TPD@Scale Briefing Note: Cost-effectiveness: Considerations for Scaling Teacher Professional Development

Executive Summary

• Any evaluation of cost-effectiveness within teacher professional development programs, particularly those that are mediated by technology, must ensure that it looks not only at the costs of a pilot program, but also at how the program’s costs may reduce substantially as the program scales.
• A variety of issues need to be considered when costing programs such as course design and development, language of instruction, technology competence of teachers, access to devices and connectivity, and capacity of the system to support scaling.
• Trade-offs need to be considered so that an appropriate balance can be achieved in quality, equity, and efficiency, especially when considering how to reach disadvantaged or marginalized teachers who may require additional support to reach the same outcomes.
• Measuring cost-effectiveness requires programs to collect accurate and comprehensive costing and outcome data from the outset of the program, building this into the program’s monitoring and evaluation framework.

This paper is one of four TPD@Scale Technical Briefing Papers published by the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc. (FIT-ED) for the TPD@Scale Coalition for the Global South.