Scaling Professional Development with a Diverse Early Childhood Workforce

Abstract

This qualitative phenomenological study examines how CDI teachers and community mothers in Colombia experienced the implementation of a professional development program structured as a cascade model. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore participants’ accounts of implementation and the conditions they described as facilitating or constraining their engagement with the program. Participants’ accounts suggest that the cascade model operated within a workforce already differentiated by institutional roles, professional trajectories, and working conditions, with these differences being reflected in participants’ experiences of training and pedagogical appropriation. Participants also described drawing on motivation, professional judgment, and peer networks, some of which supported the continued circulation of program-related knowledge beyond the formal training structure. Together, these findings suggest that cascade models can extend the reach of professional development but may also reproduce pre-existing structural inequalities unless workforce heterogeneity and the capacities educators already bring to implementation are explicitly considered in program design.

1. Introduction

From an ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), early childhood educators are central to children’s development: as key figures in children’s microsystems, the quality of their pedagogical interactions shapes the experiences and opportunities available to young children daily. This view is consistent with broader theoretical traditions that position the educator as a mediator of learning and someone who creates spaces of joint activity, scaffolds understanding, and supports children’s social and cognitive development through sustained relational engagement (Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978). Within developmental psychology, teacher–child relationships are conceptualized as a distinct developmental system, as the quality of these relationships shapes children’s trajectories in ways that neither the family context nor structural program features fully account for (Pianta et al., 2022).

There is broad consensus on the importance of professional development for educators as a key condition for improving quality of early childhood education (Egert et al., 2020; Hsueh et al., 2024). Although quality is a contested construct, most current frameworks distinguish between structural characteristics (such as staffing ratios and physical resources) and process characteristics, including the interactions and experiences children encounter daily (Burchinal, 2018). Professional development targets both by strengthening educators’ qualifications and the quality of their pedagogical interactions. Numerous studies have documented the links between workforce qualifications, the quality of instruction, and children’s comprehensive development (Brunsek et al., 2020; Elek & Page, 2018). Consequently, a growing number of countries have positioned teacher workforce development as a strategic focus of their public policies, either through pre-service preparation or in-service professional development programs (PD). Although the latter do not lead to professional degrees, they seek to transform and strengthen pedagogical practices (Gómez & Rendón, 2019; Hsueh et al., 2024; The World Bank, 2019). However, the search for effective methodologies for teacher PD is a global challenge.

Increasing the supply of qualified teachers is a key target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in response, most countries have developed strategies and policies aimed at strengthening their teaching workforce, both through pre-service preparation and in-service professional development (The World Bank, 2019). Nevertheless, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) continue to lag significantly in education investment, constraining the budget dedicated to strengthening the workforce. Between 2007 and 2021, only 1.7% of international aid for education was allocated to early childhood, and in 2022, donors invested 21 times more in tertiary education than in preschool (Luan et al., 2024; The World Bank & UNESCO, 2024). This severe imbalance limits the resources available for both initial teacher preparation and PD for those working with young children. Additionally, even when countries invest in teacher PD, evidence shows that its effects on student learning are often limited, difficult to sustain at scale, and highly dependent on program characteristics (Kraft et al., 2018).

Given the importance of teacher PD in supporting child development, it is essential to understand how professional development programs are experienced and enacted in practice, and what conditions shape participants’ engagement and learning. However, most of the evidence comes from high-income countries (de Barros et al., 2024), with limited insight into how early childhood interventions are adapted and implemented in LMICs, where workforce and resource conditions differ markedly (Pearson et al., 2023). In this context, this study examines the implementation of a professional development program for early childhood educators in Colombia based on a cascade model. Adopting a strength-based approach, it examines participants’ assets alongside the conditions they identified as facilitating or constraining their learning and appropriation of the program.

1.1. Teacher Professional Development

In general, professional development refers to experiences that promote training and learning opportunities for teachers to strengthen the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable them to support children’s development (Sheridan et al., 2009). Recent literature on teacher PD identifies two major trends. On the one hand, traditional workshops or short-course programs predominate. These initiatives typically focus on transmitting specific knowledge and, although they achieve broad coverage, they tend to have limited impact on teaching practices (Edwards & Nuttall, 2009). On the other hand, more sustained and practice-centered approaches are emerging, such as peer learning, communities of practice, and coaching processes, which promote lasting change by linking reflection with action in real contexts (Eynon et al., 2024; Pianta et al., 2022; Sheridan et al., 2009). These approaches may help address the fragmentation of training provision in LMICs, where investment remains insufficient and initiatives tend to be ad hoc or discontinuous (Luan et al., 2024; The World Bank & UNESCO, 2024). Evidence suggests that achieving sustainable pedagogical change requires combining content delivery with context-embedded support and opportunities to build professional learning communities (Kraft et al., 2018).

Among innovative methodologies, coaching occupies a prominent place. Unlike stand-alone workshops, coaching is delivered through sustained, iterative processes that strengthen professional confidence, promote autonomy, and foster contextualized learning. Educational coaching is characterized by its intensity, practical orientation, and continuous feedback in the classroom, which allows educators to observe, act, and receive feedback, reflect on their practice, and experience immediate adjustments (Kraft et al., 2018; Hemmeter et al., 2016; Pianta et al., 2022; Sheridan et al., 2009). Unlike mentoring, which focuses on long-term relationships and the comprehensive development of professional identity (Hussey & Campbell-Meier, 2021), coaching is geared toward focused, short-term interventions aimed at improving specific classroom practices (Sheridan et al., 2009). A systematic review of 60 experimental studies showed that this approach has considerable effects on the quality of teaching and, to a lesser extent, on student learning. However, these effects are not uniform, and some evidence suggests that they may diminish when programs are expanded to broader populations (Kraft et al., 2018).

Literature reviews converge in identifying observation, feedback, goal setting, and reflection as the core components that likely drive the effectiveness of coaching programs, particularly when implemented through iterative cycles of practice improvement (Elek & Page, 2018; Snyder et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2022). Its flexibility in adapting to each teacher’s conditions appears central to its effectiveness, allowing educators to receive guidance from the right person at the right moment and in direct relation to their classroom practice. These findings underscore the importance of coaching as a situated and contextualized form of professional development.

A growing body of research suggests that the effectiveness of coaching depends not only on coaching methodology but also on individual and contextual factors, including teachers’ prior education levels, classroom ratios, geographic location, and the experience of those responsible for delivering the training (Early et al., 2017; Hardy et al., 2025; Schachter et al., 2025; Yang et al., 2022). Teachers’ responsiveness, perceptions of the program, and engagement appear to be stronger predictors of coaching effectiveness than experience or qualifications, while factors such as stress, burnout, and turnover can undermine its impact (Cavadel et al., 2022; LoCasale-Crouch et al., 2016). Recent studies further highlight the role of agency, professional identity and goals, beliefs about teacher improvement, and self-efficacy in shaping engagement with coaching and other professional development processes (Lipscomb et al., 2022; Noonan, 2018; Rivas et al., 2023). In this context, how and for whom coaching is most beneficial requires further research and, despite its recognized contextual and flexible nature, research has been conducted in relatively homogeneous study contexts (Lang et al., 2024). Most research focuses on programs in high-income countries (Kraft et al., 2018), limiting understanding of the processes to LMICs and different cultural contexts, working conditions, and local policies.

