Policy Brief: Leveraging MOOCs for Teacher Development in Low-Income Countries and Disadvantaged Regions

This policy brief looks at open digital distance learning and the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to deliver and support teacher development in low-income countries and disadvantaged regions. It addresses the particular barriers faced by teachers and their communities and proposes options to help overcome their challenges. Recommendations cover areas of local, national and global policy.

This policy brief complements and draws on a longer companion report, MOOCs for Teacher Development in Low-Income Countries and Disadvantaged Regions, which looks at the technological and pedagogic dimensions of all these topics in greater detail. It recognises that local and national policymakers have only limited freedom of choice in how they can allocate resources, assign personnel or change priorities. There is always a need to back up such recommendations with evidence and data and to align recommendations to existing national strategies, capacities, institutions and sentiments. Freedom of choice at national and local levels can also be limited, constrained or skewed by the preferences and resourcesof the international donor community, global agencies, development ministries, global corporations’ charities and foundations, and academic institutions. This can mean that the available policy options for policymakers are relatively few and not always helpful or benign.