The Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa programme: Using innovative online approaches to teacher education.

Jane Devereux
The Open University

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     Last modified: October 16, 2006
     Presentation date: 11/01/2006 11:45 AM in ST Windsor B
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Abstract
Meeting the millennium goals for universal primary education is largely dependent on developing the quality of and dramatically increasing the scale of teacher education.

Traditional face to face teacher education courses will not provide sufficient numbers of qualified teachers with good classroom practice within the millennium goals' time scale. Consequently there is an urgent need to recruit, retain and professionally develop a large cohort of teachers who can train whilst at work.

The Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa programme (TESSA) aims to produce innovative online, open content, quality school-based activities written by teacher educators from across Sub-Saharan Africa. The intention of these activities is to support the teachers in a wide range of classrooms to think and act reflectively about their roles and responsibilities. The TESSA materials are also aim to help teacher education institutes develop school based teacher education programmes using innovate approaches.

This paper examines the structure and format of these materials including the underlying principles and approaches to teaching and learning TESSA has adopted.

It also examines how the key characteristics such as different modes for the materials, versioning and translating to particular contexts and ways of promoting thinking and reflection can contribute to a rise in the quality of teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa programme (TESSA): Using innovative online approaches to teacher education.