1.1.1. Cascade Models

Although coaching has shown positive effects, its large-scale implementation remains challenging. This has led to the exploration of strategies that seek to expand the reach of situated support without losing its anchoring in practice. Cascade models are based on a train-the-trainers strategy: an initial group of educators or leaders receives direct training, and then replicates it with successive groups of peers. This process can be repeated across multiple levels until it reaches the target population (Mormina & Pinder, 2018; El-Hamamsy et al., 2024). Although originated primarily in the health sector, cascade models have also been used in early childhood education (Bruns et al., 2023). In LMICs, where infrastructure for teacher PD is often limited, cascade models have been used as a cost-effective strategy to balance quality and scalability.

The literature on cascade models highlights important benefits, including the rapid dissemination of knowledge, which enables innovative practices to reach large numbers of teachers within a relatively short time (El-Hamamsy et al., 2024). Evidence from cascade implementation across sectors also suggests that these models are more likely to succeed when led locally rather than by external actors, particularly when combined with a clear delineation of roles between local leaders and experts (Buccini et al., 2023). However, considerable challenges are also noted. Cascade models are prone to losing fidelity as content is filtered through successive levels of trainers, with only a fraction of the original training reaching those at the end of the cascade (Bax, 2002; El-Hamamsy et al., 2024). This risk is compounded when the social and cultural dimensions of trainer training are not explicitly addressed (Bax, 2002). Moreover, effectiveness depends largely on the motivation and institutional support available to those who assume trainer roles, including protected time and a realistic assessment of the workload this additional responsibility represents (Mormina & Pinder, 2018). These challenges have also been documented in large-scale early childhood cascade programs in Latin America, where heavy workloads and high staff turnover at intermediate levels compromised service delivery (Josephson et al., 2017).

In early childhood education, these models have been linked to coaching initiatives in which educators not only transmit knowledge but also model pedagogical practices and provide situated feedback (Hemmeter et al., 2016). The cascade model may be a vehicle for scaling effective professional development strategies, when combined with mechanisms for continuous accompaniment and collective knowledge building. However, scalability does not depend solely on the replication model, but also on those who implement it, their resources, and their contexts. For this reason, recent years have seen a growing interest in PD approaches that recognize workforce diversity and strengths as key elements for sustaining participation and pedagogical change.

1.1.2. Strength-Based Approaches

Strength-based PD approaches prioritize the recognition and mobilization of teachers’ existing capacities rather than focusing on their deficits. From this perspective, pedagogical improvement builds on existing personal and professional resources, promoting greater intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction (Fenton & McFarland-Piazza, 2014). Recent evidence shows that coaching based on positive psychology contributes to strengthening the resilience and professional commitment of teachers working in challenging conditions (Lucey & van Nieuwerburgh, 2021).

These approaches are particularly valuable in early childhood education given the high heterogeneity of the workforce, including diversity in training, professional trajectories, socioeconomic conditions, self-perceptions, and career expectations. This variability means that opportunities and barriers to professional learning differ across groups of educators (Jackson, 2023). Recognizing these differences allows professional development programs to be tailored to teachers’ specific strengths, perspectives, and resources, rather than assuming uniform needs and relying on standardized interventions.

Thus, strength-based frameworks offer a more comprehensive understanding of teacher development by articulating dimensions such as “being” (identity and individual characteristics), “belonging” (sense of connection to the professional community), and “becoming” (growth trajectories and aspirations) (Jackson, 2023). In this way, they invite the design of coaching and professional learning processes that value what teachers already know and can do, while expanding these capacities in dialogue with their contexts and experiences. Strength-based approaches to professional development are particularly relevant in countries such as Colombia, where the early childhood education workforce is especially heterogeneous and faces persistent challenges related to working conditions and professional learning. Understanding how professional development programs can be adapted to these conditions is essential to promoting sustainable improvement.

1.2. The Colombian Context

In Colombia, early childhood education and care involves multiple actors, though much of the public provision is led by the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, ICBF). For children aged 3 to 5, services are delivered mainly through two modalities: institutional Child Development Centers (Centros de Desarrollo Infantil, CDI) and community-based Community Welfare Homes (Hogares Comunitarios de Bienestar, HCB). CDIs are institutional settings that provide comprehensive early childhood care through interdisciplinary professional teams, whereas HCBs operate in the home of community mothers, who assume pedagogical and administrative responsibilities. More than 69,000 community mothers care for over one million children nationwide (ICBF, 2025). This workforce is highly diverse in training and career trajectory: in CDIs, educators range from university-trained professionals to individuals with technical credentials or no formal training (Maldonado-Carreño et al., 2022), and the range widens further among community mothers, whose profiles span from incomplete primary education to technical training. This heterogeneity poses specific challenges for the design of PD programs.

Colombian policy distinguishes formal education, aimed at obtaining degrees, from qualification processes that strengthen pedagogical practices through courses, diploma programs, and situated accompaniment. The Situated Accompaniment Model (Modelo de Acompañamiento Situado, MAS+) represents the main qualification strategy for early childhood educators, combining classroom accompaniment, situated reflection, and learning communities (ICBF, 2019). Since its creation, MAS+ has been implemented across multiple territories and adapted to community-based modalities (ICBF, 2024). However, persistent challenges of cost sustainability and impact underscore the need for further evidence on what supports pedagogical transformation in context (Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN], 2022b).

Available evidence from PD programs in Colombia documents both progress and persistent challenges. Qualitative studies of programs combining workshops and on-site accompaniment have documented advances in pedagogical reflection and self-reported changes in practice, alongside challenges related to dosage, fidelity, and the gap between training and classroom implementation (Maldonado-Carreño et al., 2026.; Nores et al., 2023). Evidence from large-scale implementation initiatives further suggests that sustaining quality during scale-up requires organizational infrastructure. In a large-scale early stimulation program delivered through community leaders, a two-year follow-up found that supervision occurred less frequently than planned, in part because supervisors were external rather than local (Andrew et al., 2018; Attanasio et al., 2014). Experimental evidence points more strongly to the potential of PD: in a large-scale randomized controlled trial, Andrew et al. (2024) found that professional development with pedagogical support produced significant gains in children’s cognitive development, particularly among the most disadvantaged, while increased resources alone did not. Together, these studies highlight the central role of pedagogical preparation in driving change, while leaving open important questions about how PD programs are experienced by participants and what conditions support their implementation.

Since data collection for this study in 2019, the regulatory framework governing early childhood education in Colombia has evolved, most notably through Decree 1411 of 2022 (Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN], 2022a), which formalized early childhood education as an educational service and strengthened institutional expectations regarding workforce development and situated accompaniment. These developments reflect a policy trajectory consistent with the mechanisms examined in this study. Pedagogical accompaniment, cascade training, and peer-led capacity building continue to occupy a central place in current quality-improvement efforts.

