Teacher professional development

Teaching quality is the overwhelmingly most important factor in student performance. Improving the professional practice of teachers is therefore key to raising education outcomes and is a fundamental component of our work in education reform in both high-income and low-and-middle-income contexts. 

We have been working with teachers around the world for over 50 years, developing high-impact teaching methods and effective teacher professional development to improve both learning outcomes and teacher retention. Our teams support effective teacher professional development in a wide variety of countries and contexts – from developing effective strategies for teaching literacy in Zimbabwe to assessing strategies for teacher workload reduction in England.

Our approach

Our approach to teacher professional development is grounded in an evidence-based model that enables and promotes teacher professional growth. Effective teacher professional development programmes require an in-depth understanding of the knowledge base that teachers need to acquire and apply, and our experts ensure that our professional development activities target growth in those crucial aspects of learning.

We recognise that different teachers will be at different stages of their learning journey and will therefore have different needs. Our consultants therefore undertake needs analyses before planning and implementing any professional development programme, adapting in line with contextual needs. We then employ a robust approach to monitoring, evaluating and learning, to ensure our work is impactful and effective.

As an organisation, we also have significant expertise in remote and blended continuous professional development (CPD) support for teachers, encompassing high-tech, low-tech and no-tech solutions. This includes mobile-enabled CPD, through which we successfully reached 15,000 English and Maths teachers in Rwanda during the pandemic, as well as a blended learning platform, and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). We also have experience supporting remote communities of practice– for example, through our Schools Partnership Programme in the UK.