School-Based Continuous Teacher Professional Development : An Investigation of Practices, Opportunities and Challenges (original) (raw)
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Educational Research and Reviews, 2019
The purpose of this study was to examine the practices and challenges of school-based teachers' continuous professional development implementation in secondary schools of Hawassa City Administration. The study employed a descriptive survey design with both quantitative and qualitative method. The sampling technique used in the study was availability and simple random sampling technique. The sample size was 101 teachers (31 females and 70 male), four department heads, four principals, and four continuous professional development facilitators. The data gathering tools were through questionnaires, interview, and document analysis. Principals, senior teachers and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) facilitator were involved in the in-depth interview. The questionnaire was administered to 101 teachers, of which 101 of them were properly filled and returned. The data gathered through the questionnaire were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation while the data gathered through interview and open-ended questions were narrated qualitatively. Results of the document analysis were also substantiating the quantitative analysis. The findings of the study revealed that the extent to which teacher's engagement in professional development activities such as mentoring, portfolio development, conducting action research, facilitating group discussions and peer observations, and evaluating the overall successes and failures of the implementation processes were inadequately implemented. The school principals, professional development facilitators, senior teachers as a mentor, the City Education Office Experts were providing insufficient support for the teachers. The major challenges identified were, lack of teachers motivation/interest, lack of adequate training, lack of skills in conducting action research, lack of adequate resource in conducting Continuous Professional Development, lack of trained facilitators, insufficient allocation of budget, lack of peer coaching and peer evaluation, and high workload to those who participate in continuous professional development were identified in this study as the serious challenges of Continuous Professional Development realization in secondary schools of Hawassa City Administration. Therefore, conclusions and recommendations were forwarded based on the finding of the study.
Research & Reviews: Journal of Educational Studies, 2021
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is the concept that individual teachers strive to enhance their professional competence and knowledge beyond the initial training necessary to do their job. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate the nexus between continuous professional development (CPD) and teachers' teaching competence, action research preparation, mentoring and peer observation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Gulele sub city's public schools. By using mixed research design, the descriptive survey approach was used. Purposive, availability, and simple random sample techniques were all utilized in the study. With a total of 340 participants, the sample size was 220 teachers, 30 department heads, 30 principals, 20 vice principals, 10 CPD facilitators, 10woreda education office experts, 10 cluster supervisors, and 10 sub city education office experts. Three research questions were utilized in this study. Questionnaires, interviews, and document analysis were used to obtain information. Principals, Vice principals, department heads, Continuous Professional Development facilitators, cluster supervisors, Woreda and sub city education office specialists were among those who took part in the interview. The data collected through closed-ended questionnaires was then analysed using mean scores, standard deviations, and rank. While the data collected through interviews and open-ended questions was subjectively narrated. The findings of this study revealed that Continuous Professional Development (CPD) moderately improved the teachers' teaching competence, action research preparation, mentoring and peer observation activity.
Education 3-13, 2021
This study aimed to explore the nature of the continuous professional development (CPD) programme adopted in Ethiopian schools and the underlying contextual factors that constrained its implementation by examining primary school teachers’ perspectives. Twenty-four primary school teachers from four schools participated in the study. A qualitative case study design was employed, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document review to get insights about teachers’ school-based CPD practices. The analysis of the data found that CPD was considered a top-down, undifferentiated, less relevant in contents, and bureaucratic activity that has little to do with the professional development of teachers. On the other hand, CPD appeared to be dependent on the school and the local educational leadership contexts. The political, economic and social environment also tended to affect teachers’ motivation to aspire for teaching in general and CPD in particular.
2016
This study examined the contribution of teachers’ Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to quality of education and its challenging factors related with teachers. For this purpose, the study employed descriptive survey method. 76 or 40.86% participant teachers were selected using simple random sampling technique. Close-ended questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. Data from questionnaire were analyzed using one sample t-test. As study results pointed out, although teachers’ engagement in CPD activities was found to be very poor CPD has made significant contribution to the improvement in students’ achievement, classroom practices and teachers’ professional competence. Moreover, the study found significantly high impact of teachers’ belief, commitment, competence, cooperativeness, sense of responsibility and motivation in their CPD practice. Finally, based on study results, recommendations were forwarded to concerned bodies about further activities that need to get d...