This study examines how CDI teachers and community mothers in a Colombian urban context experienced the implementation of a professional development program structured as a cascade model. By foregrounding participants’ accounts, it offers qualitative evidence on the personal resources and contextual conditions that shaped that experience. The study addresses the following research questions:

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How did participants experience the implementation of the PD program?

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What conditions facilitated or constrained participants’ engagement with the program?

2. Methods

2.1. Research Approach

This study adopted a phenomenological approach situated within an interpretive paradigm to understand how participants experienced the implementation of a PD program in their everyday context and the meaning they made of that experience (Lincoln et al., 2018). This lens directed our attention to the personal and contextual elements that participants identified as significant in their participation.

The authors are researchers in early childhood education and educational policy based in Bogotá, Colombia, with fieldwork experience across different regions of the country. The team was commissioned by the implementing organization to conduct this study, but had no institutional affiliation with the ICBF, no involvement in the program’s design or delivery, and no prior contact with participants. The implementing organization had no role in the analysis or interpretation of findings, which remained entirely with the research team. The team’s prior knowledge of early childhood education in Colombia, together with first-hand familiarity with the study site, informed the interpretive lens through which the data were read. One researcher had not visited the region, bringing a perspective the others, having been present, did not share. This difference in field exposure was treated as an interpretive resource rather than a limitation (Berger, 2015).

2.2. Program and Study Context

The PD program was designed by aeioTU, a non-profit organization, within the framework of ICBF’s early childhood strengthening strategy, aligned with its guidelines for service improvement. It targeted CDIs and HCBs with prior quality improvement experience, designated as Quality Leader Service Units, which functioned as reference sites for implementation and replication. The program was implemented across two Colombian cities, involving 51 units in total. It followed a two-tier cascade model. The implementing team provided ten four-hour group workshops, periodic classroom accompaniment sessions (approximately monthly), and virtual support to educators in leading units. These educators subsequently served as second-generation trainers, replicating this model with educators in replication units while continuing to receive support themselves. The model assumes that pedagogical change can be scaled through aligned, policy-consistent professional development delivered through successive training generations.

This study was conducted in one of the two implementation cities, a large urban coastal city in northern Colombia where poverty and inequality are widespread. The program operated across 26 units in this city following a two-tier cascade structure (Figure 1): six leading units received direct support from the organization’s implementing team, and each led the replication process in two to four additional units. The program was implemented in urban expansion neighborhoods and social housing areas with high concentrations of vulnerable populations. Educators in these settings typically live and work in the same communities, which means that the material conditions affecting families also affect their own daily lives.

2.3. Participants

Participants included ten early childhood educators: six community mothers and four CDI teachers. Three belonged to leading units and seven replication units, representing approximately one third of all educators involved in the program in the study city. Among CDI teachers, only one had formal training in early childhood care; the others held credentials in unrelated fields, including computer analysis, facial aesthetics, and human resources. This pattern illustrates the workforce heterogeneity that characterizes the sector.

Table 1. Demographics and professional characteristics of participants.

	Community Mothers (n = 6)	CDI Teachers (n = 4)
Role in cascade	1 leading unit, 5 replication units	2 leading units, 2 replication units
Age range	53–59 years	40–49 years
Mean years of experience	30.3 years	15.75 years
Educational background	Primary education to vocational technical certificate in early childhood care	Vocational technical certificate to postgraduate specialization

presents participants’ demographic and professional characteristics.

Participants were recruited to capture variation across two dimensions central to the program: the modality of early childhood provision (CDI and HCB) and position within the cascade structure (leading and replication units). Leading units that were willing and available to participate were first identified, and a subset was randomly selected. Replication units linked to the selected leading units were then invited to participate, and those that agreed were included in the study. Within participating units, educators took part voluntarily based on their availability. This strategy enabled the sample to capture both educators who received direct support from first-generation trainers and those who experienced the replicated intervention, allowing examination of how the program was experienced from different positions within the cascade model.

2.4. Instruments

Data were collected at the end of 2019, the first year of the program’s implementation, through semi-structured interviews designed to elicit participants’ accounts of their experience in the training process. Two guides were used: one for educators from leading units (29 questions) and one for participants from replication units (19 questions), reflecting their different roles in the cascade. The guides were developed by two members of the research team, reviewed and refined by the senior researcher, and piloted with one educator who did not subsequently participate in the study. Each guide opened with introductory questions about participants’ roles, professional trajectories, and engagement with their work, continued with open questions about their experiences during the training process, and closed with questions about perceived areas for adjustment or improvement. Interviews were conducted individually at participants’ workplaces and lasted 30 min on average, ranging from about 10 to 70 min. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis.

2.5. Ethical Considerations

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at Universidad de los Andes (Approval 1146, Minutes 983, 5 March 2019). Ethical considerations included ensuring participants’ confidentiality and the exclusive use of data for research purposes. All participants provided informed consent before data collection began.

2.6. Analysis

Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2022). Working within a phenomenological orientation, the analysis first organized the data around participants’ descriptions of their experiences and then interpreted how the cascade model was experienced and negotiated across different implementation roles. The resulting themes and dimensions are presented in

Table 2. Analytical themes.

Analytical Theme	Definition	Dimension	Definition
Program implementation	Experiences and perceptions of how the training process unfolded.	Facilitators	Conditions that participants identified as supporting program implementation (e.g., clear communication with trainers).
		Obstacles	Conditions that participants identified as limiting their participation (e.g., resources constraints).
Learning and appropriation of the pedagogical model	Understanding and applying the principles of the program in practice.	Facilitators	Conditions that participants identified as supporting the incorporation of new learning into their practice (e.g., including the integration of program content with their prior knowledge and experience).
		Obstacles	Conditions that participants identified as limiting their appropriation of content. (e.g., emotional challenges linked to changes in practice).
Engagement with the program	Conditions that characterized participants’ engagement with the program.	Resources	Personal and professional capacities participants drew on during the program (e.g., motivation, agency)
		Constraints	Conditions participants described as limiting their participation (e.g., time workload)

. The analysis was grounded in participants’ accounts while being informed by the study’s conceptual framework, which oriented the interpretive process without prescribing analytic categories. The interview guides invited participants to reflect broadly on their experiences without introducing specific constructs, and dimensions were developed through iterative analysis of participants’ accounts rather than defined in advance. Within each theme, the dimensions are not presented symmetrically because they reflect the issues participants emphasized most strongly.

Three researchers analyzed the material independently using MAXQDA 24.10.0 (VERBI Software, 2025) to organize and manage the data. The team met regularly to discuss their readings, using points of divergence to interrogate the data more closely and develop richer interpretations. One researcher had not taken part in data collection, bringing a perspective less shaped by direct field exposure. Analytic decisions were documented through memos and meeting records, supporting the reflexivity and transparency of the process (Braun & Clarke, 2022).

