ABSTRACT
There are significant challenges to the creation of effective teacher education systems in the developing world. These vary in nature and scale from one context to another. There are, however, many issues that are shared and these have generated analyses over time from international organisations and through a range of research-based publications. The annual Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Reports (GMRs), for example, have given particular attention to teachers and made repeated suggestions for system reform in the structure, styles and content of teacher education. This chapter will look at the suggestions and comments made in the reports as well as scrutinising the wider literature, including a number of unpublished national reports that have provided the background to international meetings. In doing this, we want to suggest that the conceptualisation, planning and practices of teacher education will need to become more sensitive to the contextual challenges faced by policy makers, teacher educators and, most importantly, the teachers themselves. School systems have expanded rapidly, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and yet the process of building policies and practices to recruit, educate and retain sufficient teachers struggles to keep pace.
