The Global Teachers Institute (GTI) is a teacher development platform working to produce high quality global teachers for South Africa's classrooms through mentorship and school based initial teacher education models. International research shows that teacher quality is the most significant factor affecting educational outcomes. However, training programs often misinterpret this by overemphasizing
skills and content, while overlooking the more personal dimensions that facilitate effective teaching. This creates teachers skilled in conveying content, but lacking the reflective capacity to understand the deeper purpose of their work. To solve educational inequality, the GTI believes that teachers must not only focus on instructional practice and skills acquisition, but also on facilitating personal transformation and setting a deeper meaning for their work. In response, the GTI aims to empower student teachers, current faculty, school leaders, and education organizations globally by refocusing teacher training and professional development on ideas of consciousness development and social change. To accomplish this, the GTI integrates skills-based training with material specifically emphasizing personal awareness, student emotional needs, and social responsibility. We aim to create educators who:
·Believe in open, honest engagement and having difficult conversations about the broader context of educational work.
·Prioritize self-awareness and self-reflection
·Confront their personal beliefs about learning, culture, and achievement and consider the moral and political questions that are enmeshed within education
·Frame their teaching practice through these reflections and understand its influence on their work.