3. Results

The analysis is organized around the study’s two research questions. The first two themes, program implementation and learning and appropriation of the pedagogical model, address participants’ experience of the train-the-trainer program and are organized around perceived facilitators and obstacles. The third theme addresses the conditions that facilitated or constrained participants’ engagement in the program. Across all themes, participants’ accounts varied according to both their position in the cascade (leading or replication units) and the service modality in which they worked (CDI or HCB).

3.1. Program Implementation

Participants highlighted several aspects of the program as central to their experience: the relationships they built with the trainers, the alignment between workshops and classroom accompaniment, the opportunity to observe transformed spaces, and the program’s multi-year design. They described the accompaniment as close and constant, and valued the trainers’ availability for addressing concerns, offering practical guidance, and giving individualized feedback. They also noted that the trainers not only built relationships with them, but also with children and families, visiting regularly and sharing ideas on arrival. Participants characterized this support as extending beyond technical questions, and as a source of confidence in managing classroom changes:

“[The trainer] was always very attentive, not only when she came, but she also wrote to me and called me to ask how I was doing. I consulted her whenever I had any questions. The process was easier with her”.

(CDI Leading unit 1)

A second aspect that participants highlighted was the coherence between what was taught in the workshops and what was reinforced during classroom accompaniment. Those from the leading units emphasized that, in their experience, this coordination made theoretical guidelines more tangible in practice. ‘What they teach in the training sessions is reinforced in the follow-up’ (CDI Leading unit 2). Observing transformed classrooms and community homes was another element participants described as meaningful for their own process of change. They recounted that seeing reorganized spaces helped them picture how to restructure their own, and they linked these observations to reflection on their practice:

“I went there to [name of the model center] for an activity with them, a consultation, to get to know the spaces, learn about some methodologies, and […] I would like my classroom to be like that, I would like a science classroom […] because everything around us is science and we are unconsciously or consciously teaching [children] science”.

(CDI Replication unit 2)

Another participant recalled visiting the homes of several colleagues and noticing how they had made their spaces feel more open with the same resources available to them, describing those visits as a learning experience in which changes were explained and visible at the same time (HCB Replication unit 4). For these participants, visiting real transformed spaces provided concrete referents for change and a connection between what was proposed in the workshops and what they could envision doing in their own settings.

The program’s multi-year design was equally valued. Participants described it as allowing them to implement changes at their own pace, without pressure for immediate results. One participant, for example, anticipated reorganizing her classroom into defined areas over the coming year so that materials would be within children’s reach:

“Well, the truth is that I’ve learned a lot because what I’ve seen and what they’ve said is that they no longer want so many toys on the wall, but rather as low as possible so that they are within reach of the children. So, I imagine that by next year, we will be managing the classroom and organization well, with separate areas for games, literature, and art.”.

(HCB Replication unit 5)

These accounts suggest that participants valued a program structure that allowed change to unfold over time. Consistent with this, some participants described deviations from the planned schedule not as failures but as opportunities for future adjustment, suggesting that they weighed institutional demands, their own priorities, and the program’s timeline as the implementation progressed. This perspective was particularly evident among participants who received direct training from the first-generation trainers, across both community mothers and teachers.

That this perspective was more evident among participants in leading units is consistent with the program’s cascade design, in which only those units had direct access to training from the implementing organization’s team. Participants from replication units described this arrangement in ways that suggested it had not been fully transparent to them from the outset. Several accounts conveyed a sense of surprise or confusion about the selection of leaders and the indirect nature of their own access to training. For example:

“They didn’t choose all [the community mothers], but they took a few. And those were the ones they focused on, and our colleagues were the ones who gave us the replicas”.

(HCB Replication unit 5)

Even within the leading units, participants who had received training directly from the implementing organization recognized that what they passed on to others differed from what they themselves had experienced:

“I think those who were receiving the information directly learned more, because it’s not the same to be told directly by [first-generation trainers] as it is for me to go and give information […] It was easier in [name of the CDI] because here we received the information from the people who were conducting the project”.

(CDI Leading unit 2)

These differences in participants’ relationship to the source of training were not incidental but reflected the conditions under which the cascade was designed and leaders were asked to replicate. One concrete expression of this was the reduction in training sessions relative to what the program had planned. In practice, the model called for ten training sessions and two monthly follow-ups to be conducted in parallel, but these were often reduced and irregular. Leading participants reported up to five sessions, and replication unit participants only two sessions, a gap that participants described in terms of unequal access to training:

“We haven’t met to carry out the replication session, but [the leader]… has given us some information at times. Brief information, but she has given us information”.

(HCB Replication unit 1)

The reduction in sessions was accompanied by less frequent classroom accompaniment. In the CDIs, when the leader was unable to visit replication units, teachers described receiving no information. In one case, a leader who could not attend some training sessions sent a substitute on her behalf but acknowledged this did not produce the expected results. In another case, a leader acknowledged she had not been able to visit the replication units she had agreed to accompany, and teachers in those units confirmed they had not received the expected training. Some noted that even basic communication with the leading unit was not always possible:

“She asked me: haven’t they arrived? [referring to the leading unit] And I said no, because we can’t communicate by phone because mine is broken”.

(CDI Replication unit 2)

In HCBs, the situation was different. Because many community mothers lived in the same neighborhood as the leader, the absence of formal accompaniment did not mean replication unit participants were left without any form of support. They used formal and informal communication channels to share program information among those they were in direct contact with, keeping information flowing even when formal sessions did not take place. Some also went to the leader’s home on their own initiative to observe the changes she had made. This happened unplanned, alongside other activities, and participants described observation of transformations as their main source of learning in these circumstances:

“Since I live nearby, I go to [the leader] and see the things they have done, and I think they are very good. The organization and the space are not yet completely organized, but I think it will be very nice”.

(HCB Replication unit 1)

These accounts suggest that the irregularity of replication reflected the conditions under which leaders were expected to carry out this role. Training their peers constituted an additional responsibility layered onto their existing workload. Although leaders were recognized as such, they had no officially allocated time for this role, had not received specific preparation for it, and were expected to leave their own unit to accompany others. Participants consistently described these conditions as limiting opportunities for regular accompaniment and support during replication.

Differences in the frequency and format of training and accompaniment went together with perceptions of inequality among replication unit participants. How these differences were experienced, however, varied markedly between modalities. Community mothers, who maintained dense informal communication networks with colleagues in their neighborhoods, were more readily aware of program activities that had not reached them. This awareness gave their experience of unequal access a particular character: several expressed a strong sense of injustice at not receiving the same support or opportunities as the leading units, demanding inclusion in activities from which they felt left out:

“They held Children’s Day, they held an activity, and, well, why didn’t they call the replication units? The activity was only with the four of them [the leading units], and they should have called the replication units because we are also part of the training”.

(HCB Replication unit 2)

In contrast, teachers did not describe this same sense of injustice, but a sense of disadvantage tied to their position in the cascade. Those who did not receive the information described themselves as less connected to the leading units and attributed their non-participation to practical and logistical difficulties such as distance between units or lack of communication, rather than deliberate exclusion:

“No, no training. I don’t know if it’s because the journey is too far”.

