The teacher in the global 2030 Agenda: Importance, role and professional development

The paper looks at the questions of the position of teachers and the teaching profession and the way they are viewed in the United Nations global program The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In addition to the Agenda, supporting program documents created on the basis of the Agenda are also analyzed. The focus is on the questions of the teacher's importance and roles and his/her professional development, as well as the particular areas and competencies that the teacher is expected to master. The paper also looks at the discursive features of The 2030 Agenda and the way in which they affect the view of the teacher's role, and remarks on the great discrepancy between the rhetoric of the main actor - the United Nations and UNESCO - and the implementation of what is promised in the principal program documents. The final section of the paper analyzes recent trends shaping the implementation of the Agenda and slowing down the achievement of the defined goals, and notes the tendency for diminishing, and even seriously threatening, the position of teachers in the education system.