INTRODUCTION

As the century goes, education has emerged at the forefront of the world’s concern over
its own future. The challenges of the coming century to eliminate poverty and ensure
sustainable development and lasting peace will fall to today’s young people. Educating
the young to meet these challenges has become a priority objective for every society. The
young generation is entering a world which is changing in all spheres – scientific and
technological, political, economic, social and cultural. The outlines of the ‘knowledge-
based’ society of the future are forming. This report considers the situation of the world’s
teachers. It reviews recent trends and developments in education and educational policies
affecting their status, the contexts in which they work and the pressures they face, and
their education and training. It also considers the emerging challenges for teachers and
teaching posed by the introduction into education of the new information and
communication technologies. The discussion is necessarily broad in scope and selective
in the details chosen for emphasis. A teacher's work can be divided into three main areas:
the work with students, which mean the “ordinary teaching”, and the work in school with
other staff members, the kind of organizational work, and the work with societies at large.
A teacher’s work can be defined as the workload of being a teacher, as described in a
story by an anonymous;

One day, after being interviewed by the school administration, a teaching prospect said, “Let me
see if I’ve got this right: “You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their
disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-
shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning. “You want me to check their backpacks for
weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem
and personal pride. “You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship
and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job. “You want me
to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of antisocial behavior, and make sure that they all
pass the state exams. “You want me to provide them with an equal education regardless of their
handicaps, and communicate regularly with their parents by letter, telephone newsletter, and report
card. “You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few
books, a big smile, and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps. “You want me to do all
this and then you tell me...

The meaning of ‘a changing society’ is the social transformation to address social need of
a community for salvation, sanctification, and edification. The context that is going to be
studied is on the educational context that mainly focuses on the teachers. The focus of the
report is broadly on teachers in the formal education system at the pre-primary, primary
and secondary levels; teachers at these levels currently account for nearly nine out of ten
teachers in the world’s formal education systems (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: percentage breakdowns of teachers in the

world’s formal education system (1980 to 1995). The
number is increasing from year to year.

While the percentage grows, the workloads of the teachers grow along significantly. As
we enter the era of globalization where changes take place, the work of a teacher differs
from that of the past years and now in terms of economically, politically, scientifically,
technologically, socially and culturally. For instance, the changes of teaching practice
when ICT is in use. Back in the early 90’s when little technological means were used in
classrooms, a teacher’s work only requires little ICT skill. Nowadays, advance
technology is used in classrooms, for example, computers and internet, head projectors,
and computerized electrical system. It requires extra ICT skill from the teacher thus
contributing to the increment of workloads. In terms of social change, we may view that a
teacher’s work back then is quite minimal, when students were perceived as being
respectful to the teachers and among themselves despite the diversity of background.
Today, more concern is stressed on the role of the teachers to ensure and to promote the
integration between students from different background. All these show that a teacher’s
work is never the same as time goes by, and we will consider the factors of the changes,
the highlight of the teacher’s work, challenges for the teachers and an overview of a
changing world that affects teaching system.

1. A CHANGING SOCIETY IN MALAYSIA

Much has been written about the rapid rate of change that is characterizing our society at
the close of the 20th century. Nations around the world are experiencing dramatic shifts in
their political, economic, cultural, technological and social structures. Malaysia is no
exception and the result has increased demands from our country’s individuals and
institutions, including education. The Malaysian society is engaging towards
globalization and its educational system is not excluded from experiencing changes. The
rate of literacy among Malaysians has shown a stable growth over the years. Not to be
denied that this is a result of societal
changes that took place during the
period. Education has been the main
agenda in fostering the nations.
Through the Malaysian Plan and the
National Education Policy, the
subject of education and educating
Malaysians are always in the
highlight. The changes in other

Figure 2: percentage of literacy of Malaysians by year.

contributing factors are not to be
Literacy of male adults remains higher than female adults. missed as well. Cultural, economic,
and other factors have influenced the
system of education. Automatically, it contributes to the increase of teachers’ work. To
cater the needs of educational demands, more and more teachers were produced and
employed. Cultural change has forced the system to employ more teachers from different
racial and religious background. Meanwhile, economical change has brought over the
options in education in Malaysia. From mainly public-funded schools to a choice of non-
governmental institutions, Malaysians from different economic background has an option
on how to educate themselves. More funds are allocated to help the lower economic
background citizens to send their children to school, and many scholarships are available
for students who are eligible. In the technological and scientific perspectives, Malaysia
has experience a constant change and development stages in times. The implementation
of ICT in classrooms, the formation of smart schools, and the introduction of computer
and internet literacy subjects in education have done so much in bringing about change in
the work of a teacher. Malaysians are emerging as an educated society toward developing
its nation and the literacy percentage of our people has significantly increased (see Figure
2). Our society has develops from time to time to adapt to the changes and globalization,
and this whether formally or informally has influence the teaching and beyond.