(CDI Replication unit 1)

Taken together, these accounts describe an implementation that participants experienced as meaningful but uneven. Those who received training directly from the implementing team described a coherent and well-supported experience, characterized by close relationships with trainers, alignment between workshops and accompaniment, and confidence in the program’s relevance. Those at the replication level encountered a more fragmented experience, marked by gaps in access, informal substitutes for planned accompaniment, and, particularly among community mothers, perceptions of inequity. These differences in how the program reached participants provide the context for understanding how they appropriated its pedagogical content.

3.2. Learning and Appropriation of the Pedagogical Model

Despite differences in implementation and access to information, participants reported concrete changes in their practice, and these varied according to their level of participation. Participants from leading units named central concepts of the model, such as conceiving the child as a partner and positive discipline, describing these as meaningful shifts in how they related to and involved children in their daily work:

“What caught my attention the most, first of all, was the child as a partner because it is a way of letting the child choose, express their feelings, and thus we can get to know them better. It is not an education where we are telling them to color within the lines […] That and positive discipline, which we were implementing, only… with some changes in terms of phrases and expressions”.

(HCB Leading unit 1)

Participants from the replication units, by contrast, spoke of observable actions without naming the concepts behind them. They referred to reorganizing the space, using recyclable materials, and specific activities such as the book of agreements or the assembly, without the conceptual rationale behind them:

“I made all the changes, I removed drawers, I took away some of what they had for the space, and some of the toys that they said we shouldn’t have so many toys… because the truth is that they make a mess”.

(HCB Replication unit 3)

Across these accounts, participants engaged with the model unevenly, some naming its concepts and others describing only its visible applications. This unevenness was not solely tied to participants’ access to direct training. For some participants, conditions that supported appropriation operated independently of their position in the cascade, suggesting that the capacity to learn the model’s content was not confined exclusively to those who had received it directly.

One such condition was prior familiarity with the pedagogical principles underpinning the program. Rather than describing the model as introducing entirely new approaches, some participants identified correspondences between the program’s pedagogical framework and aspects of their existing practice. This pattern suggests that, for these participants, appropriation of the model involved connecting its proposals to what they already knew and, in some cases, using that connection to organize their existing knowledge more explicitly:

“I realized that it has four pillars. It has art, literature, play, and exploration. So, I say, yes, I am working on the same thing. What… is that they have it all separate, in each little corner […] the table here, the consumables, the game materials, and my stories… my literature, I organize it this way”.

(HCB Replication unit 4)

Perceived relevance to everyday work was another factor participants associated with their appropriation. Participants described the pedagogical guidelines as directly applicable to their routine responsibilities. The way they described this relevance, however, differed by role. Teachers primarily referred to their classroom practice, whereas community mothers also emphasized the value of the program for their interactions with families and the wider community, reflecting the broader social responsibilities their work entails:

“When it comes to disposable items, there are so many things you can do and teach children. At the same time, this is also useful for the future, so you can teach parents as well”.

(HCB Replication unit 5)

Analysis of these accounts suggests that learning involved evaluating the practical usefulness of the program content in relation to participants’ everyday responsibilities. Participants interpreted the pedagogical guidelines through the demands of their professional roles, identifying concrete applications within their daily work. This was the case among participants from both leading and replication units, suggesting that the perceived practical applicability of the program constituted a resource for appropriation across different levels of the cascade. Other conditions reported by participants were more directly related to their position within it. Participants who received training directly from first-generation trainers emphasized the clarity of the communication as an important factor in their ability to understand and apply the program’s pedagogical guidelines:

“Well, I think it’s easy [to apply what we’ve learned], because the information they provided was clear and […] quite applicable to each of the things […] we do in each service unit. So, yes, it can be applied, and yes, it can be learned”.

(CDI Leading unit 2)

Participants from leading units also described the content, pedagogical resources, and ongoing support they received as sufficient to implement the guidelines, expressing confidence both in the pedagogical model and in their ability to carry the proposed changes into practice:

“Everything I’ve seen here seems good to me […] the tools you give us, the explanations we’ve had, the videos we’ve seen. Because this is more about reflecting on the experience […] and what we can give better”.

(HCB Leading unit 1)

By contrast, participants in replication units did not describe this same sense of sufficient support. While this absence does not by itself indicate lower confidence, it is consistent with the reduced intensity and scope of the training they received. Beyond these differences across levels, both groups identified tensions between the program’s recommendations and the regulatory and institutional frameworks within which they worked. For community mothers, this meant navigating existing ICBF requirements, whereas CDI teachers also described institutional expectations specific to their centers. Both groups expressed uncertainty about how to implement the program’s pedagogical recommendations while remaining compliant with existing institutional and regulatory requirements:

“Everything caught my attention, but as I told them: here we have certain parameters, but the ICBF and the standard tell us to use other parameters”.

(CDI Replication unit 2)

For community mothers, these tensions extended beyond regulatory uncertainty to the reorganization of the physical environment. This process involved negotiating the place of objects that functioned simultaneously as personal belongings and as pedagogical resources within the community home. Unlike CDI teachers, whose classrooms and materials belong to the institution, community mothers had acquired many of these objects through years of personal effort and self-management. Because community homes operate within the mothers’ own houses, implementing the proposed changes required modifying a space that was both their workplace and their home:

“Right now, with the decoration I see they’re doing […] there are things that one has, things that one has had for a while, and you have to take them out and work with other things in an organized way. I have things here that… that I’ve had at home for years, and I see that I have to take them out”.

(HCB Replication unit 1)

Several participants described parting with these objects as a loss and negotiated to retain certain items rather than discard them. One leading-unit participant described mediating between the program’s recommendations and her colleagues’ reluctance to remove these objects, reaching a compromise that preserved the new organization while accommodating the items they were unwilling to part with (HCB Leading unit 1).

Analysis of these accounts suggests that the material context of implementation was closely connected to the meaning participants attributed to the changes required by the program. For community mothers, reorganizing the physical environment was intertwined with the personal history of the community home, changes that several participants described as emotionally significant. In this context, implementing the pedagogical model involved not only adopting a different organization of the learning environment but also renegotiating the place of objects that reflected years of personal investment in both their homes and their work.

Taken together, these accounts suggest that although participants who received training directly from the implementation team reported greater clarity in communicating the program and greater confidence in its implementation, the capacity to connect the program’s proposals with prior knowledge and everyday relevance was evident across positions in the cascade. At the same time, institutional tensions and, for community mothers, the material and affective work involved in reorganizing their spaces also shaped how participants appropriated the program.

3.3. Engagement with the Program

Participants brought a range of resources to the program that supported their engagement with its pedagogical model. These resources operated at different levels: individual dispositions toward learning, capacities to exercise pedagogical judgment in practice, and relational networks that extended learning beyond the formal training sessions. At the same time, participants encountered contextual constraints rooted in their organizational and personal circumstances that their accounts link to how fully they could participate in and implement the program. The way participants described these resources and constraints differed by role, implementation modality, and the conditions under which they carried out their work.