Journal of Education and Practice, 2023
This study examined the perceptions of Basic School (K-9) Teachers in Greater Accra towards continuous professional development programs. In carrying out this research, a descriptive survey design was applied. A survey was designed with Google Forms, and the link was posted to a WhatsApp group of 141 teachers from 63 basic schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana who were purposively sampled to participate in the study. All 141 teachers responded to the survey questions.The findings revealed mixed reactions from teachers towards continuous professional development programs/activities in Ghana. Some professional development programs, for instance, "Cluster/School Based INSET, ICT Integration in Teaching and Learning, Peer Class Observation, Classroom Management, and Subject Content and Methodology Professional Development" activities geared toward the needs of teachers therefore effective, whereas "Educational Leadership and School Management, Education of persons with Special Needs, Micro Teaching, and Social Dialogue" activities were not geared towards teachers needs therefore ineffective. The findings of this study provide valuable information to policymakers, Educational Administrators, and all stakeholders in Education. Considering the study's findings, conclusions and suggestions were provided.
RESEARCH REVIEW International Journal of Multidisciplinary, 2019
The government of Ethiopia has recognized quality education as a key to transform the economic and social development of the country. Teachers‟ professional development has been one of the priorities of the education sector to the realization of the country‟s ambitious goals. The aim of this study was to investigate the professional development needs of teachers and the hindering factors that affect teachers‟ participation in CPD. The study employed mixed research approach. The participants of the study were 624 primary school teachers who were randomly selected from government primary schools of North Gondar Zone, Ethiopia. Data were collected by questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion from teachers, school principals, cluster supervisors and Woreda education officers. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The quantitative data were analysed by the help of percentage, mean, t-test and One-Way ANOVA. The qualitative data were analysed thematically. The s...
Professional development for teachers propels schools to excellence and contributes to school growth. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of teachers' personal characteristics, perception towards Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and support of school leaders in the implementation of teachers' CPD at Finote Selam town secondary school in Ethiopia. To accomplish this, Ecological Theory served as a theoretical lens, and a convergent parallel mixed design was used. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 304 teachers selected using a comprehensive sampling strategy, as well as 11 interviewers. As findings, teachers' implementation of CPD has no correlation with age, length of service, and perception of teachers towards CPD. However, there is a significant, strong, and positive relationship between teachers' implementation of CPD and school leaders' contribution to CPD. The support of school leaders explains 39.6 % of the total variance of teachers' CPD implementation. Finally, lack of good school culture among use in professional development activities, lack of commitment, lack of funding, and lack of common understanding related to CPD were the most prominent challenges affecting teachers'
The Educational Review, USA
Purpose: The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the alignments between primary schools teachers' continuous professional development practices, performance evaluation and career growths in Oromia regional state, Ethiopia. Method: A mixed method with concurrent triangulation design was employed in the study. The primary data was collected from a total of 618 respondents. The samples were selected by using purposive, availability, stratified and simple random sampling techniques from different sources of data. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed by using descriptive (percentage, average mean, standard deviation) and inferential (one-sample t-test, Pearson correlation and one-way ANOVA) statistics and narration respectively. Results: Principals and supervisors were not committed to make professional decisions to offer professional, technical and material supports to ensure the effectiveness of teachers' CPD practices. Thus, they didn't provide enough professional, technical and material supports to ascertain best CPD practices and the achievement of career growths was rated by teachers, mentors and principals (M 1 =14.72, M 2 =13.89 & M 3 =12.34). There was no statistically significant differences of means [F (2, 545) = 1.950, p =0.145] at the p >0.05 level. The misalignment between CPD interventions, career growths and its exclusions from performance evaluation of teachers negatively affected CPD practices. There was statistically significant difference among the means of respondents [F (2, 547) = 105.552, p =0.000] at the p <0.05 level. Conclusions and recommendations: The practical gaps between teachers' performance evaluation, CPD practices and career growths should be bridged to improve teachers' career growths, competencies and students' learning outcomes. The worth given to CPD practices in teachers' performance evaluation should be upgraded at least to 35% per semester in an academic year. Finally, educational leaders should have optimistic vision, mission and destination to improve teachers' competencies, career growths and students' learning outcomes.