2. A TEACHER’S WORK

Reservations concerning a ‘product-oriented’

view of education (Malaysia)

“A high quality teaching force – one that is always learning – is a sine qua non of
coping with the dynamic complexity of a changing world. There are simply no
substitutes to having better teachers. However, the status and image of teachers
accorded by society do not seem to be commensurate with these expectations.
Teachers’ pay remains comparatively low and opportunities for career advancement
are limited. All these are issues related to the assessment of the worth of the teaching
profession. However, we should not assess education solely from the socio-economic
perspective for otherwise we run into the danger of using performance indicators to
appeal to economics and business sense and thus subjugate the influence of teaching
professionals under the control of managerial authority. This in the end may only
further limit the development of the profession and promote the development of a
product-oriented rather than process-oriented view of education.”

Source: Strengthening the Role of Teachers in a Changing World. Country Paper, pp.
2 –3, Kuala Lumpur, Ministry of Education, 1996. (National report presented at the
45th session of the International Conference on Education, Geneva, 1996.)

Box 1 – an excerpt from a report by

the Ministry of Education
A teacher’s work can never end. From the role of everyday teaching process to
managerial to the role as a member of the society, teachers play various roles to ensure
that the education system and the society as a whole move along side by side. The
movement towards monitoring and evaluation of the quality and performance of national
education systems has undoubtedly begun to have an impact on the way in which
education is regarded both by society at large and by the people directly involved, not
least teachers. While education is opened up to democratic debate, it also becomes
another ‘industry’, like mining or construction, with indicators too of inputs, process and
output, as well as of ‘market conditions’ for the product. Not all educational policy-
makers are comfortable with this trend, including us (see Box 1). Too much pressure is on
the teachers when a change in the society takes place. However, it is of their concerns that
the development process of the changes went smooth. Teachers have to facilitate all the
necessary means for the students (that makes up the society) to adapt to the changes. As
far as we’re concerned, the development of the society has never failed, thanks to the
teachers, who responded positively to the call. Policy-making is crucial for them as they
work dependently on this. Educational policy that is blended well with these changes
gives smoother run for the development. A teacher’s work may vary from that of others.
One may find it hard to implement a change especially when the time comes, but another
may find it as easy as introducing a new way of teaching. Having to require a new set of
skills or perhaps knowledge, teacher’s work is indeed subjected to these changes.

3. THE CHANGES THAT BROUGHT TEACHERS AHEAD

Generally, it is often viewed that a societal change that has great impact on the teacher’s
work centered mainly on its technological side. The development of ICT has bigger effect
on a teacher’s work compare to that of the changes in political, economical, and
environmental side. The teachers’ computer use and their perceptions of the impact of
computers on their classroom practice. Teachers made it clear that the computer did not
automatically cause more progressive teaching practices. The teachers who had adopted
more progressive teaching practices over time felt that computers helped them change,
but they did not think that the computers worked as a catalyst for change. Instead, they
offered variety of reasons for changing practice. They made it clear that their changes in
instructional approach were the result of thoughtful reasoning. Their experiences in the
classroom, reflection on those experiences, and the professional culture of a school
influenced this knowledge construction process about what does and does not work in the
classroom. We study the relations between teachers’ skills in using ICT, their pedagogical
thinking, and their self-reported practices. The study indicated that teachers who
intensively used information technology emphasized, more than other teachers, the
importance of using information technology for facilitating students’ participation in
progressive inquiry, collaborative learning, the learners’ active engagement in knowledge
formation process, and learnability of intelligence. It also indicated that the discrepancy
between theory and practice did not seem to be so strong in the context of teachers who
actively use ICT, they appeared to have adequate pedagogical means for pursuing new
pedagogical practices. The impact of economical change, however does little to the work
of a teacher, at least for the time being. In Malaysia, during the downturn of the world
economy in 1997, a relatively small change can be seen at the educational level. It did,
somehow brought some change to the work of the teachers. The same phenomenon goes
to the political change, as it was said in the Malaysian context. When a political form
restructures, some changes are brought into the education system, but merely a small
percentage of change in the work of a teacher can be seen. So, it is considered that
technology brings greater impact on a teacher’s work in a changing society.
4. CHALLENGES FOR TEACHERS