Among these resources, participants’ motivation to continue professional learning was consistent across both modalities and cascade levels. Participants described training as an opportunity they actively sought and valued, expressing a strong commitment to investing time and effort in developing their practice:

“The truth is that I really liked it, and I hope that more workshops, more diploma courses, I will continue to come. Because you never forget it, and as long as you have it here, here, you never forget it”.

(HCB Replication unit 5)

For several participants, this motivation extended beyond professional improvement to personal transformation. As they described, the pedagogical changes promoted by the program required changes in their own ways of thinking and acting. This motivation was evident among participants from both leading and replication units, suggesting that the differences described in the previous section reflected differences in the conditions available to participants rather than differences in their willingness to participate. Because participation in this study was voluntary, however, this finding should be interpreted cautiously, as those who agreed to be interviewed may have been among the more engaged participants.

Closely related to this motivation was participants’ agency in implementing the pedagogical model. Rather than applying the program’s recommendations mechanically, teachers and community mothers described making deliberate decisions about what to adopt, adapt, or reinterpret considering their own contexts. This was evident both in how they reshaped the program’s pedagogical proposals and in how they navigated institutional requirements that conflicted with them:

“They [ICBF] impose on us a way of decorating the classroom […] We don’t do it because we’ve turned a blind eye and we don’t have the door covered in paper. But their idea is that all the information for parents should be there, visible on the street door. But we tell them that we have a home inside and that the parents can meet with us here, but it is not necessary to put it there, because we do not have a store to advertise products”.

(HCB Leading unit 1)

Others expressed this agency through creative reinterpretation of the program’s content, assembling materials and designing activities in ways that reflected their own pedagogical judgment (HCB Replication unit 5). Analysis suggests that participants understood adaptation as an expression of professional judgment rather than resistance to the intervention. This sense of agency was evident across both modalities, although community mothers described it more frequently, a pattern consistent with a role that historically involves organizing resources, making decisions, and leading educational processes within their communities.

Another resource, particularly evident among community mothers, was the network of relationships through which pedagogical ideas, experiences, and practical support circulated beyond the formal training sessions. Participants described communication with peers, mutual observation, and the informal exchange of practices as extending the reach of the program to community mothers who had not participated directly in the training:

“Sometimes we meet, and they replicate the sessions for practically all 26 community mothers […] Then, each one explains their experience”.

(HCB Replication unit 4)

These relationships extended opportunities for learning beyond the formal cascade, and participants described exchanging experiences, observing one another’s practices, and circulating new pedagogical ideas informally as a result. Participants described these networks as a source of confidence in their role and a sense of belonging to a shared community. These informal exchanges also functioned as a parallel channel through which program-related information continued to circulate, independent of the formal accompaniment structure. Rather than relying exclusively on organized replication activities, participants described observing colleagues’ practices, borrowing ideas, and experimenting with them in their own settings:

“Yes, at least one of us won’t assign the activity [to the children], but will let them choose for themselves, working with recyclable materials, activities with nature. For example, with plants and things like that, which we have to teach them. A little while ago, I did some activities with them, working with dried plants, and it went really well! […] No, they didn’t actually do a formal replica, but I saw that [the leader] was doing it and it was very nice. I liked the activity and wanted to try it myself”.

(HCB Replication unit 1)

Resources, then, appear to have operated at multiple levels in sustaining implementation. In participants’ accounts, motivation was linked to willingness to engage with the program, agency to the adaptation of its pedagogical proposals to local contexts, and peer networks to the extension of learning beyond the formal training structure. These resources complemented one another, allowing participants to sustain implementation even when formal support was limited.

At the same time, participants encountered contextual constraints that appear to have shaped how fully these resources could be mobilized in practice. The most recurrent constraint was the limited time available to engage with the program alongside participants’ existing workload. Participants described the training as an additional demand layered onto already intensive responsibilities, overlapping with other professional development activities, routine work obligations, and family responsibilities. Several also noted that these pressures intensified toward the end of the year:

“This year has been very tough for us, because at the same time, ICBF has been pressing us about some matters […] so they sent us to a diploma course, which lasted six or seven months. We have to send work online… and that has taken up a lot of our time. So that’s weekly. Some colleagues [tell me], ‘No, I can’t,’ because some of them still have children; they have husbands, so [they say], ‘No, I can’t attend’”.

(HCB Leading unit 1)

While these pressures were shared across roles, they differed across participants’ work contexts. For community mothers, responsibilities included caring for children, preparing food, cleaning, and managing resources, all within their own homes. Several described carrying these responsibilities without an assistant:

“I was alone, but now my son-in-law’s mother is helping me. The truth is that I am alone; we don’t have an assistant. It’s difficult for her because she is helping me”.

(HCB Replication unit 3)

For CDI teachers, by contrast, workload was more often associated with administrative responsibilities that left little time for additional activities. One participant described how her leader’s workload had prevented the expected transfer of knowledge to her unit:

“What [the leader] has learned, she hasn’t told me because we haven’t had the time either; she is also very busy. She coordinates six, I think six [CDIs]”.

(CDI Replication unit 1)

Another constraint was the availability of the material resources needed to implement the proposed changes. Participants described transportation costs as a barrier that limited attendance at training activities, and the cost of pedagogical materials as a reason for delaying changes to learning environments:

“[Transportation] is very expensive, […] And it costs two thousand or two thousand five hundred [pesos that] they take from us”.

(CDI Replication unit 1)

These constraints were most evident in community homes, where limited resources meant that reorganizing learning spaces often had to be postponed until the following year. Both groups described characteristics of their physical environments as obstacles to implementation, but community mothers more frequently referred to limited space, materials, and financial resources within their homes. One teacher from a leading CDI reported having sufficient classroom materials, suggesting that material conditions may vary across modalities. This single case suggests that implementation may depend not only on participants’ motivation and pedagogical engagement but also on access to material resources, though this pattern would need confirmation with further cases.

Health conditions, whether participants’ own or those of their leaders, were described in several accounts as a further constraint by interrupting participation in training and replication activities. Unlike the previous constraints, which primarily limited opportunities for participation or implementation, health conditions appear to have disrupted the continuity of the training process itself by reducing participants’ availability to attend, replicate, or support others:

“[The leader] chose me for the replication, but […] the truth is that she is sick […] she hasn’t had time because she is always at the doctor’s; she had surgery, I think. So, we haven’t been able to do anything”.

(HCB Replication unit 2)

In sum, contextual constraints were experienced at multiple levels. In participants’ accounts, organizational demands appear tied to the time available to engage with the program, material conditions constrained opportunities to implement its pedagogical proposals, and health-related interruptions disrupted the continuity of training and replication activities. Rather than reflecting participants’ lack of motivation or agency, these constraints appear to have mediated the extent to which the individual, pedagogical, and relational resources described above could be mobilized during implementation.

Taken together, participants’ accounts suggest that the resources they brought to the program operated within conditions that, in their descriptions, enabled or limited how fully those resources could be mobilized. Organizational demands, material constraints, and health-related disruptions were described as limiting their ability to act on their motivation and agency. At the same time, participants described finding ways to draw on their relational networks and professional judgment to sustain implementation, often in circumstances where formal support was limited. These accounts suggest that implementation was characterized by the interplay between what participants brought to the program and the conditions within which they sought to enact it.

