On March 11, SUMMA, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and KIX organized the first working meeting with the leaders of teachers' unions of member countries of the KIX regional hub for Latin America and the Caribbean (KIX LAC hub) under the theme "Innovations for Teacher Professional Development, what role do teachers' unions play?".
The meeting provided an opportunity to learn about the current situation and the challenges faced by teachers in Dominica, Grenada, Honduras and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the performance of their daily work in the classroom, especially those generated by the modification of the context by COVID-19.
During the meeting, a presentation was made on the project "Adaptation and scaling up of approaches to teacher professional development" carried out in Honduras, which maintains that in order to improve education systems, especially in developing countries, trained teachers with good levels of training are needed to provide quality education. The objective of the project is to contextualize, adapt and test teacher education models at scale, which are those that take advantage of information and communication technologies, guaranteeing equity and inclusion in the access and quality of teacher training processes.
Some results show that in Latin America and the Caribbean there are almost 7 million teachers working in the classroom, 75% of whom are women, who face challenges such as lower salaries compared to other similar professions and low social esteem.
