The major requirements for effective cohort professional development are that it be useful and relevant to classroom teaching, and conducted within an overall teacher development framework specifying the knowledge and competencies teachers are expected to acquire. As noted in this chapter’s introduction, to ensure high-quality training, professional development should be quality assured. Training providers should be accredited. They should have systems in place to test teachers’ knowledge and competence following professional development, and to certify what new competencies teachers have attained.62
Qualifications: Preparing teachers with useful training and experience
There is consensus in the education research literature on what effective professional development delivered to a cohort of teachers should be like.* The Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review (ODE, 2015, pp. 45–47) cites some commonly referenced statements about this. Effective professional development must end up in classroom implementation and be characterised by:
> content focus
> opportunities for active learning
> post-training modelling in a school or cluster
> follow-up and feedback on participants’ teaching—in schools > collaborative examination of student work.63
Follow-up is critical. Content learned in settings disconnected from the classroom is hard to implement and the school environment may not support the teacher returning from training unless school take-up is integrated into the training system.64
Standards: setting clear expectations for teachers about student learning and teaching practice One policy area that most influences professional development is teacher standards, which tell teachers what is expected of them and what ‘good teaching’ behaviours look like.65 Teacher standards make it possible to organise a performance assessment system. This is important because performance appraisal is an incentive for teachers. Standards-based appraisal enables principals and educational authorities to identify performance that professional development can improve. This facilitates efficient allocation of resources to meet needs across student learning requirements.
Features of quality cohort professional development practice
This section provides an overview of DFAT’s professional development policy experience that supplements the SABER teacher domain ‘Preparing teachers with useful training and experience’, as well as ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review. DFAT’s professional development approaches include many good policy and practice features. This is the most common type of DFAT teacher development assistance, and so the department has developed a repository of practical knowledge about what is useful, including the topics outlined here.
* See, for example, the summary of Hawley and Valli’s (1999), ‘Design principles of high-quality professional learning for teachers’ in the Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review (ODE, 2015, p. 46).
Training integrated with system priorities
Large systemic purposes, such as curriculum change, can motivate education leaders, administrators, principals and teachers to accept and support training and learning. This enables mandated change to be successfully adopted (Kiribati Education Improvement Program—KEIP).
Training as a school-owned and school-led process of change
Mass train-the-trainer programs are often criticised for diluted and de-contextualised messages and classroom disconnect (BEQUAL in Laos; VESP in Vanuatu). Effective professional
development uses decentralised mechanisms, which include post-training modelling sessions in the school or school cluster, and is consistent with the quality of initial training.
Online training needs to be supported at school level if learning is to be effective and sustainable. Participants in professional development for improving teaching should include principals and local education officers, especially supervisors, so new practices can be
technically supported at school level. Besides helping teachers translate training into practice, this is an opportunity for all school staff to benefit. It also facilitates whole-school change in line with targeted reform.
Collaborative development of content focus
DFAT has many examples of collaboratively developing appropriate content, including with: > teachers, curriculum officers and advanced skills teachers (Nauru Improved Education
Program; Fiji Access to Quality Education)
> representatives of Disabled People’s Organisations (KEIP; Samoa Education Sector Program) > leaders of indigenous communities (Philippines Strengthening Muslim and Indigenous
Peoples Education)
> local community leaders (Pakistan Education Development Improvement Program—EDIP).66 Adequate materials and teacher guides
Training materials and teacher guides must be available to teachers while they are being trained (Pakistan’s EDIP) and in a form usable for trying out in classrooms.
Supporting and embedding change
Classroom implementation of what was learned in training needs to be systematically monitored and evaluated through teacher observation (Afghanistan, Empowerment through Education). DFAT program managers have most commonly attributed their disappointment with teacher investment outcomes to insufficient monitoring and classroom follow-up by education officials (Laos, Pakistan and Samoa).
Training needs to be progressive. Teachers need ongoing training to develop a deep enough understanding to transform how they teach; for example, to change pedagogy from rote to outcomes-based approaches. This is well supported by research67 and confirmed by DFAT’s experience.
The [second] thing that I did like … is the cycle of training. It might not be new to others but I think for us at that time it was new. Many programs have one-off training of trainers etc., which is less effective, in my view. I think it’s important that the training is done in cycles and over the life of the project or the program.
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The need for time to embed changed practices was echoed in interviews with program staff and government partners in Bangladesh, Fiji and Indonesia, with each system seeking to fundamentally change how teachers teach.
The paradigm shift takes a long time. You cannot expect a good outcome immediately. We have completed only one cohort. I think the attitude of students when we measure is quite positive. It is difficult for teachers to implement the new methods when they return to their schools due to shyness and not believing some of what is taught in the Diploma course. But I believe once there are two or three teachers who are Diploma graduates, the total environment will change.
Bangladesh UNICEF Technical Assistance to Third Primary Education Development Program (PEDP 3), Interview 3, Program staff
Rukmini Bhattarai is a Grade 1 teacher at the Shree Sahara Bal Primary School, Pokhara, Nepal. Photo: Jim Holmes for DFAT.