Foreword and Acknowledgements

The expectations for teachers are high and rising each day. We expect teachers to have a deep understanding of what they teach and to keep up with the rapidly expanding knowledge base to be passionate, compassionate and thoughtful to make learning central and encourage students’ engagement and responsibility to respond effectively to students of different needs, backgrounds and mother tongues, and to promote tolerance and social cohesion to provide continual assessments of students and feedback and to ensure that students feel valued and included and that learning is collaborative. We also expect teachers themselves to collaborate and work in teams, and with other schools and parents, to set common goals, and plan and monitor the attainment of goals collaboratively. And there is more to this: successful learners generally had a teacher who was a mentor and took a real interest in their aspirations, who helped students understand who they are, discover what their passions are and where they can capitalise on their specific strength who taught them how to love to learn and to build effective learning strategies as the foundation for lifelong learning.