SDG4: Quality Education
Teachers throughout Greenland who work in the more isolated settlements, often feel isolated. This solution targets this issue and aims to improve the working conditions of teachers and empower them in their important role. This in return will result in more children being able to finish primary school with adequate grades and continue their studying.
The solution is a dual-faceted hub called Ikaartarfik (meaning Bridge in Greenlandic). It has a physical capacity hub set-up with a small staff located in Nuuk, who act as mentors and coordinators of mentoring and targeted training. They will organize workshop activities aimed at teacher capacity building.
Hub to build teacher capacity throughout Greenland
The coordinators are in communication with local touchpoints at each school throughout Greenland and can assist as needed with advice and problem solving, creating communities of practice and peer mentoring. The staff functions as cultural ambassadors, building and continuing networks and maintaining and organizing the platform’s forum, chat services, and resource accumulation.
This is complemented by a technical aspect, consisting of a platform hosted on an already existing network called Attat which is adapted to Greenlandic bandwidth capacity. Here, teachers can find support in terms of connection to local society contacts, psycho-social issues, content specific training, previously made teaching material, a forum for FAQ’s and lastly a vast peer-to-peer network.
Team 29 presenting their solution
Alleviate teachers’ isolation
If this solution works, it will alleviate the isolation that many teachers feel while operating in the challenging Greenlandic school system. It will improve the working conditions of teachers and empower them in their important role, resulting in more children being able to finish primary school with adequate grades and continue their studying.
In the longer perspective, this will also contribute to lessening the gap and negative spiral for teachers in Greenland and can contribute to improving the high teacher turn-over rate and high-student dropout rate.
