Teacher professional development

Successful education reform depends on the participation of teachers. It is teachers who link the policy decisions to the classroom and inform the policy decisions with evidence and experiences from their classrooms. A strong teacher professional development program can help teachers fulfill this crucial role. They can take new techniques and contextualize them for use in their classrooms. They can also experiment with a variety of approaches and share their successes and challenges with colleagues and professional development specialists. In this way, development of education flows in two directions: from the bottom up and from the top down.

Materials for teaching and learning reading

Materials bring a class to life. They hook students' interest and make learning fun, helping students sustain their attention on the lesson. At the same time, they allow for more active student participation in the lesson and which each other. Materials make lessons concrete for students and may even help connect the lesson to students' lives outside of school. And importantly, they can allow teachers opportunities for formative assessment.