Continuous professional development is essential for upgrading and updating teachers because the rate of social and educational change makes pre-service training an inadequate basis for long term professional competence. The design of these continuous professional development programmes must be informed by an effective needs analysis that culminates from the teachers' knowledge bases of curricula, instructional, content and pedagogical knowledge. The knowledge bases are conceptual frameworks upon which professional development should be based. Research shows that teachers perform better in professional development programmes whose design they are part of. This article is a literature review of professional development programmes for teachers in relation to teacher knowledge bases in South Africa. It articulates how high quality professional development programmes can be designed, implemented and evaluated, as well as the causes of failure and dissatisfaction associated with these programmes. It highlights strategies that teachers, subject specialists and curriculum developers can use to design professional development programmes that they can conduct in schools or externally to enhance high learning outcomes.