In this insightful brief, we delve into the transformative power of the Core Practice approach—a beacon of hope for educators working in challenging environments. The Core Practice framework introduces evidence-based, high-impact teaching techniques that promise not only to enhance student learning outcomes but also to provide a practical, coherent, and adaptable solution for teacher professional development.

NORRAG has brought together 48 authors from academia, humanitarian agencies, and think tanks to produce 27 papers that showcase current evidence and offer policy directions to prioritise and protect the work and well being of refugee teachers everywhere.

In 2019, Dr. Lindsay Brown at NYU Global TIES for Children co-developed and implemented the Building Expert Teachers Through Evidence-based Research (BETTER) program with Laura Killips.

In 2019, Dr. Lindsay Brown at New York University’s Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES) co-developed and implemented the Building Expert Teachers Through Evidence-based Research (BETTER) program with Laura Killips. BETTER is designed to support intentional and sustained teacher learning across contexts. It utilizes practice-based strategies to develop teachers’ foundational skills and knowledge and to sustain them with the support of teacher coaches and other resources within education systems. The program builds upon decades of scientific research that demonstrates that effective professional development: demands active and applied learning from its participants; provides sustained and repeated learning opportunities; showcases models of effective practice; provides expert support; and fits within a coherent framework of practice.

Teachers are expected to do it all: to attend to students’ academic, social, and emotional, skills while finding time to plan, grade, and develop professionally. In the wake of COVID-19 school closures, they are expected to remediate for loss of learning, target instruction to multiple skill levels, and ensure a safe learning environment. But they are currently provided with only a “patchwork of opportunities” to build such skills, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and humanitarian contexts, where teachers are especially crucial. This approach to professional development does not provide an opportunity to build expertise in the teaching practices that are required to fulfill such wide-ranging expectations.

Preschool programs have expanded rapidly in low- and middle-income countries, but there are widespread concerns about whether they are of sufficient quality to promote children's learning and development. We conducted a large school-randomized control trial (‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ – QP4G) of a one-year teacher training and coaching program, with and without parental-awareness meetings, designed to improve preschool quality and child development. We followed 3,435 children in 240 schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, a country with universal pre-primary education. A previous study reported positive impacts of teacher training (but not teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings) at the end of the implementation year on some dimensions of classroom quality, teacher well-being, and children's school readiness (Wolf et al., [2019] Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 12, 10–37). The present study analyzed a new round of data collected 1 year after the end of implementation to assess (a) the extent of persistence in impacts on child development and (b) whether such impacts vary by select child, household, and school characteristics. We found impacts of the teacher training intervention on children's overall school readiness were sustained (d = 0.13), but were only marginally statistically significant. When broken down by domain, impacts on social–emotional skills specifically persisted. Persistent negative effects of teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings varied by the literacy status of the male parent such that negative impacts were concentrated in children in households with non-literate male heads.

This study explores the personal, professional, and contextual conditions faced by early childhood education (ECE) teachers in under-resourced settings and how these relate to teacher responsiveness to professional development (PD): namely, teacher attrition (a sign of PD failure when occurring shortly after PD), take-up of offered PD, adherence to PD training/materials, and quality of implementation. We use data from six disadvantaged districts in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana and PD focused on implementation of a national, play-based curriculum. Descriptive statistics indicate that ECE teachers (n = 302) face a multitude of barriers to high quality teaching across the bioecological model. Multilevel mixed effects models find that teachers with low job satisfaction are more likely to leave the school within the academic year. Teachers with moderate to severe depression are less likely to attend PD trainings. Senior teachers and those with poverty risks are less likely to adhere to PD material. Teachers with many time demand barriers are more likely to adhere to material. They also implement the content at higher observed quality as do teachers with bachelor's degrees and early childhood development (ECD) training. Take-up of PD also predicts quality of implementation. Practice and research implications are discussed.

The development of competencies known as 21st-century skills are garnering increasing attention as a means of improving teacher instructional quality. However, a key challenge in bringing about desired improvements lies in the lack of context-specific understanding of teaching practices and meaningful ways of supporting teacher professional development. This paper focuses on the need to measure the social quality of teaching processes in a contextualized manner. We do so by highlighting the efforts made to develop and measure teacher practices and classroom processes using the Teacher Instructional Practices and Processes System© (TIPPS) in three different contexts: Uganda (secondary), India (primary), and Ghana (pre-school). By examining how such a tool can be used for teacher feedback, reflective practice, and continuous improvement, the hope is to pave the way toward enhanced 21st-century teacher skills and, in turn, 21st-century learners.

We assessed the impacts of a teacher professional development program for public and private kindergartens in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. We examined impacts on teacher professional well-being, classroom quality, and children’s readiness during one school year. This cluster-randomized trial included 240 schools (teachers N = 444; children N = 3,345, Mage = 5.2) randomly assigned to one of three conditions: teacher training (TT), teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings (TTPA), and controls. The programs incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching for teachers and video-based discussion groups for parents. Moderate impacts were found on some dimensions of professional well-being (reduced burnout in the TT and TTPA conditions, reduced turnover in the TT condition), classroom quality (increased emotional support/behavior management in the TT and TTPA conditions, support for student expression in the TT condition), and small impacts on multiple domains of children’s school readiness (in the TT condition). The parental-awareness meetings had counteracting effects on child school readiness outcomes. Implications for policy and practice are discussed for Ghana and for early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the demand for and supply of early childhood education (ECE) in low- and middle-income countries. There is also growing awareness that unless ECE is of high quality, children may attend school but not learn. There is a large literature on the conceptualization and measurement of ECE quality in the United States that focuses on the nature of teacher-child interactions. Efforts to expand access to high quality ECE in low- and middle-income countries will require similar measurement efforts that are theoretically-grounded and culturally-adapted. This paper assesses the factor structure and concurrent validity of an observational classroom quality tool to assess teacher-child interactions—the Teacher Instructional Practices and Processes System© (TIPPS; Seidman et al., 2013)—in Ghanaian pre-primary classrooms. We find evidence of three conceptually distinct but empirically correlated domains of quality: Facilitating Deeper Learning (FDL), Supporting Student Expression (SSE), and Emotional Support and Behavior Management (ESBM). Teachers’ schooling level, training in early childhood development, and professional well-being positively predict the three quality domains in different ways. SSE and ESBM predict classroom end-of-the-school-year academic outcomes, and SSE predicts classroom end-of-the-school-year social-emotional outcomes. Implications for the field of international education and global ECE policy and research are discussed.

We assessed impacts on classroom quality and on 5 child language and behavioral outcomes of a 2-year teacher professional-development program for publicly funded prekindergarten and kindergarten in Chile. This cluster-randomized trial included 64 schools (child N 1,876). The program incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching. We found moderate to large positive impacts on observed emotional and instructional support as well as classroom organization in prekindergarten classrooms after 1 year of the program. After 2 years of the program, moderate positive impacts were observed on emotional support and classroom organization. No significant program impacts on child outcomes were detected at posttest (1 marginal effect, an increase in a composite of self-regulation and low problem behaviors, was observed). Professional development for preschool teachers in Chile can improve classroom quality. More intensive curricular approaches are needed for these improvements to translate into effects on children.