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The learning event organised by the Education International Asia-Pacific (EIAP) office on teacher-led learning circles for formative assessment (T3LFA) aimed to take stock of progress and learning since project completion, identify successes, challenges, and gaps, co-create a roadmap for continued commitment to professional development and strengthen union advocacy for sustainable change and empowerment.

The T3LFA project aims to provide teachers with tools and support to identify and establish effective teacher-led formative assessment practices that can be disseminated within and across education unions. Led by EI with funding from the Jacobs Foundation, it started in 2023 and will operate until 2026 across classroom, national, and international contexts. It is being developed in seven countries, with the support of Education International member organizations – in Asia-Pacific, Malaysia with the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) and South Korea with the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU).

The T3LFA project, a “natural sister” to the Go Public! Fund Education campaign

Opening the meeting held from October 25th-26th, 2025, in Seoul, South Korea, EIAP Regional Director Anand Singh reminded participants of EI’s strategic work areas, i.e. 4 Ps: People, Public, Profession and Planet. “While this workshop sits in the professional quadrant, we must not forget the importance of the other three,” he said.

He was also adamant that “this project has put teacher and pedagogical activism at the heart of the AP region’s work. It is a natural sister to EI’s Go Public! Fund Education campaign, stressing the importance for unions to control the pay, conditions and funding message, but also to lead on professional issues too. We hope our unions will continue to progress this work, as they clearly are in Korea and Malaysia, and that we will continue to press governments to support teacher unions to lead professional learning.”

KTU: “When the teacher learns, students grow”

Taking the floor after Mr. Singh, KTU President Younghwan Park spoke of the importance of this work for teachers. Mr. Park spoke about the significance of the T3LFA work which, echoing Go Public!, stresses the importance of professionalism and teacher leadership to union work. “When the teacher learns, students grow,” he acknowledged, adding that “formative assessment was crucial to Korean teachers and this project had put them back where they need to be, as leaders of learning.”

The KTU President and the NUTP Treasurer talked about the things they most wanted the minister of Education to change. For NUTP, it was the growth of administrative tasks for teachers, while, for KTU, it was the inability of teachers to play a political role in society, which has been banned by law for 63 years.

TALIS 2024: Teachers’ professional learning and development is crucial

EI’s coordinator Martin Henry then presented the TALIS 2024 report’s findings, underlining the importance of this model of Professional Learning and Development for teachers. He specifically noted that the TALIS report points out that collegial approaches that include teacher leadership are crucial to both retaining teachers and improving learning.

He also welcomed the focus on teacher wellbeing in this report. On average, around one in five (19%) of teachers report experiencing stress “a lot” in their work. In terms of health, 10% of teachers say their job negatively impacts their mental health “a lot”, while 8% report that it negatively impacts their physical health “a lot”. In many education systems, teachers report growing negative impacts of their jobs on mental and physical health, M. Henry said.

Voices from the classroom

The diverse sessions allowed teachers to share experiences.

Dave gave a presentation on how to use AI to analyse the assessment, showing how teachers use AI more than unionists do. As he is a deputy principal, he got his whole school engaged with T3LFA, making it a sustainable project.

Elangoh explained how he used an evidence-based approach, including video evidence, to drive his students' learning in physical education.

Heman said that he adjusted T3LFA to fit his students. His entrance and exit strategy included using tickets to drive student learning. This helped him decide when he needed to revisit particular topics. They integrate formative assessment into the lesson so that is not burdensome.

With another participant, focus was put on students with special needs.

A Korean teacher also talked about the growth of the T3LFA project which was presented at the national evaluation conference.

Another teacher centered his presentation around the importance of leadership for the teachers involved and how they were able to lead change in their schools. The change to formative assessment from summative assessment which was inherited from the Japanese has taken several years to get implemented.

Talking about the importance of students self-assessing too, a teacher also said that assessment rubrics were used to drive the learning.

A participant, now a supervisor of several schools in the Korean Jeonbuk province, reported how, with colleagues, they are working on recruiting novice teachers and how the new superintendent is moving back to summative assessment.

The teacher-led learning circles for formative assessment in Asia-Pacific are more than just a professional development initiative – they are a testament to the power of collective action and pedagogical activism. As unions like KTU and NUTP champion the cause, they remind us that when teachers are empowered to lead, students thrive, and education systems evolve for the better. The T3LFA project, complementary to the Go Public! Fund Education campaign, places teachers at the heart of change, advocating not only for improved pay and conditions but also for professional autonomy and leadership.

You can also read the blog by Seongryang Lee, A facilitator’s perspectives on Teacher-led Learning Circles on Formative Assessment.

And you can learn more about the T3LFA initiative by visiting our dedicated webpage.