Teacher Professional Development around the World : The Gap between Evidence and Practice
Teachers, like all professionals, require ongoing professional development opportunities to improve their skills. This paper provides evidence on effective professional development characteristics and how at-scale programs incorporate those charact...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/349051535637296801/Teacher-Professional-Development-around-the-World-The-Gap-between-Evidence-and-Practice http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30324 |
| Summary: | Teachers, like all professionals,
require ongoing professional development opportunities to
improve their skills. This paper provides evidence on
effective professional development characteristics and how
at-scale programs incorporate those characteristics. The
authors propose a standard set of 70 indicators—the
In-Service Teacher Training Survey Instrument—for reporting
on professional development programs as a prerequisite for
understanding the characteristics of those programs that
improve student learning. The authors apply the instrument
to rigorously evaluated professional development programs in
low- and middle-income countries. Across 33 programs, those
programs that link participation to career incentives, have
a specific subject focus, incorporate lesson enactment in
the training, and include initial face-to-face training tend
to show higher student learning gains. In qualitative
interviews, program implementers also report follow-up
visits as among the most effective characteristics of their
professional development programs. The authors then apply
the instruments to a sample of 139 government-funded,
at-scale professional development programs across 14
countries. This analysis uncovers a sharp gap between the
characteristics of teacher professional development programs
that evidence suggests are effective and the global
realities of most teacher professional development programs. |
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