4. Discussion

This study examined how early childhood educators experienced the implementation of a professional development program structured as a cascade model, in a context characterized by pronounced workforce heterogeneity and structural constraints. CDI teachers and community mothers alike described meaningful engagement with the program: they valued the relationships established with trainers, recognized connections between the program’s proposals and their existing practice, and expressed genuine motivation to strengthen their pedagogical work. At the same time, the findings show that the model operated within a workforce already differentiated by institutional roles, professional trajectories, working conditions, and the material contexts in which participants carried out their work. These differences interacted with the cascade structure of the program, and this interaction was associated with uneven conditions for pedagogical appropriation and with community mothers’ perceptions of inequity. It also led participants to mobilize personal and relational resources to sustain their engagement with the program. In some cases, these resources supported forms of dissemination and adaptation that extended beyond those anticipated in the program’s design.

Together, these findings suggest that scaling professional development through cascade models requires attention to how these conditions shape the distribution of learning opportunities. It also requires attention to the design features that determine whether a training process attenuates or reproduces existing inequalities, and to the strengths that a heterogeneous workforce already brings to implementation. In doing so, the study offers evidence relevant to a central challenge in early childhood policy: how professional development can be scaled in resource-constrained settings without reproducing the inequalities it seeks to address.

4.1. Implementation and Uneven Opportunities for Appropriation

Regarding the first research question, participants’ accounts suggest that implementation lost intensity, and this reduction coincided with unequal learning opportunities across the two levels of the cascade. The program was designed to include ten group workshops and two monthly follow-up sessions. In practice, participants reported receiving, at most, five sessions in leading units and only two in replication units; in addition, classroom accompaniment became irregular or, in some cases, did not take place at all. This pattern is consistent with evidence showing that facilitators in cascade programs typically receive more intensive training and broader support than the teachers they subsequently train (Bruns et al., 2023). The literature notes that cascade models are vulnerable to progressive content dilution and loss of fidelity as training passes through successive levels of trainers, such that only a fraction of the original content may reach teachers at the end of the cascade (Bax, 2002). This dilution is described as an inherent and expected limitation of cascade models unless support, monitoring, and quality-assurance mechanisms are implemented to preserve training fidelity across levels (El-Hamamsy et al., 2024).

The results suggest that the differences in learning opportunities reported by participants were associated with how participants appropriated the pedagogical model. Participants from leading units tended to describe a more conceptually elaborated appropriation, more frequently mentioning the model’s central principles. By contrast, participants from replication units referred more to concrete changes in practice, such as reorganizing the physical space, without making explicit the pedagogical rationale underlying them. In both groups, however, participants highlighted that prior familiarity with the approach and the perceived relevance of its content supported their understanding of the model. Although this study does not allow for establishing causal relationships, the literature on teachers’ professional development suggests that the differences observed in participants’ accounts may be associated with variations in the opportunities for continuous support available to them. Snyder et al. (2015) highlight observation, feedback, and reflection as central mechanisms through which coaching promotes improvements in practice. Likewise, Weiland et al. (2018) show that successful large-scale implementations rely on intensive, sustained processes of initial training and frequent coaching. From this perspective, deeper appropriation of the model’s principles may require ongoing opportunities to reflect on practice, receive feedback, and connect pedagogical actions to their conceptual foundations.

The challenges observed in participants’ accounts are more directly linked to the implementation infrastructure that supported the program than to limitations inherent to cascade training models. The literature emphasizes that the sustainability of these strategies depends on organizational conditions such as protected time for training activities, manageable workloads, institutional recognition, and specific preparation to train other adults (Mormina & Pinder, 2018; El-Hamamsy et al., 2024). In this program, the replication function was added to leaders’ ordinary responsibilities without protected time, institutional recognition, or specific preparation to take on this role. Adding a training function to educators’ ordinary workload without dedicated support is unlikely to sustain high-quality implementation (Kraft et al., 2018). By contrast, early childhood programs that have successfully scaled up through intermediate personnel have deliberately invested in this kind of infrastructure, including differentiated preparation for mentors and ongoing supervision (Attanasio et al., 2014).

This interpretation is particularly relevant in the Colombian context. Although professional development is recognized as a fundamental component of quality and comprehensive early childhood care, and both the regulatory framework and ICBF’s operating guidelines promote pedagogical reflection, situated accompaniment, and collaborative learning (Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN], 2022a; ICBF, 2024), no institutionalized mechanisms guarantee protected time to participate in professional development activities or to lead training processes. As a result, cascade training initiatives depend heavily on local organizational arrangements to generate the time and capacity needed to sustain continuous professional learning processes.

From this perspective, the reduction in training intensity and the differences in pedagogical appropriation evidenced in participants’ accounts appear as foreseeable consequences of extending professional development without the organizational supports needed to offer equivalent learning opportunities throughout the cascade. At the same time, these organizational constraints affected a workforce characterized by heterogeneous professional trajectories, institutional roles, and working conditions.

4.2. The Interaction Between Program Design and Organizational Context

The findings of this study suggest that participants’ experiences, interpretations, and implementation processes reflected the interaction between the training design and pre-existing differences in professional preparation, institutional roles, and working conditions. Although both modalities participate in the provision of early childhood services, CDI teachers and community mothers occupy different positions within Colombia’s early childhood system. CDI teachers typically work in formal institutional settings and hold technical or professional qualifications, not always specific to early childhood education. Community mothers, by contrast, carry out their work from their own homes, combining educational and domestic responsibilities within a process of professionalization that is more recent and marked by historically precarious forms of labor recognition. These differences are also reflected in everyday working conditions: teachers must travel and incur additional costs to participate in training activities or support replication units because CDIs are in different neighborhoods. Community mothers, in contrast, work within the same neighborhoods as their leaders, which facilitates the informal circulation of information even in the absence of formal accompaniment (ICBF, 2024). In this context, offering a single training design runs counter to equity-oriented professional development research, which highlights the need for differentiated and sustained support for practitioners with limited formal preparation in early childhood education, across both modalities, and greater constraints on access to professional learning opportunities (Jackson, 2023; Lang et al., 2024).

Based on this evidence, a design that assumes uniform starting conditions is unlikely to serve either group well. These structural differences help explain why, although both HCB and CDI participants described their inability to receive direct training from the implementing team as a limitation, they interpreted this situation differently. CDI teachers tended to attribute their lack of access to logistical circumstances, describing themselves as less connected to the leading units rather than deliberately excluded from them. Community mothers, by contrast, whose everyday proximity to their leaders made gaps in accompaniment quickly visible, framed the same exclusion as a matter of injustice, demanding inclusion in activities they considered themselves entitled to as program participants. This asymmetry is consistent with the historically precarious and informally recognized status of community mothers. The position was built on unpaid voluntary labor, and at the time this study was conducted, community mothers still lacked a formal employment relationship with the state (Buchely, 2015). Viewed against this historical backdrop, their demand for inclusion can be understood as an assertion of legitimacy by a group of workers whose recognition within the state has historically been partial and contested.

