Empowering teachers by enabling and preserving content-centric discussion

Teachers learn best from experience, and from each other. Communities of practice are an important opportunity for teachers to continue to refine their teaching, reflect, and learn valuable insights from colleagues and mentors -- whether through discussing their own practice, or hearing about the practice of others. Teachers in low-resource/disconnected environments who want to improve their content-specific pedagogy and general teaching practice, can frequently be cut off from these opportunities. In such environments, teachers may have limited numbers of peers with which to interact, especially for those who are subject specialists. Standard models of teacher development and continual professional development are best delivered through communities of practice, because they allow for engagement in discussions with other teachers, and learning from their experience, in order to improve the quality of lessons for their students.