On March 13 and 14 in San Jose, Costa Rica, the Central America and Dominican Republic Chapter of PREAL’s Working Group on the Teaching Profession (CCAD-GTD) held, in collaboration with the Central American Integration System’s Education Coordination (CECC/SICA), the first of seven national workshops on the teaching profession that PREAL will organize throughout the region. These workshops seek to promote debate on teacher policy and showcase innovative policies, such as standards for entry into the profession, systematic induction of novice teachers, and performance evaluations. [...]
Local experts Luis Carlos Morales, a sociologist at the University of Costa Rica, and Soledad Chavarria, owner of an educational consulting firm, opened the second day’s activities as part of a panel moderated by Juan Manuel Esquivel, an expert in student assessment [...]
Chavarria highlighted key findings from the third report of “Estado de la Educación,” which is produced by the State of the Nation Program (Programa Estado de la Nación) and assesses the state of schools and education in Costa Rica. Like Morales, she focused her discussion on teachers and their working conditions, institutional accreditation, and government efforts to improve education. She emphasized that the lack of a target profile for teacher candidates, unacceptable teaching conditions, the lack of an official induction period, and a negative view of teaching as a profession all hinder the quality of education. Generating effective school leadership and establishing an organization to define and monitor the quality of education are crucial to developing high-quality teachers. By strengthening teacher opportunities and working with actors from various social sectors – such as training institutions, teachers unions, and the ministry of education – Costa Rica can work to raise the status of the teaching profession.
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