Last week’s CIES 2021 conference—the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society—showcased a wealth of exciting research about teaching and teachers (among many other topics).

RISE presentations about teachers included papers on teacher recruitment in Indonesia, teaching practices in Vietnam, and virtual teacher coaching in Brazil and South Africa; as well as work in progress on teacher performance pay in Pakistan, teacher unions in Indonesia, policy and stakeholder dynamics in teacher quality in Pakistan, and teacher and principal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia.

From the RISE directorate, I presented on work in progress with Lant Pritchett in which we propose a set of principles for applying systems thinking to teacher career policy. As shown in the slides, we’re currently calling this the 5Cs: choose and curate toward commitment to capable and committed teachers. In the presentation, we discuss why the five Cs matter for supporting the profession in the complex endeavour that is classroom teaching.

This paper is still under development—and, in fact, these slides have been tweaked slightly since the presentation last week. We would welcome any feedback or suggestions, as noted on the final slide.