Aligning In-service Teacher Professional Development with Government Policy in Georgia

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Designing Teacher Preparation and Professional Development Systems for Resilience, Sustainability and Scale: The Role of Policy Alignment and Reform.

Proposal

In 2013, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) signed its second compact with Georgia ($140 million), which was MCC’s compact to focus exclusively on education. To address the identified constraint of a lack of an adequately trained workforce to meet labor demands, MCC and Georgia designed a project under the Compact that aimed at improving the quality of general education through in-service training for educators and school directors among a wider set of education reforms and improving school infrastructure. [1] The objectives of the Training Educators for Excellence (TEE) Activity were to: (1) improve math, science, ICT, and English teaching in order to improve learning in grades 7-12; and (2) improve school management. To accomplish these objectives, the activity offered training to all 2,085 public school principals in Georgia, at least one school professional development facilitator per school, and all 18,750 secondary school STEM, geography, and English teachers in the country. Notably, for the first time in Georgia’s history, through the TEE Activity, ethnic minority teachers and principals received trainings in minority languages (Armenian, Russian, and Azerbaijani) that were identical in content and format to the trainings that Georgian-speaking educators received, delivered by minority language-speaking trainers. [2]
At the time of Compact development, though separate to it, the GoG had established a framework for continuous professional development (CPD) of teachers, including associated adjustments to compensation, in an attempt to incentivize teacher performance and certification. The government entity responsible for teacher professional development, the Teachers’ Professional Development Centre (TPDC), was charged with implementation of this framework, and needed support to transition from exclusively providing certification-oriented short-term, subject matter-focused trainings to facilitating continuous professional development.[3] While the operationalization of the CPD framework was not the initial intent of the activity, a decision was made with the Government of Georgia (GoG) to implement the TEE Activity through TPDC, under the purview of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport, to ensure full integration into the policy framework.[4] By the end of the compact, approximately 18,000 teachers participated in compact trainings, nearly 12,000 of whom completed the full program and received a certificate. Over 2,000 principals and another 2,100 school-based professional development facilitators completed at least one course in the training program. The training modules were subsequently integrated into the GoG’s continuous teacher professional development system, which provides salary and career incentives to encourage teachers to pursue professional development.
Drawing on data from the interim and final evaluations, this session shares insights and lessons learned, including:
• The importance of integrating training activities into the GoG’s own teacher professional development system and building the capacity of TPDC staff to manage the system after the compact.
• When implementing through a government entity, be realistic about what institutional change is achievable during the compact term and adapt the scope and support to existing capacity.
• Institutionalizing operations through building government capacity and reforming policy requires significant resources, local champions, government commitment, and adequate implementing entity capacity.[5]

Author

• Jenny A Heintz, Millennium Challenge Corporation