25 Issues relating to management of Continuous Professional Development of teachers

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

1. Introduction

 

2. Importance of Continuous Professional Development

 

3. Theoretical perspective to Continuous Professional Development

 

4. Models of Continuous Professional Development

 

5. Expected outcomes of Continuous Professional Development

 

6. Impediments to successful Continuous Professional Development

 

7. Suggested corrective measures

 

8. Summary

 

 

E-Text

 

1.   INTRODUCTION

Professional development generally refers to ongoing learning opportunities available to teachers and other education personnel through their schools and districts. It is a planned, continuous and lifelong process whereby teachers try to develop their personal and professional qualities and to improve their knowledge, skills and practice leading to their empowerment, improvement of their agency and the development of their organisation and pupils. It can involve any relevant learning activity, whether formal and structured or informal and self-directed.

 

Professional development for teachers is more than any kind of training or structured classes as it is a continuous lifelong process to enable teachers be an agent for change through their classroom practices. The growth of a teacher’s skill and understanding of the profession is developed through personal reflection, interactions with colleagues and students and mentoring which gives confidence by engaging with their practices and reaffirming their experiences. It could have a positive impact on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge as many teachers feel less equipped for teaching of curricular subjects due to lack of previous experience with hands-on activities, lack of content knowledge, lack of interest to acquire the resources needed to create appropriate learning environments and lack of confidence.

 

Professional growth can therefore be defined as a range of learning activities through which professionals improve and broaden their knowledge, skills and attitudes and develop their personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional duties.

 

2.  Importance of Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

  1. CPD ensures your capabilities keep pace with the current standards of others in the same field.
  2. CPD ensures that you maintain and enhance the knowledge and skills you need to deliver in a professional service.
  3. CPD ensures that you and your knowledge stay relevant and up to date. You are more aware of the changing trends and directions in the profession.
  4. CPD   helps  you to stay interested and  interesting.  Experience  is a  great teacher, but it does not mean that we tend to do what we have been doing before. Focussed CPD opens you up to new possibilities, new knowledge and new skill areas.
  5. CPD helps advance the body of knowledge and technology within the profession.

 

3. Theoretical perspectives to CPD

Although the complexities of the teaching profession require a lifelong learning perspective to adapt to fast changes and evolving constraints or needs, international studies on teachers and their professional development have shown that so far, in-service training is considered as optional in many countries. Incentives to encourage participation in CPD appear few, and penalties for no participation are rare. In accordance with the degree of centralisation/ decentralisation in national education systems, the responsibility for planning and organising CPD, falls to schools or local authorities. As regards to the conditions affecting Continuous Professional development among teachers, two theoretical perspectives are usually taken into account:

  • Psychological factors (teacher cognition and motivation)
  • Organisational factors (leadership, teacher collaboration, staff relationships and communication, locus of control, opportunities for teachers’ learning) The latter factors are considered as prerequisites for linking teacher professional development and school development. The second theoretical perspective often refers to a system theory on change, linking structural, cultural and political dimensions of school workplace environments to professional learning. Scholars stress the need for research considering the interplay of the two perspectives – psychological factors, together with leadership and organisational conditions –deploying multi- level models. The few existing studies seem to show that psychological factors have relatively large effects on teacher learning, mediating the influence of leadership and organisational conditions.

 

The development and competence can be recorded by following the CPD cycle (below) at least once every 12 months.

 

The CPD cycle is a four-stage process in which you:

 

●       Assess your learning needs

 

●       Plan learning activities to meet the needs you identify

 

●       Perform Action on your planned activities

 

●       Evaluate whether your activities met your learning needs or not

 

