Recalibrating Careers in Academia: Professional advancement policies and practices in Asia-Pacific

11 Apr 2017

Teachers are at the centre of quality higher education systems. This understanding is part of the international community’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals introduced in September 2015. Goal four is known as SDG4 – Education 2030 which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This bold vision requires high quality teachers using learner-centered, active and collaborative pedagogical approaches. To meet this need, we must first explore how to effectively train, hire and promote the next generation of scholars, including key dimensions outlined in UNESCO’s Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel (1997). Twenty years has passed and we struggle to effectively balance the core functions of higher education – teaching, research and service.

To address this challenge, UNESCO Bangkok and experts from the Education Research Institutes Network (ERI-Net) launched a two-year project to assess professional advancement policies and practices of higher education teaching personnel in Asia and the Pacific. One of the outcomes of the project is this collection of case studies on academic promotion. Recalibrating Careers in Academia collects promising practices and assesses emerging challenges in how higher education teaching personnel are recruited, evaluated and promoted in Asia and the Pacific. Further, it presents important issues that are fundamental to UNESCO’s mandate, including to promote gender equality and address concerns of teaching personnel with disabilities as well as the fair treatment of part-time staff and other potentially vulnerable people. We welcome your feedback on how we can achieve SDG4 and build on the vision of the 1997 Recommendation: eisd.bgk@unesco.org.

Recalibrating Careers in Academia: Professional advancement policies and practices in Asia-Pacific
Bangkok: UNESCO Bangkok, 402 p.

ISBN: 978-92-9223-573-4 (print version)
ISBN: 978-92-9223-574-1 (electronic version)