The social and cultural dimensions of trainer training

The cascade model has been widely used as a means of reducing costs and maximizing benefits in large-scale teacher training. This article focuses on the first step in the cascade process, training the trainers, and argues that we need to integrate more social and cultural awareness into this area of training if the cascade approach is to succeed. It does so through reference to two projects in South Africa which used a 'cascade' approach to train trainers, one at secondary level and the other at primary level, and attempts to show not only why we should include such areas in our training, but how this can be done in practice.