To ensure that Afghanistan’s teachers are equipped to provide a quality education to their students, the U.S. Government and the Ministry of Education work together to ensure proper teacher training.  Recently, the Ministry of Education’s Teacher Education Department (TED) and USAID produced a training manual for grades 7-12 science and math teachers.  The workshop participants also designed 36 training sessions that will reach 14,000 teachers across 11 provinces in Afghanistan between March and June 2010.  Senior trainers successfully piloted the training sessions, including General Math Methods, Problems and Challenges of Teaching Trigonometry, and Developing Lesson Plans for Geology.  

“Development of this manual will have a significant impact on the quality of education in Afghanistan and will be useful for school teachers, especially in the provinces and in remote areas, who have limited educational qualifications,” affirmed an experienced member of the TED.  “We have witnessed their weaknesses during our observations, and I think this manual can help solve most of their methodological problems.”

This collaborative effort in materials development for in-service teacher training demonstrates the strong and lasting partnership between the U.S. Government and the Ministry of Education’s Teacher Education Department.