The aim of the Regional Strategy on Teacher Policies from the Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago) is to produce and disseminate specialized knowledge to contribute to the formulation of policies on the teaching profession in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The first phase of the Strategy (2011 and 2012) involved producing a state-of-the-art study on teacher policies in the region and a series of criteria and guidelines for policy-making. The drafting process for that document and the teacher policy guidelines revealed four key areas: initial education; service training and professional development; teaching career and working conditions; and institutions and processes of teacher policies. The second phase of the Strategic Regional Project (2012-2013) has included an in-depth exploration of specific relevant themes in each of the four key areas. These are the crucial issues that generated additional discussions or questions during the previous phase, and that were felt to require further exploration with a two-fold purpose: more specialized and in-depth focus, as well as comparisons with international first-world experiences. With this in mind, a request was made for working documents to provide diagnostics based on systematized regional information (as well as comparative evidence from the first world), to contribute up-to-date and wide-ranging information for the analysis of issues critical to the design and implementation of public policies on the teaching profession. A group of renowned regional experts was gathered together for this purpose. In accordance with the aim for this stage, the experts analysed the core issues in each area, as well as the technical, academic and political debates that had been generated as a result. On the basis of a study of the strategies and practices deemed effective, each study produced public policy guidelines for that area that were judged as having implementation potential in the region.