Teacher Professional Learning

1. Background to reforming teacher professional learning in Ukraine

Abstract

This opening chapter briefly introduces the goal of this report in the context of the New Ukrainian School reform. It outlines the structure of the report and how it approaches teacher professional learning as a holistic whole – from the initial selection of teachers to the workforce and their preparation, to how they are supported to learn and grow throughout their career as part of a flourishing professional ecosystem.

A system’s approach to pre-service and in-service professional learning has a profound influence on the quality of teaching in its classroom. Moreover, pre- and in-service professional learning are increasingly seen as an inter-connected continuum that, along with the wider career structure, also contribute to creating a rich, rewarding and impactful career as a teacher.

In the 21st century, professional learning is not only about supporting the development of teachers’ knowledge and skills as it may have historically been commonly viewed. Rather, it is increasingly also about nurturing the type of professional identity that can allow teachers – and accordingly their students – to thrive in a complex, ever-changing future. The OECD Teaching Compass captures the breadth of competencies that teachers need going forward, ranging from particular types of knowledge and skills, but also values and attitudes (OECD, 2025[1]). At the same time, the Compass also highlights the centrality of teacher well-being and teacher agency in their work. Indeed, at its core are the three anchors of teachers’ being, belonging and becoming:

• Being: Establishing a solid and evolving sense of self

• Belonging: Building relationships in the classroom and school community

• Becoming: Embracing continuous growth and transformation

It helps point towards emerging challenges but also new opportunities in terms of how systems conceptualise teacher professional learning as a means to supporting the flourishing of students, schools and communities alike.

Background for reforming teacher professional learning in Ukraine

Despite the extremely testing context of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine continues to advance reforms in its education system. The New Ukrainian School (NUS) reform, launched in 2016, aims to make schooling engaging and stimulating by focusing on each student's personal development and their acquisition of key competencies. The Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science’s Strategic Plan to 2027 aims to create a system where all children have a safe, modern learning environment with ample opportunities for self-realisation, and access to high-quality education (Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science, 2024[2]). Focusing initially on primary schools, the reform efforts have steadily expanded in scope and recently concentrated on the transformation of secondary education with the support of the OECD (OECD, 2025[3]).

Teachers have a key role to play in the long-term success and sustainability of the NUS reform. After all, teaching quality is the most important school level variable in determining the success of an education system (OECD, 2019[4]; OECD, 2005[5]). Yet teaching is also very complex (OECD, 2025[6]), and accordingly its mastery demands both quality preparation and ongoing learning – particularly in an era where the demands on classrooms and schools is evolving in step with wider societal transformation.

Ukraine’s teachers have been working through an extraordinarily demanding period due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Their efforts have been nothing short of inspiring. According to data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), between 2018 and 2022, performance in Ukraine’s 18 regions in mathematics fell less than the OECD average, despite the unprecedented disruption to learning (OECD, 2023[7]). Similarly, the OECD’s most recent Survey on Social-Emotional Skills suggests that 15-year-olds in Ukraine feel better at school than in most sites, reflecting the care and attention they receive from their teachers amidst the war (OECD, 2024[8]). Although they report less motivation than the average, Ukrainian 15-year-olds report having felt more confident, less anxious and less angry while at school, compared to almost all other survey locations (OECD, 2024[8]).​

These are reflective of Ukraine’s dedication to building an education system that allows all to flourish. Even in the most challenging of circumstances, Ukraine’s ambition remains unwavering. As part of the NUS reform, Ukraine is now exploring the ways to better recognise and reward teachers throughout their careers, and to re-evaluate the types of supports they need at different stages of their teaching journey.

A vision for teacher professional learning based on international insights and best practice

At the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science’s request, the OECD is supporting the country as it engages in examining its models of teacher professional learning and the surrounding teacher career infrastructure.

Parts of this report were prepared as a background document for a hybrid international peer-learning event in Kyiv, Ukraine on 13-14 May 2025. This was organised by the OECD and EdCamp Ukraine at the request of the Ministry. The event aimed to serve as a spark for inspiring change in how policymaking on teachers’ growth and development is approached. A key goal was to examine teachers’ career structures and professional learning as a holistic whole, spanning the first steps of a teacher’s career to their ongoing professional learning to the wider ecosystem of collective learning. Chile, England (UK), Finland, Ireland, and Singapore, as well as the European Schools Heads Association and European Training Foundation, kindly participated in this peer-learning event and shared their experiences.

Four high level ambitions serve as the spine of the report. Chapter 2 to 5 focus on these four high-level ambitions, taking each ambition one-by-one:

• Each ambition is broken down into three more specific ‘levers’ for change (see Table 1.1).

• Within each of these levers, some of their key design considerations are explored. These design considerations can be viewed as particular decision points for reflection when enacting change.

• With a view to the process of change, each chapter also briefly outlines some implementation considerations for their respective ambition.

Throughout these chapters, a series of illustrations from different national and sub-national systems around the world are included. In the Annexes, more detailed deep-dives into a selection of systems are offered.

Reflection questions are also provided to support school and system leaders – as well as teachers themselves – to reflect on the aforementioned design and implementation considerations. As this paper is orientated around offering a ‘vision’ of professional learning, reflection questions are framed with a view to the future and what could be possible, but they could also be transformed to focus on the present and gauge the current state-of-play.

