Teacher Professional Development Center

• In Event: Partnership for effective and sustainable in-service training practice at-scale

Proposal

As mentioned above, the role of Teacher Professional Development Centre in TEE Project is actual implementation of the project, with MCC-MCA-Georgia providing financial and IREX quality assurance and technical support.

As part of TEE around 15000 teachers, 1900 principals and 1400 school-based facilitators have been trained as well as involved in pre- and post-training professional development activities such as study groups, quarterly meetings and annual conferences. Even though the actual impact of TEE activities on teacher performance is still being explored, extremely positive and country-wide appraisal of the project is voiced unanimously.

With the end of TEE upcoming, intensive sustainability planning has begun. In consultation with IREX as well as MCC/MCA, Project Management Unit (PMU) of TPDC has been actively planning for making TEE activities sustainable beyond the Project. The plan describes TEE areas of effort, proposes future activities, and estimates budgets for continued use of the materials and methods developed and implemented during TEE. The plan intends to propose approaches that will sustain the outcomes of TEE and even expand the reach of materials to include teachers outside the original target population. The initiatives include creating additional resources—science lab activity pack, Web-based Virtual Labs, online teacher training courses, which will provide the first time opportunity for Georgian teachers to undergo professional development in an online mode. Adopting webinars and academic platforms, such as Edmodo, is another convenient and cost-free method to offer further networking and professional development opportunity to the target audiences that has also been actively explored within TEE. Additionally, Principal and Teacher Associations have also been identified as important stakeholders who should contribute to the process of making TEE outcomes lasting. To this end, grant competitions have been announced to support these organizations with conducting study groups, quarterly meetings, conferences, and publishing quarterly principal magazines.

Sustainability efforts are aimed at in-service as well as pre-service teacher support. Thus, intensive communication, consultation, resource and experience sharing and transfer from TEE to interested Higher Education (HE) Institutions is planned.

The sustainability of TEE is further supported by the design of the Project itself. Initial planning of the Project was conducted in close cooperation among and involvement of multiple important stakeholders in the field of education in Georgia. As a result, certain mechanisms that were put in place then will have their impact post-compact as well.

Author

• Nino Maisuradze, National Center for Teacher Professional Development