Teacher professional development and curriculum: Enhancing teacher professionalism in Africa

This report is a comparative study on teacher professional development in relation to curriculum. The review is framed by a focus on the interrelationship between teacher professional development and curriculum, seeking to understand the relationship between teacher professionalism and curriculum in Africa by investigating 10 selected countries covering primary and lower secondary schooling. The analysis of the profile countries, based on questionnaires, provided an overview about policy processes, the curricula framework, pre-service and in-service teacher education, and the policy gaps in 10 different countries, namely Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. For major policies, policy processes, and policy gap, a trend across francophone, anglophone, and lusophone countries shows that the project-based approach to continuous professional development (CPD) through donor funding is neither systematic nor sustainable. For curricular frameworks, the competency-based teaching (CBT) approach appears to predominantly inform the curriculum across all three categories of countries. Finally, for initial teacher education (ITE), CPD, and teacher support, it can be stated that francophone countries rely on a support system at the deconcentrated and school level, while anglophone countries favour a cascade training model.