The World Teachers Day (WTD) 2024

The 5th October is an auspicious day for teachers around the world. On this day, teachers’ pertinent role in shaping education throughout the world is recognised and celebrated by UNESCO and it’s affiliate Educational International (EI). EI is an umbrella body of 383 member organizations, representing more than 32 million teachers and education support personnel in 178 countries and territories. This year’s World Teachers’ Day (WTD2024) celebration focuses on a theme entitled "Valuing Teacher Voices: Towards a New Social Contract for Education". This year's celebration emphasizes teachers' pivotal role in shaping the future of education and the urgent need to incorporate their perspectives into educational policy and decision making processes.

Teacher voices is a form of powerful expression indicating the relation between the teacher’s beliefs in a narrated education, and subsequently their actions, particularly in the classroom teaching learning process. Two types of teacher voices could normally be identified in the teaching profession. Reflection on action is where teachers use their disposition of professional knowledge learned in preservice and in-service programmes as well as their experiences accumulated over the years in their teaching career in expressing their belief on education. Reflection in action, on the other hand, is where teachers use their disposition of professional knowledge and experiences impromptu, in situ, when they are confronted with an educational task in hand.

In essence, both reflection on action and reflection in action, and the interplay between both, are rich and powerful voices of teacher’s beliefs that need to be valued. Their voices determine what and how education should be delivered. Therefore, it is imperative to take teacher’s voices into account and incorporate into educational policy and decision-making processes. Neglecting teacher voices would only add injury to the prospect of having quality education. No matter how good an educational innovation is and how adequate and advanced its support systems, it is the teachers who have the final say about what exactly is being taught and what students should learn.

In Malaysian context, the words teacher, ustaz, lecturer, academician and educator are used interchangeably to refer to a person who has assumed teaching responsibilities in a school or higher education institution, be it government or private. In particular, Malaysian education institutions refer to preschool, primary, and secondary schools, madrasah and pondok schools as well as tertiary education institutions, including matriculation programmes, teacher training, colleges, polytechnics and universities. As of September 2024, it is estimated that in Malaysia there are 414,800 teachers with 5,123,353 students in 10,235 government primary and secondary schools (www.moe.gov.my), and 58,343 academic staff with 799,370 students in 532 higher education institutions (www.mohe.gov.my).

On this auspicious World Teachers’ Day 2024, the Malaysian Association for Education (MAE) would like once again to urge all concerned education parties and stakeholders, especially those involved with policy making at all levels of education to value and pay attention to the teacher’s voices. MAE, the oldest professional education organization established on the 5th January 1968 as a resolution of the First National Education Congress and one of the founding members of Educational International (EI) also urge teacher’s voices to be incorporated into the educational policy and decision-making processes.

Happy World Teachers’ Day 2024!

Mohd. Majid Konting, MAE President