Sponsorship of the literature review and extent of the search
The literature search was carried out in the early summer of 1998 as a commission (R7145(from the UK government's Department for International Development.
This paper reports a review of journal articles to be found listed in the British Education Index (BEI) and the Cumulative Index of Journals of Education (CUE) under the key word of inset or in service and either Africa, sub-Saharan Africa or one of the 50 sub-Saharan African countries by name (from Angola to Zimbabwe). Reports from Nigeria and South Africa form a substantial part of the literature: approximately 17% and 30% respectively. For half the countries in sub-Saharan Africa the literature search on in-service and related key words turned up no references at all.
Procedure leading to the summary points
· BIDS was used to search the BEI and CUE electronically. The cited articles were located and read. Summaries of the articles were produced. Short one sentence statements of implications for the process of teacher development through in-service were drawn up.· The implications were collected together and sorted into groups with similar foci. The criteria for summary point formation was that the implications should be related in some way with respect to teacher development through in-service. the summary points emerge from the collected and sorted implications.