Chapter 6 then turns to consider more concretely the Ukrainian context and some of the current challenges it faces in terms of teacher professional learning, as well as existing opportunities. Chapter 6 was authored by Liliia Hrynevych, Volodymyr Bozhynskyi, Oleksandr Elkin, Halyna Kovalchuk, Yevhen Nikolaiev, Grygoriy Riy and EdCamp Ukraine NGO. Following these authors’ assessment of the Ukrainian context, the authors present in Chapter 6 – informed also by the aforementioned peer-learning event – some of the potential directions for Ukraine to explore with a view to further strengthening its approach to teacher professional learning.

Table 1.1. Key elements of a vision for teacher professional learning in Ukraine

Ambition	Levers	Key design considerations	Key implementation considerations
1. Build the initial foundations of an effective and meaningful career	Process for selecting candidates for the profession (Attracting and identifying high-quality candidates)	Define the entry requirements to initial teacher education (ITE) Establish the entry requirements to entering the classroom Define pathways into teaching Incentivise and attract candidates	Facilitate buy-in from different stakeholders Co-ordinate across multiple stakeholders Attend to the quality of school-based experiences Dedicate resources for impactful induction Attend to the capacity and needs of teacher educators
	Nature of preparation for the classroom and profession (Preparing teachers for immediate effectiveness and lifelong learning)	Ensure quality in the provision of ITE Develop a coherent body of theory and knowledge Move beyond theory to build an understanding of practice Attend to the wider knowledge, skills, values and attitudes for their career ahead
	Attending to the transition into the classroom and school (Supporting beginning teachers through the most challenging early stages)	Establish induction programmes with coaching and mentoring Align induction as a coherent continuum with professional learning Facilitate feedback loops between schools, ITE providers and stakeholders
2. Develop an infrastructure that incentivises and recognises excellence	A clear and attractive vertical career structure (Rewarding excellence and expertise)	Define stages to be clear, coherent and comprehensible Align with competency frameworks Clarify connections between stages Leverage appropriate financial incentives	Translate existing structures to new structures Communicate changes and build ownership Ensure coherence with ITE and professional learning provision Build coherence with leaders’ career structures Understand the role of cultures
	Opportunities to specialise through horizontal diversification (Recognising the variety of roles of teachers)	Define specialisations Accredit and recognise specialisations Enable and incentivise specialisations
	Trusted evaluation mechanisms (Ensuring fair promotions and identifying development needs)	Protect the role of the ‘external’ in evaluation for certification and promotion Draw upon well-defined, multiple measures Calibrate and audit measures Use formative evaluation for development Facilitate connections between the summative and formative to identify learning needs
3. Facilitate quality, meaningful ongoing learning that enables the profession to grow and face future challenges	Provision of relevant learning opportunities (Responding to needs at the individual, school and system levels)	Establish who are the providers Align provision with needs and competency frameworks	Foster coherence with the foundational content of ITE Develop facilitators’ skills Understand the accompanying needs of school leaders Consider the role of market forces Attend to equality of access to learning opportunities across localities Troubleshoot challenges through pilot programmes
	Delivery of quality learning opportunities (Ensuring impactful learning experiences for teachers)	Support structured communities of learning Utilise coaching and mentoring Enable peer observation and feedback Implement quality assurance
	Incentives to engage in professional learning (Fostering a culture of effective self-regulated engagement)	Balance mandatory and voluntary choices Facilitate the means of participation Recognise and track participation
4. Create an ecosystem for collective learning and sharing to ensure opportunities for excellence for all	A culture of collaborative inquiry within and across schools (Encouraging inquisitive and reflective practitioners)	Promote tangible and specific focusses Delineate clear structures and roles Dedicate resources to support collaboration Create structures for school-to-school collaboration Tap into the role of additional actors	Support leaders Identify ‘early adopters’ Appreciate the time needed for new cultures to embed Attend to potential reform fatigue Celebrate successes
	Developing engagement with research (Nurturing a culture of evidence-informed work)	Supply high-quality, relevant and accessible research Build research engagement skills Create system-supported approaches for research engagement
	Systematising and disseminating knowledge (Ensuring the identification of and learning from best practices)	Capture new knowledge in systematic, coherent ways Curate new emerging knowledge Ensure effective tools for dissemination at scale

References

[1] OECD (2025), “OECD Teaching Compass: Reimagining teachers as agents of curriculum changes”, OECD Education Policy Perspectives, No. 123, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/8297a24a-en.

[3] OECD (2025), Transforming General Upper Secondary Education in Ukraine: Insights from International Experiences, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/7c357ac4-en.

[6] OECD (2025), Unlocking High-Quality Teaching, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f5b82176-en.

[8] OECD (2024), Nurturing Social and Emotional Learning Across the Globe: Findings from the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills 2023, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/32b647d0-en.

[7] OECD (2023), PISA 2022 Database, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/pisa-2022-database.html (accessed on 28 May 2025).

[4] OECD (2019), PISA 2018 Results (Volume I): What Students Know and Can Do, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5f07c754-en.

[5] OECD (2005), Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers, Education and Training Policy, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264018044-en.

[2] Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science (2024), Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Education and Science until 2027.