Teachers will be facing a lot of challenges especially in the age of globalization that
promises a degree of social change from time to time. When a social change takes place,
challenges for teachers will increase and vary. The change in economics, politics,
technology, cultures and others in a community will deter the type of challenges that a
teacher may be facing. A change in culture, say, in Malaysia where the culture in the rural
areas differs from the culture in the urban areas, would give a challenge to teachers in
their teaching. Students may be a lot passive than students from urban areas and there
will be only little teacher-student interaction. A change in technology may result to poor
effectiveness of learning, where the unfamiliarity of students’ surroundings lowers the
pace of teaching. Literacy may be of low percentage, thus the receptiveness of learning
may progress very slowly. In the economical term, meanwhile, these students may find it
hard to get books, stationeries, and even to buy uniforms. There are funds allocated for
these schools but the fact is it still inadequate. Amenities in these schools are limited and
so are the resources for teachers. Nevertheless, teachers in the urban schools are none of
the exception from facing challenges. One challenge in working in an inner city school is
that a lot of the children have emotional problems. They come from dysfunctional
families and it's not easy for them to come to school – their focus is someplace else.
Sometimes they have behavioral issues as a result of their emotional problems, and the
biggest challenge is to find the key to reach that child who is very disruptive or very
angry. Another challenge a teacher faces is that a lot of the children are not as prepared
for school as they need to be. They come without a lot of literacy experience. They come
into the classroom holding books upside down, or not knowing where the books start.
Attitude is one of the major concerns in these schools. Teachers will face the environment
of gangsterism and more and the attitude problems do not come from the students only,
but the parents as well. Parents come from two different backgrounds, which are parents
who are so involved in their children’s schooling that they regard themselves as the
policy-makers in the related field, and parents who know nothing about their children
matters in school.
5. THE CHANGING STATUS AND THE PROFILE OF TEACHERS

There were 16 million teachers in the world’s formal education systems when the
Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers was adopted, and their number was
increasing rapidly. The 1960s was a period of considerable expansion of education in
most regions of the world and there were widespread shortages of teachers, especially in
the newly independent developing countries. Many countries adopted temporary, ad hoc
measures to meet the shortages, notably by employing untrained teachers, while at the
same time postponing the investment needed for long-term solutions. In consequence,
questions concerning the status of teachers were very much in the air. In retrospect, the
growth and sheer size of the teaching profession in most countries have been handicaps in
obtaining improvements in the status of teachers, which was the overall aim of the
Recommendation. The 57 million teachers employed in the world’s formal education
systems today constitute the largest single distinctive category of people engaged in
professional and technical occupations; this fact alone makes it difficult for society to
accord teachers a status similar to that of smaller professional and technical groups such
as physicians, lawyers and engineers. In any case, the status of teachers is affected by the
characteristics of teachers considered in the aggregate. From this standpoint, the teaching
profession is notable for the diversity of its members’ backgrounds and the multiplicity of
their occupational functions, ranging from managing kindergarten classes to giving
university lectures, training industrial technicians and running adult education courses.
Many of its members are quite modestly trained before they begin their first job, while
others undergo a lengthy preparation. Other characteristics too are relevant, notably the
fact that in most countries a majority of teachers work in the public sector where they
normally are not highly paid in comparison with persons in other occupations with
similar or even less training, and long tenure in the job usually does not bring very large
increases in salary. Also, a majority of teachers at the lower levels of education often are
women, which has probably in the past helped to keep salaries low. Moreover, although
the teaching profession attracts large numbers of academically able graduates from
secondary or higher education institutions, it must also recruit large numbers of less able
graduates in order to meet the enormous human resource needs of the education system
as a whole. Taken together, all these factors account in large measure for the teaching
profession’s uncertain status. In practice, therefore, the challenge for teachers has mostly
been to ensure that their status is at least broadly comparable with that of other major
professional and technical groups, while not foregoing the prospect of improvement when
conditions are favourable. This challenge is a continuing one. The situation of teachers
today is different from that of thirty years ago when the Recommendation concerning the
Status of Teachers was adopted: there are more of them, the national education systems in
which they work are very much bigger, the pupil/student populations are more diverse,
and the global economic, social and cultural context has changed. What these changes
have broadly implied for the status of teachers is the main concern of this chapter. There
are four sections. In the first, with a view to clarifying the nature of the continuing quest
for improved status, key elements of the Recommendation concerning the Status of
Teachers, in particular its Guiding Principles (Box 2.1), are recalled. In the second
section, the pressures driving the growth of the world’s education systems – and hence
growth in the number of teachers – are considered. In the third section, major trends and
developments in educational policy and expenditure in different parts of the world that
have had implications for the status of teachers are examined. In the fourth and final
section, a broad assessment of the emerging status and profile of the world’s teachers is
made.