Mainstreaming the practice of innovative teachers: managing decentralized professional development in public schooling

Abstract

The formal state-run (public) schooling system in developing countries depends on a centrally-driven approach to the professional development of its teacher workforce. The culture which underpins this approach is defined by hierarchy, centralized control of training delivery, an ethos which facilitates a downward ‘cascading’ transmission of expertise by knowledgeable authorities, and an assumed uniformity of training needs. This culture hindersthe abstraction and processing of relevant and effective practices from the grassroots, resulting in the system’s inability to learn from the strengths within. An alternative culture that values peer-learning,sharing of experiences, validation of outstanding practices and development of learning material for use by decentralized professional forums will promote key principles like self-learning, applying external practices to one’s own problems and monitoring self-development. This paper has outlined an “educational innovation bank” (EI Bank) initiative, drawing on processual theories of innovation that identify specific types of networks for the three “episodes” of innovation: design and development, diffusion and implementation, and the related knowledge transformation that is called for. The establishment of the EI Bank combines the social construction of knowledge by decentralized networks with knowledge objectification in the diffusion episode, through a process of screening and validating innovations and converting them into user-friendly products like case studies, a curriculum module and an open-access, searchable database of teachers’ practices. The use of the EI Bank calls for a return to local user-networks to adapt the objectified ideas in new contexts. Such an alternative approach demands that educational administrators perform three tasks—develop a learner-focused perspective, convert validated local knowledge into ‘products’ through appropriate networks, and undertake “policy entrepreneurship”—if they are to develop a culture of decentralized professional development.