Quality assurance of teacher education in Africa

This booklet starts with the evolution of the concept of quality of education in general and goes on to discuss the teachers’ role in improving the quality. It highlights indicators for identifying effective teachers and the factors that determine the quality in teacher education so that the appropriate mechanisms of assurance could be derived to from these factors. The booklet identifies three mechanisms for quality assurance of a teacher education institution in terms of programme or as a course. It discusses in details, the implementation of the process of accreditation in the context of teacher education at di¬fferent levels specifying the criteria of accreditation, giving the steps to set up a quality assurance agency and its management including the challenges of the accreditation process. It has also collected few available examples of quality assurance of teacher education in Africa, which are limited to quality audit and quality assessment. These form a part of the initial process of accreditation. The booklet attempts to improve upon the mechanisms of quality assurance through accreditation to derive the benefits it could provide.

It concludes by recommending a set of strategies for the government, the accreditation agency and the teacher educational institutions for successful implementation of the accreditation process for quality assurance of teacher education in Africa.