How Can We Develop Expert Teachers?

The excellence of teaching and student learning are inextricably linked with one another. They make up two sides of a triangle when put together. The third part of this triangle, quality instruction, and teacher preparation, is often disregarded, although it is critical to teaching quality and student development.

Unfortunately, the children who might benefit the most from excellent instruction—those living in low-income households, in crisis or conflict situations, or isolated or extreme geographic locations—are rarely exposed to it.

Unfortunately, in these same settings, the teachers who might benefit the most from quality professional development (PD) would equip them with the skills to assist more students in learning either do not receive PD or receive ineffective PD.

The handbook, which now has a simplified executive summary, includes seven important suggestions for improving teacher professional development in unstable environments based on research and experiential best practices. These suggestions are outlined in this article.

Recommendation 1: Focus on teachers as professionals, learners, and persons in low-income and crisis-affected settings.

Teachers, like every other profession, must establish strong professional identities. Teacher professionalism is influenced by access to quality professional development, in addition to apparent considerations such as recruiting, salary, and possibilities for growth.

It's difficult to feel like a professional when you don't feel competent, when you don't have any training or support, and when you're teaching children who have serious academic and emotional problems and don't know how to handle them.

Recommendation 2: Create, implement, assess, and institutionalize teacher professional development standards.

We know what makes effective professional development based on studies. Despite this understanding, no criteria define excellent professional development inside donor-funded humanitarian and development initiatives, and there are far too few trained providers.

Teachers are frequently subjected to substandard, and in some cases, harmful professional development that does not benefit them and wastes their time and donor money since there is no accepted and codified notion of "excellent" professional development.

On the other hand, standards specify minimum provider competencies and quality benchmarks that guarantee superior inputs and experiences. They don't have to lead to undue rigidity. To adapt to local realities, standards—or teacher professional development curriculum—can be adapted or contextualized.

Recommendation 3: Provide opportunities for professional development that encourage teacher cooperation.

Everywhere, there is incontrovertible evidence of teacher cooperation. Collaboration with colleagues—and the culture of trust and information sharing that collaboration fosters—has been associated with better teacher effectiveness, student test-score increases, and teacher openness to accept innovations (Kraft & Papay, 2014). (Granovetter & Soong, 1983).

People must have a cause to cooperate, be trained on being a productive team, and collaborative groups must be supported, at least at first, by a "more knowledgeable other."

The INEE guidance suggests three activities to help teachers collaborate more effectively:

1. Create an environment that encourages cooperation by encouraging peer-to-peer classroom visits with opportunities for feedback.

2. Promote and cultivate effective and engaged teacher learning communities, and 3. Strengthen peer-to-peer instruction.

Recommendation 4: Continue to support instructors.

Teacher "support" is a multi-layered array of different sorts of aid that assist instructors in successfully transferring information from a professional development environment to the classroom. Administrative, instructional, and resource help and peer, supervisory, and instructional support from a "more knowledgeable other" are all possible.

Teachers who receive on-the-job support, guidance and feedback from a supervisor or a trained support person apply new skills and strategies more frequently and appropriately and adopt a more diverse range of instructional practices than teachers who do not receive such supports, according to research on on-going teacher support (Showers & Joyce, 1996).

The book suggests four methods to remedy this situation:

1. Create methods for (true, "high touch") instructional coaching, rather than "monitoring" or "data collecting" that we call "coaching."

2. Provide continuing assistance by utilizing relevant and accessible technology.

3. Move professional development away from workshops and more support-based interventions such as modelling, coaching, observations, and feedback.

4. Improve school leadership so that principals and directors can give continuing assistance.

Recommendation 5: Invest in high-quality teacher educators.

In-service or pre-service teacher educators or trainers are frequently the weakest links in the teacher education ecosystem. Implementing agencies are keen to list the flaws in numerous teacher training institutes and in-service providers controlled by the Ministry of Education.

When it comes to unqualified teacher trainers, however, implementing agencies share some of the faults. Many implementing organizations commit professional development in crucial areas such as literacy or numeracy to persons who have never been teachers — or whose only teaching experience is a year in the Peace Corps, as mentioned in previous postings.

The following suggestions are made in the guidance to guarantee that people hired to promote teaching are effective in their work:

1. Find professional development providers who have a lot of experience teaching.

2. Increase the capability of teacher-professional development providers.

3. Educators can use audio/radio teaching or didactic materials in locations with no instructors. They can also enlist the help of experienced community members and other teachers to deliver instruction in crucial areas.

Recommendation 6: Build instructional leadership at all levels of the educational system

The most significant school-level influencer of student accomplishment is school directors, who are second only to instructors (Leithwood et al., 2004). They are in charge of the teaching and learning quality of their schools. However, we frequently observe ineffective instructional school leadership stifling teaching and learning.

When the lead learners, the head teacher, and the school director, ensure that teachers are in their classrooms every day, covering the syllabus at an appropriate pace, instructing students in developmentally appropriate and engaging ways, and attempting to apply knowledge and skills gained through professional development activities to their classes, schools in disadvantaged areas benefit greatly.

As stated in the INEE handbook, the following must occur for this to occur:

1. Assist Ministries of Education in developing and implementing instructional skills for principals and teachers

2. Encourage teamwork among head teachers and school administrators.

3. Provide chances for head teachers and school leaders to participate in practical professional development.

Recommendation 7: Make use of ICT to deliver content, professional development, and professional learning communities.

Even in low-resource situations, technology—radio, cell phones, television, and the Internet—can provide instructors access to information, curriculum, colleagues, and a range of learning experiences.

The guidance offers three main steps to assist the prudent implementation of ICT:

1. Make audio learning available to enhance teacher development in and with hard-to-reach places and populations.

2. Encourage teachers to use video for self-study and to share models of planning practice.

3. Give instructors open-content access to teaching and learning materials and assist them in incorporating this content into their lessons.

Conclusion

Teachers are harmed by poor and inefficient professional development. It is detrimental to their students. 

It harms their neighbourhood, and because great education is so closely linked to economic prosperity, it also harms their country. MyAssignmentHelpAu' top My Assignment Help reviews can help you develop the skills you need to become an outstanding instructor.

While the above broad recommendations do not address all of the complexities of teacher professional development in fragile contexts, we hope that the INEE guide will help to kick-start serious discussions about how to improve the quality of professional development where it is most needed—in the world's poorest and most fragile places. Get the best online Essay Writing Services in Australia for a new age of academic development.