Governments, schools, and educators face significant pressure to play an integral role in building a generation of young people who are able to participate actively and contribute meaningfully to their communities and to a rapidly changing global world. The contributors in this edition of Education Brief attempt to address an urgent question shared by contemporary education thinkers, practitioners, and policymakers:

How do we know whether the education system is effectively preparing students with 21st-century skills, and what changes within the system, whether in terms of inputs, processes, or policy frameworks, are necessary to produce the desired outcomes?

Together, the four authors featured in this edition bring three perspectives to help answer this question.

First, they offer a qualification perspective, exploring the historical and political contexts past and present that shape the paradigms underlying our understanding of the education profession and educator qualifications. The authors examine the demands of our time to, in the words of Iwan Syahril, reimagine prevailing views of the teaching profession and the responsibilities carried by educators.