Queen Rania Teacher Academy launches 2022 Forum

AMMAN — The Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA) kicked off its 2022 forum on Sunday, under the theme of “Building Forward Better: Transforming Schools of Today". 

Held virtually over two days, the QRTA Forum offers a platform for educators to explore, learn, and share experiences with a renowned host of international educators and researchers.

This year, the QRTA forum aims to tackle school transformations at the grassroots level, covering policies, curricula, student and teacher affairs, and classroom structures. Its primary objective is to highlight the challenges facing today’s school systems, and come up with plans to improve them, QRTA announced on its website.

The series of panel discussions, led by 42 speakers from reputable global educational institutions across 18 countries, also aims to equip participating teachers with the necessary tools to improve current school systems. 

Each panel discussion will showcase field expert studies, success stories, and recommendations to help set new, attainable goals for education, as well as identify new roles for those leading this transformation.

This year, more than 27,000 participants from 85 countries registered for the event and for the pre forum workshops, including 9,000 Jordanians whom registered for day one and day two of the forum.

The two-day forum comprises several sessions that cover an array of topics, such as the impact of climate change on education, fostering psychosocial wellbeing through literacy, and the role of innovative school leadership. 

A group of facilitators have also organised pre-forum workshops that will delve into technology, design thinking, psychosocial wellbeing, transformational leadership, and the importance of professional learning communities.

In his opening remarks, QRTA CEO Osama Obeidat stated that “the continuous changes noticed nowadays, especially during and after the COVID pandemic, resulted in having a prospective vision to the educational systems needed for the future, and how to speed up the transformation in the various elements of the educational system especially teachers and what has to do with helping them gain new skills and competencies to provide appropriate response towards the demands and tasks they have to perform". 

He emphasised that the forum this year is entitled “Building Forward Better: Transforming Schools of Today” as the need these days is related to building for the future and not focusing our energy in going back to how things were before the pandemic.

Nuno Crato, Portugal’s former Minister of Education and Science and keynote speaker at this year’s QRTA Forum, during a session entitled “Schools to Build the Future,” stated, that “in order to reverse the damage the pandemic has done to education, we must pay attention to the fundamentals, build coherent and ambitious curricula, look for clear learning goals, provide teachers with a clear structure, structure teaching… and improve quality by supporting all students.”