Developing Support Systems for Rural Teachers' Continuing Professional Development

Zhao Yuchi is Programme Specialist and Administration Officer of UNESCO International Research and Training Centre for Rural Education (INRULED) as well as a lecturer in Beijing Normal University. He designed and started the project on teacher education in INRULED. Before joining INRULED, he worked in the International Department of Ministry of Education of China for seven years, with two years on international cooperation and exchanges in education and five years as the project manager of China-UK Southwest Basic Education Project, with a grant of 23.7 million pounds from UK government. For three years from 2001 to 2004, he worked as a research assistant in Research and Training Centre for Literacy Education, Southwest University, China. He has a doctorate in education and he finished his post-doctoral study on Support System for Rural Teachers' Continuing Professional Development in 2013.

Liu Jing has been working as Programme Specialist in UNESCO INRULED since 2012, with the responsibility to lead the programme called 'Quality Teacher for Rural Schools'. She is also a lecturer in Beijing Normal University. She has had over seven years of experience in research and practice of teacher education in China. She worked as an education consultant from 2007 to 2012 and provided technical assistance to a number of basic education projects in rural contexts supported by Department for International Development (DFID), UNICEF, Save the Children and Plan International. She has extensive experience in training material development, in-service training programme design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation. Also, she has experience in school development planning and inspection training with a focus on rural school improvement. She holds a Master's degree in Comparative Education and a PhD. in History of Education from Beijing Normal University.

Awol Endris is Programme Officer in teacher education and curriculum development at the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. IICBA is an institute established by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1999 with a mandate to assist the 54 African Member States of UNESCO in the areas of teacher education, curriculum development, distance education and educational planning. Dr Awol coordinates the teacher education programmes of IICBA. He also facilitates training sessions in school leadership and management, management of teacher education institutions, and teacher policy development and implementation in many sub-Saharan African countries.

Prior to joining IICBA in 2005, he was Assistant Professor and Chairman in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He had also served at the then Bahir Dar Teachers College as a teacher trainer for English language teaching.

He has a Masters of Arts Degree in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from the Addis Ababa University, an MEd in Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University of Leeds, UK, and a joint PhD. in TEFL from the University of Lancaster, UK, and Addis Ababa University.