Empowering Teachers Through PD Rooted in Local Context

This article is co-authored by Shwetangna Chakrabarty (SC) and Natasha Haque (NH). Individual sections are written in the first person by the author identified in each section heading.

Earlier this month, we had the privilege of delivering the keynote address at the History for Peace professional development course, held in collaboration with Shiv Nadar School, Noida. After two years of online editions, this year marked the first in-person gathering of the program, designed by teachers, for teachers, and grounded in the timely theme, Sifting Fact from Fiction.

In a world where narratives are increasingly shaped by emotion, algorithm, and agenda, this course invited educators to reimagine teaching as a space for truth, inquiry, and critical thinking. The two-day event brought together teachers ready to question, reflect, and reclaim the integrity of the curriculum. Our keynote explored a shared belief that has shaped our own journeys as educators across continents: that teacher empowerment begins with professional development deeply rooted in local context. Here are excerpts from our keynote.

The Evolving Role of the Educator (NH)

Doing this keynote address was a full-circle moment for both of us. Eleven years ago, we first taught together in Dar es Salaam, two younger educators brimming with idealism. Even then, we were united by a conviction that teachers are not merely “deliverers of curriculum,” but curators of inquiry and the heartbeat of educational change.

In 2018, we began writing together out of both passion and frustration. Across seven countries and multiple curricula, we witnessed extraordinary work from teachers, yet their voices were often absent from global conversations on reform. The world debated policy and innovation; meanwhile, those closest to learners were rarely centered.

And then came the pandemic. Overnight, teachers around the world re-engineered their practice, often without training, resources, or certainty. They learned to unlearn, relearn, and adapt rapidly. Creativity, compassion, and resilience became the real curriculum. For a moment, the world recognized the value of teachers, but as soon as schools reopened, that recognition faded. Today, UNESCO estimates that the world needs 44 million additional teachers by 2030 to achieve universal education. This reality underscores a truth we emphasized in our keynote: if teachers want change, they must shape the conversation, not wait to be invited into it. This is the heart of teacher empowerment.

Why Professional Development (PD) Must Be Rooted in Local Context (SC)

Professional development often arrives packaged as global frameworks or universal strategies. Yet after teaching in Asia, Africa, and Europe, we know that learning never happens “anywhere.” It happens somewhere, in a specific cultural and historical reality shaped by identity, community, and lived experience. When PD ignores local context, it becomes dehumanizing. It erases what students bring. It renders teachers implementers instead of innovators.

In India, I once visited a school where students spent an entire term studying World War II but rarely encountered their own histories of anti-colonial struggle. They could recite Shakespeare and Shelley but had never read Kabir or Tagore. When asked to name thinkers from their own region, many hesitated. This is the silent erosion of identity that occurs when curriculum lacks representation.

Professional development must therefore equip teachers to elevate the intellectual and cultural richness already present in their communities. As I wrote in my TIE blog, Humanizing the Curriculum for Flourishing, context is not a constraint, it is a curriculum. When teachers see their realities reflected in PD, they become empowered decision-makers, not passive implementers.

Teacher Empowerment as Professional Agency (NH)

Empowerment begins when teachers are trusted as designers of learning, not just deliverers of content. PD that fosters critical reflection, collaboration, and confidence transforms teachers into genuine agents of change.

During the Enhanced Middle Years Programme trials at the Aga Khan Academies, we saw the power of teacher agency firsthand. Coordinators and teachers engaged with proposed changes not as instructions, but as provocations. They re-examined context, concepts, and approaches to learning. Their reflections directly influenced how assessment was redesigned. Collaboration turned these insights into shared practice. Teachers across regions formed communities of inquiry—horizontal structures where expertise flowed freely, and professional dialogue itself became curriculum design.

One moment stands out vividly. A student once shared the proverb, “I store my surplus in my neighbour’s belly.” In a unit on sustainability, it reframed the entire learning journey. Suddenly, sustainability was not just scientific, it was ethical, grounded in kinship and reciprocity. Students connected this ethic to the absence of hoarding in Kenya during the pandemic. Such moments remind us that when teachers claim their agency, students claim theirs too.

Learning to Stay Relevant in Teaching (NH)

Relevance is not about staying trendy; it is about staying connected, to students, to communities, and to the times we live in.

During a Grade 9–10 curriculum alignment project, we asked teachers two questions:

• What does a 16-year-old need to understand about the governance of their own country?
• How do we help them recognize themselves across cultures and differences?

These questions moved teachers beyond content coverage toward purpose.

More recently, while supporting teachers in Nairobi, we saw educators weaving their own communities’ stories into curriculum. Yet many hesitated to document these ideas. As is common across the Global South, teachers carried multiple epistemologies but rarely saw them validated in official frameworks. Learning to stay relevant requires courage, the courage to bring one’s full identity into teaching, and to trust that students need that authenticity from us.

Reclaiming the Classroom as a Space for Truth, Inquiry, and Critical Thinking (SC)

The theme Sifting Fact from Fiction resonates deeply with our current moment. In my TIE article Modern-Day Book Burning, I wrote about how erasure often appears not as fire, but as silence, the exclusion of local stories, indigenous wisdom, and community truths. Uncritical adoption of imported curricula contributes to this silence. PD that ignores context risks burning histories without flame.

But when PD is rooted in local realities, teachers become knowledge producers. They curate learning responsibly in a world overwhelmed by misinformation, AI-generated content, and agenda-driven narratives. Global frameworks give us ambition. Context gives us meaning. When we honor both, classrooms become spaces of truth, inquiry, and critical thinking, the very ethos of this conference.

Professional Learning as a Journey, not a Destination (NH)

For many of us, professional learning is deeply personal. I grew up in the United Kingdom but learned nothing about the histories that shaped my family’s migration or the colonial realities that made that migration possible. My education qualified me, but did not help me understand myself. It is only through working across South Asia and East Africa that I pieced together the narratives that had been missing. That journey has reshaped me not only as an educator, but as a parent and citizen. It taught me that we cannot empower students if we ourselves are disempowered. Professional learning is a lifelong journey of confronting our blind spots, expanding our understanding, and committing to continuous evolution.

A Call to Action (SC)

Our classrooms today are global, digital, and deeply personal. Amid all this complexity, one truth remains, education begins with the teacher. As I wrote in Humanizing the Curriculum for Flourishing, “When education loses its connection to humanity, it loses its purpose.” Teacher empowerment is therefore an act of moral courage. An empowered teacher:

• Challenges misinformation
• Invites multiple perspectives
• Creates safe spaces for dialogue
• Grounds learning in truth, compassion, and inquiry

Professional development is not a checklist. It is a promise to believe in ourselves, honor our contexts, and teach in ways that help students sift fact from fiction in an uncertain world. Every teacher is a storyteller of the future and a truth-teller of the present.

Thank you to History for Peace and Shiv Nadar School, Noida, for creating the space to reaffirm this calling.