Recent scholarship on teacher professional development has shown renewed interest in col-
laborative forms of teacher learning. Networks, communities of practice and clusters are related
concepts that describe forms of collaboration between schools and/or teachers that encourage
such learning. In South Africa, teacher clusters represent a relatively recent and popular ex-
periment in teacher professional development. However, there is no verdict yet about their
effectiveness. While the utility of such collaborative structures for teacher learning is fairly well
established in many developed countries, we still know very little about how the intended
beneficiaries (the teachers) experience these non-traditional structures of professional develop-
ment. Using qualitative data from a large-scale research project, we explore teachers’ perspec-
tives on what constitutes a successful clustering experience, and the kinds of professional
development benefits they derive from their participation therein. Our major findings are two-
fold: First, clusters seem to enhance teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content
knowledge. Second, and somewhat unexpectedly, the teachers identified another set of benefits,
the so-called “process benefits” that include collaboration, instructional guidance and teacher
leadership. In a context where teachers have tended to work solo and insulated their classroom
practices from influence, the presence of the “process benefits” represents a significant finding.
We conclude the paper by exploring several possible directions for further research on these
process benefits of clusters for teachers in South Africa and elsewhere.

doi: 10.15700/201412071132