What went wrong? An overemphasis on teacher development as opposed to teacher performance

Over the past 40 years international funding agencies have poured billions of pounds into hundreds of millions of person hours of mostly in-service teacher training with little evidence to show whether this has or has not had... [ view full abstract ]

Over the past 40 years international funding agencies have poured billions of pounds into hundreds of millions of person hours of mostly in-service teacher training with little evidence to show whether this has or has not had an impact. Indeed, most developing countries are currently facing a crisis in the quality of their education as measured by learning outcomes of their children. This paper makes two arguments. Firstly that there has been an imbalance between the attention and investment given by countries and donors to initial teacher training compared to in-service teacher training. Secondly, that there has been an overemphasis on teacher training per se, while other important factors contributing to teacher performance have been ignored. While teacher training is certainly necessary it is not sufficient on its own to create effective teachers. There a is a complex mix of other domains such as Accountability & Responsibility, Incentives & Rewards, and Motivation & Morale that all contribute to teacher performance. All are equally necessary and none is sufficient on its own and addressing one without the others is unlikely to produce the desired improvements in teacher performance. This paper calls on the authors’ experience in more than 20 developing countries along with a review of existing evidence (where it exists) and the analysis of teachers’ career structures in a sample of countries.