Teacher professional development (PD) is widely recognized as a cornerstone for improving educational quality, yet traditional PD models often rely on external expertise delivered through top-down training. Such approaches can overlook the insights and cultural knowledge that local teachers bring to their practice. This paper explores the concept of humble conviction in teacher professional development, a stance that combines confidence in evidence-based pedagogical expertise with humility and openness to local knowledge. Drawing on two qualitative case vignettes from Guatemala and Ecuador, we examine how balancing external expertise with teachers’ contextual insights leads to more relevant and sustainable professional learning. The findings illustrate that when facilitators and program designers approach PD with humble conviction, it fosters collaborative knowledge exchange, higher teacher buyin, and culturally responsive instructional improvement. We discuss implications for designing teacher PD programs that honor local wisdom while introducing new pedagogical strategies, and we offer recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to cultivate more equitable, context-responsive professional learning environments.

Keywords: teacher professional development; local knowledge; expertise; intellectual humility; contextresponsive learning.