Touching base : the management of staff development in British curriculum schools overseas

The thesis identifies current staff development issues in the United Kingdom through literature and research findings from the 1970's to the present. The focus of the research is to relate these issues to policy and practice in a global survey of British curriculum overseas schools with the central theme of "touching base" and the dilemmas of adopting British methodology.;The case study material on professional development cultures (Glover and Law, 1996, p.p. 127-144) was used as the starting point for the questionnaire. The survey of 173 schools of all age ranges (which represents the target population in the European Council of International Schools database), illustrates the diversity of the staff development experiences of the 115 schools which replied, although they are linked by the common themes of isolation, financial constraints and staffing.;These findings are supported in four case study schools in the Arabian Gulf which follow a British curriculum and represent the three major age range groups; primary, secondary and all-age range schools.;The overall findings suggest the need for schools to adopt the idea of "internal consultancy" (Bennett 1997) and the need for a co-ordinator of staff development, and a model is suggested for this. Although the findings suggest that many staff are involved in their own professional development, in a climate of rapid change and increasing accountability, British overseas schools need to ensure that their management teams are sufficiently qualified to lead their schools into the new millennium and encourage staff development to occur in a strategically managed way.