4.  Models of Continuous Professional Developemnt

A. Kennedy has described the following models of CPD, which are outlined below:

  • Training – focuses on skills, with expert delivery, and little practical focus.
  • Award Bearing – usually in conjunction with a higher education institution, this brings the worrying discourse on the irrelevance of academia to the fore.
  • Deficit – this looks at addressing shortcomings in an individual teacher, it tends to be individually tailored, but may not be good for confidence and is unsupportive of the development of a collective knowledge base within the school.
  • Cascade – this is relatively cheap in terms of resources, but there are issues surrounding the loss of a collaborative element in the original learning.
  • Standards Based – this assumes that there is a system of effective teaching, and is not flexible in terms of teacher learning. It can be useful for developing a common language but may be very narrow and limiting.
  • Coaching / Mentoring – the development of a non-threatening relationship can encourage discussion, but a coach or mentor needs good communication skills for building a community of practice. These may inhibit active and creative innovation of practice, but they have the potential to work well through combining the knowledge bases of its members.
  • Action  Research  –  This  is  relevant  to  the  classroom,  and  enables  teachers  to experiment with different practices, especially if the action research is collaborative.
  • Transformative – the integration of several different types of the previous models, with a strong awareness and control of whose agenda is being addressed.

     Kennedy suggested that the first four of these were essentially transmission methods, which give little opportunity for teachers to take control over their own learning. The following 3 are more transformational, giving an increased capacity for professional autonomy, with the action research and transformative models being able to provide even more professional autonomy, and giving teachers the power to determine their own learning pathways.

 

5.  Expected Outcomes of Continuous professional development

J. Harland and K. Kinder suggested the following nine possible types of outcomes of CPD:

  • Materials and resources – provisions for teaching, such as worksheets or activities
  • Informational outcomes – fact-based information, e.g. about new policies or schemes
  • Awareness of novel ideas and values– a perceptual shift, teachers becoming aware of new ideas and values
  • Value congruence – the extent to which teachers’ own values and attitudes fit in with those which the CPD is trying to promote
  • Affective outcomes – teachers’ feelings and understanding after going through the CPD, which may be negative (e.g. demoralised) or positive (e.g. confidence)
  • Motivation and attitude – such as enthusiasm and determination to implement changes
  • Knowledge and skills – both curricular and pedagogical, combined with awareness, flexibility and critical thought
  • Institutional outcomes – on groups of teachers, such as consensus, collaboration and support
  • Impact on practice – The ultimate aim of CPD: what effect does it have on the pupils?

      Harland and Kinder suggest that these outcomes are non-hierarchical, and teachers have a unique “outcome profile” from each CPD, with varying amounts of each type of outcome. Some CPD events may result in only one or two of these types of outcome (indeed, some may only be designed to result in one or two of these types of outcome), and some may result in a much broader pattern of outcomes. Certain outcomes can have far-reaching effects. Value congruence is a big challenge for CPD  events,  with  delivery  often  having  to  focus  on  how  best  to  change preconceived teacher beliefs. This can be a very significant factor in how effective CPD is, and needs to be considered when only one or two members of staff attend the event and cascade it to the rest of their school. In such cases, the majority of teachers at the school will not have had the exposure to input which was designed in such a way as to induce value congruence, so those staff that cascade the CPD may face issues in the acceptance by other teachers of the material. Affective outcomes can  be  short- lived,  but  a  short-term  increase  in  confidence  may  help  when embedding knowledge and skills into practice. Motivation can also help with self-concept and participation in future CPD, but for 223 the effects to last these needs to be backed up by knowledge and skills. While Harland and Kinder suggest that these outcomes are separate, they acknowledge that certain outcomes may have knock-on effects on other outcomes. For example, the supply of provisions and resources may have knock-on effects on motivation; affective outcomes may impact the assimilation of new knowledge, skills, and so on.

 

6. Impediments to successful Continuous Professional Development

Effective professional development is often seen as vital to school success and teacher satisfaction, but it has also been criticised for various reasons, such as:

  • its cost,
  • often vaguely determined goals,
  • and for the lack of data on resulting teacher and school improvement that characterises many efforts.

    Schools today are facing an array of complex challenges, right from working wit h an increasingly diverse population of students, to integrating new technology in the classroom, to meeting rigorous academic standards and goals. As a result of this, the observers continue to stress the need for teachers to be able to enhance and build on their instructional knowledge.

