Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) in South Africa in the Time of COVID-19: Evidence from a School Cluster in a Rural Context.

In this paper we examine evidence from a study of continuing professional teacher development (CPTD), in a selected rural school cluster in South Africa. The paper seeks to achieve two objectives namely, to determine the nature of such CPTD during the pandemic of COVID-19, and to record the form the CPTD takes during the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess critically whether it is enabling teachers to handle crises such as COVID-19 in transformative ways. Even without any immediate crisis such as COVID-19, schools in rural contexts are confronted with multiple contextual factors that negatively affect the attainment of quality education. The advent of COVID-19 has compounded such challenges. In South Africa, empirical evidence on the voices of teachers, school principals and circuit management in rural contexts, regarding ways to enhance teacher practice through CPTD, remains sparse. Through a qualitative multiple case study involving four schools in one circuit, the study generated data through interviews with the circuit manager and each of the four school principals as well as focus group discussions with all teachers in each school. Findings show that CPTD in the four schools was largely transmissive, involving workshops, the 'cascading' of information, and restricted application of coaching and mentoring. There was no evidence of transformative CPTD, in which teachers would be [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]