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Developing sustainable and scalable educational initiatives is a key challenge in low-income countries where donor-funded short-term projects are limited by both contextual factors and programme design. In this concept paper we examine some of the issues related to in-service teacher development in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, grounded predominantly in our experiences of over 5 years of iteratively developing, refining and evaluating an intensive school-based professional learning...

This study intends to present a bespoke teacher professional development MOOC designed by Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team that allows MOOCs to become a viable means offering cost-effective, quality professional teacher development. TESSA is a network of teachers and teacher educators, working to improve classroom teaching in Africa. TESSA MOOC is an innovative approach to capacity building for teacher educators and teachers across Africa. The study presents outputs of...

Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has become a major policy priority within education systems worldwide. But keeping teachers professionally up-to-date and providing them professional development opportunities on continuing basis is a big challenge. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can be a cost and resource effective means to complement the traditional methods of professional development of teachers. This optimism is based on the assumption that use of MOOCs will facilitate mass...

This systematic review explores the impact of teacher professional development (PD) on student reading achievement. The first part of the literature evaluates all available existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses of PD intervention studies. No quality reviews of PD and reading specifically (distinct from ‘attainment’) were found. There was a little overlap of studies in existing reviews. The second part of the systematic review focuses on the most recent intervention studies exploring...

The prevalence and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in education has often been guided by utopian perspectives without proper research to understand the schooling context and teachers’ ICT development needs. This paper reports on the findings from a study of in-service teachers who are members of a teachers’ union in South Africa. These teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire based on Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES), which is an...

The prevalence and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in education has often been guided by utopian perspectives without proper research to understand the schooling context and teachers’ ICT development needs. This paper reports on the findings from a study of in-service teachers who are members of a teachers’ union in South Africa. These teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire based on Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES), which is an...

Several rigorously evaluated programs have recently shown positive effects on early literacy and numeracy outcomes in developing countries. However, these programs have not been designed to evaluate which ingredients of the interventions are most essential to improve literacy outcomes. Policy makers therefore lack evidence as to whether program ingredients such as teacher professional development (PD), instructional coaching, learner materials, teachers’ guides, community support, or...

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 65.6 million people are forcibly displaced, having either crossed national borders or become internally displaced within their own countries. Of this estimate, over 22.5 million are refugees. Over half of the world's refugees are children. With an average length of displacement of approximately 20 years, the majority of these children will spend their entire childhoods away from home. Refugee children have limited...

Teacher coaching has emerged as a promising alternative to traditional models of professional development. We review the empirical literature on teacher coaching and conduct meta-analyses to estimate the mean effect of coaching programs on teachers’ instructional practice and students’ academic achievement. Combining results across 60 studies that employ causal research designs, we find pooled effect sizes of 0.49 standard deviations (SD) on instruction and 0.18 SD on achievement. Much of...

This report captures what might be learnt from a selection of the world’s most interesting examples of technology-assisted in-service professional development in lower-income countries and from wider reflections about the potential of technology to enhance the professional learning of teachers.

Teacher education in Sub Saharan Africa has been highlighted as key in helping to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education across the continent. Digital technologies that support new modes of teacher education can improve access and quality in developing regions (Moon and Villet, 2017a, b; Moon, 2007; Power, 2013), however little is known about how teachers develop digital literacies to enable them to effectively use these new resources, nor the ways in which student teachers are...

Teacher education in Sub Saharan Africa has been highlighted as key in helping to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education across the continent. Digital technologies that support new modes of teacher education can improve access and quality in developing regions (Moon and Villet, 2017a, b; Moon, 2007; Power, 2013), however little is known about how teachers develop digital literacies to enable them to effectively use these new resources, nor the ways in which student teachers are...

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have developed into a significant international movement, showing great promise in addressing equity, quality, and efficiency issues in global education. To date, many MOOCs have been developed specifically for teacher professional development (TPD). In this regard, an important empirical question remains to be addressed: How and to what extent can MOOCs support equity, quality, and efficiency in teacher professional development? To help fill this...

Several influential reviews and one meta-review have converged on the position that teacher professional development (PD) is more effective when it is: sustained, collaborative, subject-specific, draws on external expertise, has buy-in from teachers and is practice-based. This consensus view has now been incorporated in government policy and official guidance in several countries. Despite this, several recent PD programmes incorporating these characteristics have failed to have any...

This qualitative in-depth interview study investigated the experiences of Pakistani English teachers in an online community, English Companion Ning (ECN). The main purpose of the study was to investigate what ECN meant to these Pakistani teachers and how they found their professional learning experiences different in ECN from face-to-face professional development programs in Pakistan. Data were gathered from six teachers through in-depth interviews, guided tours, field notes, memos, and ECN...

This qualitative in-depth interview study investigated the experiences of Pakistani English teachers in an online community, English Companion Ning (ECN). The main purpose of the study was to investigate what ECN meant to these Pakistani teachers and how they found their professional learning experiences different in ECN from face-to-face professional development programs in Pakistan. Data were gathered from six teachers through in-depth interviews, guided tours, field notes, memos, and ECN...

This qualitative in-depth interview study investigated the experiences of Pakistani English teachers in an online community, English Companion Ning (ECN). The main purpose of the study was to investigate what ECN meant to these Pakistani teachers and how they found their professional learning experiences different in ECN from face-to-face professional development programs in Pakistan. Data were gathered from six teachers through in-depth interviews, guided tours, field notes, memos, and ECN...

The prevalence and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in education has often been guided by utopian perspectives without proper research to understand the schooling context and teachers’ ICT development needs. This paper reports on the findings from a study of in-service teachers who are members of a teachers’ union in South Africa. These teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire based on Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES), which is an...

The purpose of this research is to identify the specific skills required of videoconference teachers who teach K–12 distance education courses. Many schools and educational districts worldwide are using videoconference technology to deliver courses to students as an economic solution when they cannot afford specialised teachers at remote locations. However, teachers are rarely trained to use this instructional technology and must therefore translate their experience in face-to-face and/or...