Underlying the teaching vocation is a moral calling to engage in productive change in the lives of students. Teachers must be motivated to teach and must believe that they can change the lives of their students. In contexts with limited resources and low remuneration, such as Cambodia, teachers are often not motivated to teach and do not believe that they can change the lives of their students. Teacher self-efficacy beliefs is represented in this study as the empowerment of teachers to emphasize the sociopolitical impact of professional development (PD) and can be strengthened through PD. Research surrounding the effectiveness of PD in Cambodia has largely focused on structural and personal barriers, but I argued that cross-cultural factors surrounding relational learning are a major barrier to the effectiveness of PD. More specifically, content and process can be contextualized effectively to remove cross-cultural barriers in PD in Cambodia. I analyzed contextualization in two stages. In the first stage, I conducted a contextualized teacher training at a local Christian private school in September 2022 and recorded my observations about contextualized aspects of the training and responses from the teachers. In the second stage, I interviewed five trainers who have experience training teachers in Cambodia and collected available documents and observed trainings to understand their approach to contextualization. I used thematic analysis to extract themes about contextualization from the interviews and compared these to my own reflections from the training. Two themes of contextualization rooted in Cambodia's honor-shame culture and patronage system emerged: (a) effective contextualization brings understanding and (b) effective contextualization brings parity of perceived power. This comprehensive understanding of contextualization can be used to help trainers design their PD in a way that helps local teachers understand the tenets of quality education and empowers teachers to envision quality Cambodian education in their local contexts. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]