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

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Evidence suggests that teaching quality is positively associated with student learning outcomes[1] and that quality pre-service teacher education and structured, specific, in-service teacher training[2] can have positive impacts on teacher performance. As such, improving teacher preparation and professional development systems have become core objectives for governments and donor agencies as they tackle the global learning crisis. Making improvements in teacher preparation and professional development systems requires navigating a complex political economy which includes interactions and feedback loops between different actors including citizens, multiple executive, legislative and government agencies, education authorities and organizations and education service users.[4] ] In addition, the political, social, cultural, and economic environment in which teachers operate have implications for their performance. Donors and implementors need to balance trade-offs, priorities, and opportunity costs, and those decisions will impact the ability to implement, sustain, and scale teacher preparation and professional development initiatives.[5

In this session, IREX, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and SUMMA, share perspectives and learning from interventions to improve teacher preparation and professional development systems in Jordan, Georgia, and Honduras, with a specific focus on interactions with the wider education ecosystem and political economy, the role of policy reform, and the use of data to ensure responsiveness and adaptation.

• IREX draws on its experience implementing the USAID Pre-Service Teacher Education in Jordan activity to share insights on how creating mechanisms for cross-government coordination and collective review of evidence and data can build trust, drive transparent policy dialogue, and support policy reform that promotes quality pre-service teacher education.
• MCC shares lessons from its Compact in the Republic of Georgia, which was the first to focus exclusively on education and incorporated national-wide in-service teacher and principal professional development into the Government’s new framework for teacher continuous professional development and associated salary scales.
• SUMMA shares findings from a pilot study in Honduras, which addressed the fundamental questions of what structures, practices, competencies, and resources local educators required to enable and support quality learning in teacher professional development at scale. Findings are shared across six dimensions including communication channels, policies and partnerships.
Individual presentations will set the scene for facilitated dialogue to answer the question, how can we best design teacher preparation and professional development systems for resilience, sustainability and scale?

Sub Unit

• Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession SIG

Chair

• Marcel Ricou, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)

Individual Presentations

• Pre-Service Teacher Education and the evolution of Teacher Preparation Policy in Jordan - REBECCA LOUISE Ward, IREX

• Scaling and Adapting Teacher Professional Development Approaches in Honduras - Rosa Maria Moncada, SUMMA; Dante Castillo-Canales, SUMMA - Universidad Diego Portales - Universidad Alberto Hurtado

• Aligning In-service Teacher Professional Development with Government Policy in Georgia - Jenny A Heintz, Millennium Challenge Corporation

Discussant

• Marcel Ricou, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)