Teacher Professional Development at Scale in the Global South

Abstract

The problem of a lack of qualified teachers is acute in the Global South, where countries often struggle with limited resources and significant rural–urban, regional, and gender gaps in the provision of quality education. The shortage of qualified teachers affects student learning engagement, reducing the effectiveness of schooling. There is a need for countries in the Global South to provide high-quality teacher professional development to all teachers, from pre-service to induction to in-service. Initiated in 2018, the TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South seeks to address this need for inclusive, quality, and cost-effective teacher professional development programs through collaboration, research, and implementation support. The coalition works with governments to design and develop their respective TPD@Scale systems while addressing critical issues of learner differentiation or personalization, learner support, and assessment. Depending on their contexts, such systems harness ICT to reach teachers remotely, face-to-face, or both, to provide accessible, sustainable, and quality teachers’ professional learning.