Investigating the relationship between individual learning opportunities and improved teaching practices in public primary schools

This study examined the relationship between individual learning opportunities and teaching practices in public primary schools in Gasabo District, Rwanda. The study is guided by learning-centered leadership theory, which emphasises the role of school leadership in fostering teacher professional development to enhance instructional quality. Despite strong policy emphasis on teacher development, empirical evidence on how professional learning opportunities translate into improved teaching practices in low-resource urban schools remains limited. A mixed-methods research design was employed. Quantitative data were collected through structured questionnaires from 99 teachers, 37 Directors of Studies, and 37 headteachers, while qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured interviews with 15 headteachers. Descriptive analysis indicated that professional learning opportunities including workshops, coaching sessions, and online courses were widely available and generally perceived as beneficial for lesson planning, curriculum understanding, and instructional innovation. However, inferential analysis revealed a negligible and statistically non-significant relationship between participation in professional learning opportunities and improvements in teaching practices ( r = 0.017, p = 0.830). Qualitative findings provided contextual explanations for this outcome, identifying key constraints such as limited instructional resources, heavy teacher workloads, inconsistent program implementation, and weak alignment between training content and classroom realities. The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence from an urban Rwandan context and by integrating multi-stakeholder perspectives to examine the practical effectiveness of leadership-facilitated professional learning. The findings highlight that access to professional learning opportunities alone does not guarantee instructional improvement and underscore the importance of contextually relevant, sustained, and well-supported teacher development initiatives