Does the Cascade Model Work for Teacher Training? Analysis of Teachers’ Experiences

Throughout the world, education systems are changing, thus offering opportunities for serious and promising educational reforms. One of the key elements in most of these reforms is the continuing professional development of teachers. The real challenge facing most schools is no longer how to improve, but how to sustain the improvements these schools have made. Also, reform requires that teachers learn new roles and ways of teaching that translate into long-term developmental processes which require them to focus on changing their own practices. To meet all of these demands, the professional development of teachers is recognised as vital to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Using a quantitative approach, the researchers explore the experiences of teachers on cascade model. They concluded that, although this model has come to be accepted as the way of disseminating information in most in-service training programmes, it appears to have failed to significantly improve the performance of educators.