The primary objective of this study is to conduct an assessment of the effectiveness of skills development training programmes on the performance of educators, with specific reference to the case study of two selected schools in King Williams Town, Eastern Cape Province. This study is derived from the fact that in order for the government to provide efficient and effective service delivery to the population, the Public Service requires employees with requisite competency. There is a need for continuous improvement of capacity and skills development in the Public Service with the purpose of ensuring that employees who are recruited and retained in the Public Service have the requisite skills to perform their responsibilities. It is within such postulation that the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of skills development training programmes on the performance of Eastern Cape educators, so that improvement measures can be suggested. Two selected schools in King Williams Town district participated in the study and the detailed analysis of the findings imply that some of the on-the-job skills development training programmes that are used in the Eastern Cape Department of Education include coaching, counseling, job rotation, job enrichment, project work , mentoring, use of assistantship and committees or quality circles. Some interview participants construe that the strategies or measures that can be used to improve the implementation of skills development programmes for educators in the Eastern Cape Department of Education include commitment from school authorities, remunerate the learners, adopting support policies, possible promotion after training and investing more resources.

This qualitative study is a response to a request for help from a group of Grade 3 (year 3) teachers who were disheartened with the poor performance of their learners in Mathematics. In an attempt to address their challenge, they resolved to form a Teacher Collective (TC) amongst themselves. Their main objective was to support each other in their development of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). The participants, being frustrated by what they perceived as an inefficient and unhelpful cluster approach to professional development used by the Department of Basic Education initiated their own teacher collective strategy. I was approached by this TC to assist them in developing a strategy to make this TC suit the needs of the participants. A Lesson Study (LS) approach was used as an alternative Teacher Professional Development strategy within the TC. In studies conducted by Ono and Ferreira (2010) and Jita and Mokhele (2014), a LS approach is regarded as an essential tool desirable for enhancement of teacher collaboration and participant’s MKT. However, both studies reported on challenges related to contextual issues. Those contextual issues revealed themselves as similar to the challenges that threatened to weaken the collaborative structure initiated by the participants in this current study. To overcome these challenges, participants felt a need for some sort of adaptation for a LS approach to work in their context. In the application of the revised adapted version of a LS approach, participants experienced a Teacher Collective (TC) in action using real and useful experiences (Ono & Ferreira, 2010). The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a Teacher Collective for improving participating teachers’ pedagogical and disciplinary content knowledge in Foundation Phase (FP) Mathematics. As this study targeted a small group of teachers, it adopted a case-study methodology. The participants were five Grade 3 teachers purposefully self-selected from two Port Elizabeth township schools. Semi-structured interviews were used to determine participating teachers’ perceptions of a Teacher Collective as a Teacher Professional Development strategy necessary to promote Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching. Descriptive methodologies which concern inter alia practices that prevail, relationships that exists, point of views that were held, processes that are going on and effects that are felt by participants were used (Creswell, 2013). The following major findings emerged from the data analysis: For the TC to be a successful alternative TPD, it requires that: (1) Teachers must regard themselves as being responsible for the own professional growth and own the TPD programme. (2) Participants of the TC must adopt flexible strategies to allow for active participation of the participants in building meaning for themselves. (4) A TPD strategy should be sensitive to contextual issues and be addressed accordingly. (5) A TPD programme should seek to improve classroom instruction but this must be based on the needs of the participants. It is primarily the following structural features that affected teacher learning within the TC: (a) the form of the activity (joint lesson planning, observed lesson presentation, post lesson feedback, etc.), (b) collective participation of teachers within and across the schools and (c) the duration of the activity. In this study the LS approach worked well as it sought to address the needs of the participants.