Ken Harley - Emeritus Professor at the School of Education and Development, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)

After 25 years of (mainly) teaching in secondary schools, Ken Harley joined the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg) in 1991 where he served as Head of Department and Interim Dean at the time of the incorporation of Edgewood College.  He served on the councils of four colleges of education and was Chair of the then-Council of Rectors and Deans of Teacher Education in KwaZulu-Natal.

Ken has published extensively on history of education, curriculum, and teacher development, and has evaluated projects in Uganda, Kenya and Ghana. He edited the Journal of Education from the time of its resuscitation in 1993 until after his retirement in 2004. 

As an Emeritus Professor, Ken had three years on the National Teacher Education Review followed by a year on a teacher education HIV Pilot project.   He is currently contributing to SAIDE's OER Africa project .

Tessa Welch - Programme Specialist, Teacher Education, South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE)

Tessa Welch has been employed at SAIDE since 1996 and in that time has worked with the national Department of Education in teacher education policy particularly in respect of teacher upgrading, and with large providers such as the University of Pretoria and UNISA in evaluation and professional development for distance education design and delivery.

She has been involved in hands on materials development, most recently for the national Higher Education HIV/AIDS project that piloted a module in HIV/AIDS for teacher education programmes in all 23 higher education institutions in South Africa. She has worked in the field of quality assurance as well, both with South Africa’s Higher Education Quality Committee and the South African distance education organization, NADEOSA. The main product of this work is a set of quality criteria and case studies from South Africa that exemplify good practice.