Technology
ASPnet encourages teachers in ASPnet schools to recognize the opportunity presented by ICTs to develop new teaching and learning styles and especially to develop strategies for leveraging on the knowledge, enthusiasm and skills of students.

ASPnet teachers are aware and try to make use of the new technologies to integrate disadvantaged populations by broadening access to education.

While participating in pilot projects and international contests such as Mondialogo, ASPnet teachers help students to make meaningful use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) and to increase their involvement at all phases of the project.

Collaboration
There is a ceiling effect to how much we can learn if we keep to ourselves. The ability to collaborate on both a small- and large-scale is becoming one of the core requisites of postmodern society. Personal strength, as long as it is open-minded (that is, inquiry-oriented), goes hand-in-hand with effective collaboration — in fact, without personal strength collaboration will be more form than content. Through the Associated Schools Project work, teachers are empowered to facilitate contacts between students and pupils of different races and cultures thereby contributing to education for international understanding and peace.

Generally, work of the Associated Schools Project in the four major themes encourages teachers to:

• Work with all students in an equitable, effective, and caring manner by respecting diversity in relation to ethnicity, race, gender, and special needs of each learner;

• Be active learners who continuously seek, assess, apply, and communicate knowledge as reflective practitioners throughout their careers;

• Develop and apply knowledge of curriculum, instruction, principles of learning, and evaluation needed to implement and monitor effective and evolving programs for all learners;

• Initiate, value, and practice collaboration and partnerships with students, colleagues, parents, community, government, and social and business agencies;

• Develop a personal philosophy of teaching which is informed by global contexts of education.

Teacher professionalism is at a threshold. Moral purpose and change agentry are implicit in what good teaching and effective change are about, but as yet they are society’s (and teaching’s) great untapped resources for radical and continuous improvement so as to realize Quality Education For All. The quality of the learning environment at school depends to a large extent on the quality of the human resource capacity available. Teachers are the most important human resource and remain the backbone of any educational system.

There is an urgent need for the Associated Schools project to incorporate in all its programmes elements that will enable teachers to appreciate the total person in working with others, encourage working with colleagues, redefine their role to extend beyond the classroom and to contribute to continuous improvement and perpetual learning in the school.

We all need to put our efforts in various capacities and situations so as to strengthen the role of the Associated Schools Project in empowering teachers to prepare the young generation for a ‘real world’ which they must understand and seek to change; and not only to survive as persons and professionals, but also to grow.

Happy 50th Anniversary! ASPnet Pupils of City Parents School mark 50 years of ASPnet.