Teacher Activity Groups: an effective model for professional development?

About the webinar

Several professional development projects delivered by the British Council in recent years have used a community of practice (CoP) model called Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs). In this webinar we explore what makes the TAG model unique and present the results of a review of six TAG projects in different parts of the world. The review aimed to answer these questions:

1. How have TAGs been implemented in British Council CPD projects in different countries?
2. What evidence is available from these projects about the impact of TAGs on teacher development?
3. What challenges for the impactful implementation of TAGs do these projects highlight?
4. What are the conditions required to make TAGs effective?

Watch a recording of the webinar below or watch a recording of the webinar with subtitles 

About the speakers

Simon Borg has been involved in language teaching and teacher education for over 30 years. As an educational consultant, he specialises in the design, implementation and evaluation of teacher professional development programmes and policies in a range of international contexts. Details of his work (and his blog) are available at http://simon-borg.co.uk/.

Amy Lightfoot is the Regional Education and English Academic Lead for the British Council in South Asia. She leads on the academic strategy and quality assurance of English and school-based education projects and related research activities. She has been working in the field of education for more than 20 years, spending the majority of this specialising in South Asian contexts. She has special interests and expertise in alternative models for teacher professional development, the monitoring and evaluation of teacher competence and performance, multilingual education and the use of digital platforms, with a variety of published work exploring these areas.

Radhika Gholkar is a Senior Academic Manager with the British Council in India. She manages teacher development projects in partnership with state governments across the education sectors, and has substantial experience of teaching English both face-to-face and online. She is particularly interested in the potential of using technology for teachers’ professional growth, for example looking at how this can be supported through online communities of practice using WhatsApp.

Download the publication 'Professional development through Teacher Activity Groups'

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