Educators and policymakers worldwide are reimagining teacher preparation through the lens of the science of learning and development (SoLD). This blog series, based on insights from EdPrepLab’s World Café webinars, highlights global strategies for aligning teaching practices with what we know about how students learn best.

Around the world, policymakers and teacher educators are rethinking how to prepare teachers to support student learning in ways that prepare all young people for a complex and rapidly changing world—drawing on the growing body of research grounded in the science of learning and development (SoLD).

In addition to what students need to learn, we now know more than ever about how students learn—evidence that can inform not only how teachers teach, but how teacher preparation programs are structured. Thanks to a large, cross-disciplinary body of research and evidence known as the science of learning and development (SoLD), we know that emotions, relationships, feelings of belonging, school and classroom climate, and students’ cultural and community backgrounds all impact learning. Evidence shows that the brain continues to develop throughout life as a product of these influences, thus shaping the skills and characteristics of students. You can read more about SoLD principles in this blog.

Coherent and intentionally designed policies can drive improvements in teacher preparation practices in order to align them with the growing body of SoLD research. Informed policies can address many aspects of teacher preparation through levers like standards, program evaluation and accreditation, clinical experience requirements, high-quality mentoring, strategic partnerships, performance assessments, and compensation for student teachers. Coordinated policies at the national, provincial or state, school district, and university levels can work in tandem to create conditions that enable effective implementation of SoLD-based practices.

Through EdPrepLab’s World Café series, participants from different nations shared promising policies that are supporting practices and conditions to do just this. Following are a few examples of such strategies. 

Shape a Collective Vision of Teaching that Incorporates SoLD

• The National Council of Education in Portugal recently approved recommendations regarding the core elements of the teaching profession that incorporate many SoLD principles, including the ethical, intellectual, relational, technical, social, and cultural dimensions of teaching.
• Jamaica is embarking on a similar reform of its national teacher education curriculum, which will include SoLD principles.
• Several states in the United States have incorporated a robust framework or teaching standards for culturally responsive and sustaining practices and other aspects of SoLD.

Ensure Equitable Resources, Opportunities, and Inclusion for Marginalized Groups

• New Zealand’s 1840 Treaty of Waitangi is a founding document that established British sovereignty while also guaranteeing certain rights and protections to Māori. The treaty, which requires school curricula to include instruction of Māori language and culture, has implications for teacher preparation programs. It means that, in New Zealand, all teachers learn not only Māori language and culture, but how to be responsive to Pacific and Māori learners’ needs. New Zealand doubled down on the treaty’s principles with the Education and Training Act in 2020, which helped solidify the promises of the original treaty.
• Scotland, where the population is overwhelmingly White, passed the Gaelic Language Act in 2005 and the Scottish Languages Act in 2025 to address Scotland’s history of intentional Anglicization that aimed to eradicate the Gaelic language and traditional communities and culture. The law requires the Scottish government to develop a National Gaelic Language Plan every 5 years that sets out goals related to promoting and facilitating the use of Gaelic. In addition, the Scottish teaching standards require teachers to not only respect and support all learners but, specifically, to incorporate Gaelic medium in curriculum and to understand Gaelic culture and ethos.

Other policy strategies used around the world include supporting teacher preparation partnerships, providing compensation for student teachers to remove some of the cost burden of preparation, establishing curriculum guidelines that respect local contexts, ensuring continuity between preservice and early-career induction, creating incentives and opportunities for later career advancement, emphasizing inquiry and action research in teacher preparation, and implementing SoLD-aligned approaches. 

Through the World Cafés it became clear that teacher educators around the world, across different nations and cultures, are experiencing common challenges and agree on foundational principles of teaching and learning based in SoLD. What differs is the context, which can define what is possible and how. 

Teacher educators, education leaders, and policymakers must work together to introduce and maintain intentional and thoughtful policies that preserve the integrity of teacher preparation and survive shifting political and socioeconomic contexts. These challenging times call for an international network of leaders to engage in advocacy for SoLD-aligned changes with students at the center.

Cathy Yun is Deputy Director of EdPrepLab and Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute.