Happy World Teachers’ Day!

World Teachers’ Day is held annually on 5 October to celebrate all teachers around the globe.  It commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, which sets benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers, and standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions. The Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel was adopted in 1997 to complement the 1966 Recommendation by covering teaching personnel in higher education. World Teachers’ Day has been celebrated since 1994.

It is a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education but also to reflect on the support they need to fully deploy their talent and vocation, and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally.

UNESCO

Celebrating World Teachers’ Day at Queen’s

To mark the celebration of the World Teachers’ Day, we would like to invite you to attend the dedicated QUB Intercultural Forum, jointly supported by The Language Centre and the BAME & International Staff Network, with two language teachers’ experiences of their personal and professional development through interacting with Chinese students in different contexts.

About the speakers

Liane Sandrey is an English Language teacher at Queen’s University Belfast, offering support to Chinese students in the School of Pharmacy’s programme in Shenyang, China. She has extensive experience working with international students in Japan, Poland, The UK, New Zealand, The United Arab Emirates and China. She has spent the last 20 years teaching and developing language support programmes in higher education. She loves travelling, meeting new people and experiencing new cultures.

Pengjuan ZOU works in Shandong Polytechnic as both a TESOL teacher and a TCSOL teacher. Her teaching courses and research field involve English spoken language teaching, ESP teaching in Mechatronics and Urban Transit, Mandarin teaching, pedagogies applied in college English teaching in China, comparisons on pedagogies between teaching English to Chinese students and teaching Chinese to international students, analysis of common difficulties in learning foreign languages from both Chinese students’ English learning and international students’ Chinese learning.

Call for participation

We warmly welcome QUB staff members and students to attend and share your experience in the open and follow-up discussions. If you have any ideas or questions to raise in advance, please leave your messages in the reply box below and we will forward them to our speakers beforehand.

Watch the forum

Related reading

• Teaching and learning in a private university in China – the case of Shanghai Sanda University (Yanqi LU 陆炎奇 and Zishun YUAN 袁子顺)
• Thoughts on Teachers’ Day (Dr Hui MA 马辉 博士)
• Supporting international students – an intercultural perspective (Dr Aisling O’BOYLE 艾诗琳博士 and Dr Xuezi HAN 韩雪子 博士)
• Writing a post-graduate research project: Issues arising from Chinese students (2021, 2020) (Dr Ibrar Bhatt 巴亿博 博士)
• ‘Out of the Comfort Zone’ – Experiences Working in China Queens’ College (Dr Dan Corbett 柯百丹 博士)