For community mothers, the activities, roles, and relationships associated with domestic and professional microsystems unfold within the same physical environment (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). As a result, a modification introduced as a pedagogical recommendation also implied a transformation of the home environment and of a space shaped by personal history. Interpreted through Buchely’s (2015) analysis, this situation reflects a persistent ambiguity between the public nature of the work performed by community mothers and the private nature of the spaces and resources through which that work is carried out. As Buchely argues, early childhood policy relies to a significant extent on homes that function as extensions of a public service without conferring equivalent recognition on those who make them available to the program. The resistance participants described toward removing objects they had incorporated into the learning environment, as well as their perception of the proposed changes as a homogeneous and imposed approach, can be understood as everyday expressions of this tension. This interpretation is consistent with the coaching literature, which shows that guidance and support are most effective when they are situated in practice and negotiated with those responsible for implementation, preventing them from being perceived as disconnected from participants’ everyday realities (Kraft et al., 2018; Snyder et al., 2015).

Taken together, these findings add to the literature on professional development in under-resourced contexts by highlighting the importance of strengthening systemic supports such as protected time, institutional recognition, and specific preparation for second-generation trainers, as well as the relational and community resources that educators already mobilize to sustain change beyond what the program itself can provide (Hsueh et al., 2024). More broadly, they suggest that implementation capacity is linked to the interaction between these supports and the institutional contexts in which educators work.

4.3. Individual and Relational Capacities Sustaining Implementation

Regarding the second research question, the results suggest that implementation of the program drew on capacities that participants brought to the training process. These capacities operated at two complementary levels. The first resided in individual professional dispositions and capacities, particularly motivation and the professional judgment to interpret, adapt, and mediate the program’s pedagogical guidance. The second resided in participants’ relationships with one another, expressed through peer networks and informal exchanges of knowledge.

Motivation to keep learning was one of the most consistent findings of the study: it was present among both leaders and participants in replication units, across CDI and HCB modalities, and several participants described the process as an experience of personal transformation that extended beyond their work with children. This finding is consistent with evidence from other cascade training programs, where teachers trained by second-generation trainers have shown levels of motivation and appropriation comparable to those trained directly by experts (El-Hamamsy et al., 2024). However, because participation in this study was voluntary, this finding should be interpreted with caution, as those who agreed to be interviewed may have been among the more engaged participants.

Alongside motivation, participants’ accounts reflected a form of professional agency that extended beyond adapting activities or materials. They described a process of institutional translation, through which they interpreted the program’s pedagogical recommendations considering their local realities and reconciled them with ICBF’s and CDI’s requirements. Participants reported making deliberate decisions about what to adopt, adapt, or set aside, reflecting the exercise of pedagogical judgment as they navigated these institutional expectations. This interpretation engages with a growing body of research that conceives of professionalism in early childhood education as a practice involving professional judgment, contextualized decision-making, and the interpretation of practice, extending beyond the acquisition of formal credentials or the implementation of externally prescribed standards (Moss, 2006; Urban et al., 2012; Campbell-Barr, 2018).

This perspective is particularly relevant for community mothers. Although research in Colombia has focused mainly on their professionalization, educational credentials, and working conditions, recent studies have also highlighted their role as street-level bureaucrats who exercise discretion, negotiate institutional demands, and actively participate in the implementation of public policy in their everyday practice (Buchely, 2014, 2015). Our findings situate this capacity for agency within the context of professional learning, showing how community mothers mobilized their judgment to interpret and enact the program’s pedagogical guidance within the specific realities of their contexts.

Beyond these individual capacities, the analysis showed that implementation also drew on participants’ relational capacities. Community mothers, in particular, sustained a social infrastructure for learning that operates through everyday contact within their own neighborhoods. This infrastructure included mutual observation, as when a community mother visited her leader’s home to see how she had reorganized the space, the exchange of specific practices, and a shared sense of belonging to a community. Participants’ accounts also showed that program-related information continued to circulate through these everyday networks of interaction, allowing ideas and practices discussed during training to continue to be shared and reinterpreted beyond the formal accompaniment structure. This dynamic is consistent with strength-based approaches to professional development, in which peer networks support engagement, collective learning, and the circulation of knowledge in ways that formal structures alone can rarely sustain (Jackson, 2023). CDI teachers, by contrast, did not report an equivalent informal network extending across units; their connection to the leading units remained comparatively more dependent on the formal structures of the cascade.

The professional development literature has emphasized the importance of motivation to learn, a sense of professional identity, and belonging to peer learning communities for sustaining pedagogical change over time (Kraft et al., 2018; Lucey & van Nieuwerburgh, 2021; Noonan, 2018). Explicitly recognizing these capacities and incorporating them into the design of professional development strategies would allow educators’ existing commitment, professional judgment, and collaborative networks to be deliberately mobilized as resources for strengthening implementation and expanding the reach of professional learning.

4.4. Limitations and Future Research

This qualitative phenomenological investigation examined how CDI teachers and community mothers experienced the implementation of a professional development program, attending the context in which this process unfolded. While the study sheds light on this experience, it has some limitations. First, the analysis focused on a small number of participants in a single urban context, which limits the transferability of the findings to other territories and settings within Colombia. Future research could examine the implementation of cascade models across different regions to identify contextual factors that facilitate or constrain program fidelity. Second, the study examined only data collected at the end of the first year of program implementation. Future research could benefit from tracking changes in participants’ perceptions and practices over time to better understand how learning, appropriation, and challenges evolve throughout the program. Third, because participation in this study was voluntary, it is possible that participants who agreed to be interviewed were among those more engaged with the program, which may have shaped not only the consistency of motivation reported across modalities and cascade levels, but also the broader emphasis on agency, peer support, and informal engagement that emerged from participants’ accounts. Fourth, the data rely on self-reports collected through interviews, which may introduce memory or social desirability biases (Teherani et al., 2015). Finally, although the perspectives of CDI teachers and community mothers were captured, it would be valuable to complement these accounts with the perspectives of trainers and other stakeholders involved in the program, which would enrich the understanding of implementation processes and provide a more comprehensive picture.

5. Conclusions

This study examined how CDI teachers and community mothers in one Colombian urban context experienced the implementation of a professional development program structured as a cascade model. The findings suggest that, while cascade models can extend the reach of professional development, this particular model operated within a workforce already differentiated by institutional roles, professional trajectories, and working conditions, with a risk of reproducing these pre-existing inequalities instead of attenuating them. Participants’ accounts also suggest that they sustained implementation through professional judgment, motivation, and relational capacities, some of which extended beyond what the program had anticipated. These findings point to the importance of designing cascade models that account for workforce heterogeneity from the outset, instead of treating it as a condition to be managed once implementation is underway, and of recognizing the capacities that this workforce already brings to implementation. Given the qualitative and context-specific nature of this study, these insights are best read as illustrative of the mechanisms through which cascade models may interact with workforce heterogeneity, not as generalizable claims about cascade models.