Localized Teacher Professional Development Programs
Patterns and Purposes
This paper reviews an important aspect of quality of teachers and teaching and presents a perspective on why in-service teacher professional development programs that take place primarily at the local level—in schools and clusters of schools—are increasingly favored and implemented by governments in the North and the South. The argument is made that the changing structure and location of many in-service programs is driven by two fundamental paradigm shifts within the education sector: (i) the shift in approaches to both student and teacher learning from passive to active learning, and (ii) the shift to more decentralized forms of authority, activity, and agency.