Across very different contexts, a consistent message is emerging: human-centred professional development is not the opposite of rigour. In many cases, it's the foundation on which rigour is built.
Sabre Education, TeachUNITED and the Circle of Teachers' Learning, three innovations from the HundrED Global Collection 2026, show how working with teachers in Indonesia, Ghana, and far beyond can approach professional development via different lenses - peer to peer collaboration, play-based pedagogy and sustained coaching - yet arrive at the same conclusion. When teachers are supported as people, practice changes at the deepest levels and learning outcomes follow.
Circle of Teachers' Learning: starting with trust
In South Sumatra, educator Muhammad Akbar Rafsanzani began with a challenge familiar to many systems. Teachers were required to collaborate, but in practice those meetings were often unfocused, time-consuming and isolating. Communities of practice existed in name, but not always in a meaningful form. "Teacher professional development is often unfocused and isolating. We wanted to make it short, practical, and something teachers actually want to return to," Akbar shares.
"It's okay not to be okay as a teacher. That understanding changes how teachers show up for one another."
Rather than adding new content, Akbar redesigned the conditions that the collaboration was based on. Circle of Teachers' Learning is built around short, regular meetings - targeted for 30 minutes- guided by a shared structure, the 5 Cs: Connect, Convey, Collect, Consider and Commit. To encourage a sense of shared ownership, roles rotate and classroom evidence is the basis of every conversation. But importantly, each session deliberately makes space for teachers to check in as humans, not only as practitioners.
The key insight, says Akbar, is that "it's okay not to be okay as a teacher. That understanding changes how teachers show up for one another." Over time, that has led to the clearest indicator of success. Akbar points to engagement, rather than compliance. "When teachers ask when the next session will be, that's how we know it's working," he says.
And that's where a common misconception about rigour begins to unravel. Emotional safety is not an add-on to learning. It's what allows honest reflection to happen at all. And honest reflection is what enables practice to improve.
Sabre Education: play, practice and measurable outcomes
In Ghana, Sabre Education is addressing a different facet of the same false choice - particularly in early childhood education. Play-based learning is often viewed with skepticism: Is it serious enough? Will children fall behind? Will parents accept it?
Sabre's technical support to the Ghana government helps challenge those assumptions by focusing on the implementation and the process. Teachers aren't simply told to adopt play-based pedagogy; they're supported to practice it as well.
As Sabre's senior technical manager Robert Quansah explains, many teachers have encountered play-based learning in theory, perhaps a single lecture during their licensure, but rarely experience it themselves. Sabre's training reverses that dynamic. Teachers participate in hands-on experiential sessions that mirror the learning environments they are expected to create in the classroom.
"What looks 'soft' on the surface is actually very disciplined in design."
Susan Place Everhart, Sabre's CEO, describes the dynamic clearly: in more traditional classrooms, children may recite numbers or letters in unison. In play-based classrooms, children manipulate materials, collaborate, test ideas, and demonstrate understanding in concrete ways. "Children may be counting aloud," says Susan, "but do they understand? In play-based classrooms, understanding becomes visible."
Crucially, Sabre supports government to pair the pedagogy with sustained support. Training is reinforced through coaching, professional learning communities, classroom resources, and ongoing monitoring. Headteachers are trained as instructional leaders to help embed new practices and answer parent concerns.
And it works: independent evaluations show substantial improvements in literacy, numeracy, and psychosocial development in schools where the programme has been implemented. "What looks 'soft' on the surface is actually very disciplined in design," shares Robert, pointing to why it works.
And this shows another crack in the argument pitting human training against rigour. Play-based learning may appear informal, but can be the foundation of structured training, coaching and follow-up to deliver rigorous and measurable gains.
TeachUNITED: confidence as infrastructure
TeachUNITED’s work completes the picture by naming a factor often treated as secondary: teacher confidence and retention are not side effects of effective professional development. They are outcomes in their own right.
Their model centres on sustained coaching that supports teachers over time - not only to adopt new strategies, but to grow into their professional identity. By focusing on confidence, continuity, and practical support, TeachUNITED links teacher experience directly to student learning outcomes.
In October 2025, TeachUNITED launched a three-year project supporting 1,900 educators across Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar. This initiative aims to improve learning outcomes for 86,000 students via direct teacher training and local NGO and government capacity building. The organization is also excited to pilot an AI-powered teacher coach chatbot, offering personalized, 24/7 instructional support. This multi-level strategy ensures that professional development is well-contextualized, locally led, and sustainable.
Through a five-year project in Tanzania launching this quarter, TeachUNITED is embedding high-impact coaching strategies directly into the national teacher development framework (MEWAKA) to create a sustainable, local engine for secondary school teacher excellence and student success. By training government staff and local NGO partners to deliver this model, they aim to improve educational outcomes for approximately 311,000 students in rural and underserved communities by 2030.
This perspective aligns closely with insights emerging from both Indonesia and Ghana. Teachers are more likely to take instructional risks when they feel supported rather than judged. They are more likely to stay in the profession when growth feels possible. And students benefit from classrooms led by educators who feel capable, confident, and valued.
What these approaches share
These three innovations are not replicas of one another. They operate at different scales, in different contexts, and through different mechanisms. But all reject a familiar professional development pattern:
Deliver a workshop. Hope practice changes. Blame teachers when it doesn’t.
Instead, they design professional development around how adults actually learn by:
- Recognizing that teachers learn through relationships as much as through information - whether via peer dialogue, coaching, or leadership support;
- Acknowledging that identity shifts before practice becomes consistent. A teacher who feels isolated or judged is unlikely to take risks. A teacher who feels safe enough to say “this didn’t work” is already learning;
- Treating rigour as a design principle rather than a tone of voice. Rigour appears in repeated cycles, classroom evidence, follow-up, and accountability that teachers can realistically sustain.
Improving learning outcomes at scale requires more than better training materials. It requires investing in the conditions that make adult learning possible: time, trust, continuity, and support.
“Teachers are not robots. Professional growth needs to be both practical and human-centered.”
That does not mean every professional development model must look the same. But it does suggest a shared direction:
- Moving from one-off workshops to sustained rhythms of learning;
- Activating expertise within schools rather than importing it;
- Replacing compliance with commitment;
- And treating teacher wellbeing not as a sidebar, but as infrastructure.
As Akbar succinctly puts it, “Teachers are not robots. Professional growth needs to be both practical and human-centered.”
When professional development stops treating teachers as interchangeable units and starts supporting them as professionals and people, learning does not become less rigorous.
It becomes more durable - for teachers and students alike.
Learn more about innovations transforming the future of education in the Global Collection 2026.
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Image Credits: Sabre Education 2024
