BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Submission Summary

Scaling effective teacher professional development in low-and middle-income countries:Choosing the right model, identifying scalability, and fitting the model to the location

Sun, March 29, 9:45 to 11:00am, Hilton, Floor: Fourth Floor - Tower 3, Union Square 5&6

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel will share ongoing research conducted on scaling the impact of teacher professional development (TPD) innovations in low- and middle-income countries. The topic is crucial because it is now well established that sustainable education improvement cannot happen anywhere without supporting educators to teach differently. Whether it is learning new instructional methods, working with digital applications in one form or another, more fully integrating equity and inclusion considerations into everyday practices, connecting schools with families and communities, or increasing professional agency or leadership, most education improvement efforts in schools require some form of in-service teacher training or TPD (proposing author, 2023). Myriad models for TPD currently exist, from in-person trainings and ongoing coaching or observation to hybrid or cascade models of experts delivering development for groups of teachers, from practitioner research inside classrooms to online trainings and ICT-based teacher knowledge-sharing networks.    

But not every TPD approach is effective (Popova, et al 2022) and not even are the most effective models appropriate for every context or funding point (Olsen and Wyss, 2022). Therefore, education teams and program implementers must develop or find the model that will work best for them. Given the popularity of “education transfer”—the practice of finding appropriate, proven models and reforms in other locations and importing them to a new location (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004)—searching for the right model frequently becomes a key early part of the scaling process. This additionally includes adapting (or “contextualizing”) the existing model for the unique features of the location and evaluating the scalability of the model. Considering scalability factors can be a particularly challenging process, as many effective TPD models require more time, resources, or commitment than can be afforded at large scale or when incorporated into an existing education system. Understanding what is core to the model’s effectiveness, what can be adapted or sacrificed, and what tradeoffs are worth making when it comes to the delivery format (i.e., online, hybrid, in-person, etc.), the cost, and ongoing support are all crucial scaling decisions.

To illuminate these facets of the behind-the-scenes work that occurs before and during scaling TPD in education, this panel brings together representatives from research teams pursuing different ways to develop, refine, and scale the best TPD model for their purposes. All teams are part of an ongoing global scaling research project that organizes and supports 40 scaling teams around the world.

The session will begin with an overview presentation of the interconnected topics of teacher development, scaling, the work of fitting a promising TPD model into the features of a location, and the role of conducting research to support this work. Then, by discussing their methodologies for developing, choosing and contextualizing their TPD and sharing what they have learned, the three research team presentations will deepen and broaden understandings of scaling TPD and highlight both context-specific features and generalizable lessons learned. Attention will also be given to specific scaling challenges that arose and how teams addressed them, learned from them, and documented the adaptive nature of scaling in the research.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations