ISJ April 2018: Recruiting international educators in a global teacher shortage – Research for practice

Marcea Ingersoll, Mark Hirschkorn, Jeff Landine and Alan Sears

Introduction

In October of 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pronounced a global teacher shortage of approximately 70 million new teachers. This expected shortage arises from the Sustainable Development Goal of providing every child equitable and inclusive primary and secondary education by the year 2030 (UNESCO, 2017). At the same time, international school organizations such as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) report a growth in the number of IB schools worldwide at 40% over the last 5 years (IBO, 2017), with academics like Bunnell (2011) predicting as many as 10,000 schools offering the IB program by 2020 (compared to 3000 schools in 2010). Seemingly, it is a good time to be a teacher with global intentions, but not such a good time to be the school in those global contexts seeking to find and retain good teachers.