 In order to understand and implement CPD successfully in India, it requires a strong understanding of external and internal barriers. The following are some such barriers:

 

1. It is a top down approach

The authorities decide what the teacher educators need to learn. Therefore, most educators resist it and yet go through it lest they invite negative consequences for themselves. If this is the case, it goes against the very fundamentals of what learning is. For any serious learning, the learner engagement is an absolute necessity. If we further reflect on the scenario, this is how education is practiced in schools – Transferring information and knowledge to students who are unwilling to learn.

 

2. The approach to training is mostly didactic and prescriptive

It may sound very erudite and one may get the feeling of becoming knowledgeable. But its take home effect and the ability to put it into practice is negligible. Just getting informed does not suffice for the purpose of professio nal development.

 

3. Fault finding and insensitive attitude

Often professional development efforts are clinical and find fault with the present practices. This will only serve to further dis-empower the teacher educators. If this is so, it would be like the treatment becoming worse than the disease itself. This is not to deny the fact that there are things that need to be changed.

 

4. They are ‘one time affair’

Professional development offered by the central and state government tends to focus on mass training-based solutions, often through large-scale cascade models which provide limited scope for need-based and flexible inputs. The skills and experience of the teacher educators is variable and the lecture method tends to dominate, but, more critically, follow-up and school based support is rare.

 

5. Maintaining the enthusiasm of personnel imple menting the teacher professional development programmes

Pre-service training at the moment is theory-based and teachers come out ill-equipped to handle day-to-day classroom realities and receive no encouragement to personally invest in their own development. Adding to it, the scale involved and the lack of time and incentives for teachers to take it up, CPD can seem like an insurmountable mountain.

 

6. Motivational level of Teachers

It is the teacher who decides to undertake the CPD journey. Policies, research material and a supportive environment only support an individual’s choice. The central stakeholder in all CPD is, therefore, always going to be the teacher. In a country where teacher motivation levels are extremely low, and where the concept of critical reflection is weak, this is a significant challenge.

 

As if that wasn’t enough, internal barriers include a constantly changing environment, in terms of policy changes and government interventions; the overall notion of good practice not being sufficiently understood, or understandably varying across the diverse contexts within India; and the need to constantly maintain a strong understanding of policy, which changes very fast. School teachers within the government system are often not qualified. This complex backdrop means that it is essential to work for Continuous professional development with different stakeholders at national and regional level so as to change, as well as challenge the prevailing perceptions about CPD. It also means working practically on the ground, and finding out ways to support and nurture CPD.

Professional development impacts student achievement through three steps:

 

1.  Professional development enhances teacher’s knowledge and skills.

 

2.  Better knowledge and skills improve the classroom teaching.

 

3.  Improved teaching raises student achievement.

 

If one link is weak or missing, better student learning cannot be expected. If a teacher fails to apply new ideas from professional development to classroom instruction, then the students will not benefit from teacher’s professional development.

 

Five challenges to achieving and sustaining social and intellectual engagement in implementing professional development for school improvement:

 

(1)  Introducing new activities in ways that inspire buy- in;

 

(2)  Balancing principal control with teacher autonomy;

 

(3)  Committing to ambitious goals;

 

(4)  Maintaining industriousness in pursuit of those goals;

 

(5)  Effectively harvesting and sustaining the gains.

 

Failure to successfully address the first three challenges is among the reasons professional development programs fail. By successfully addressing these five challenges in implementing professional learning programs, school leaders can effectively improve instruction in their schools.

 

Any commitment to change has to acknowledge, embrace and be continuously solution-based. The question is how seriously it is being pursued and with what results. We only need to look at the results to decide what processes need to be put in place. Anything that we do needs to be goal oriented. Are our present efforts giving us the results in terms of the goals which we have set? If they do not and yet we continue with them, it is mere ritualism. If we do the same things over and over, we only get the same results. So if we want different results, we need to change our actions.

 

7. Suggested corrective measures

In order to be transformative, strategic professional development needs to be 50 hours or more plus less formal and should involve ongoing interaction and peer engagement to refine skills and model successes. It must also be tailored to the subject, grade level and type of student. The forms of support to facilitate teachers’ professional development can consist of paid working time and substitutions (often discouraged for budget and organisational reasons), funding of CPD costs sustained by teachers, salary incentives, CPD as a condition for salary progression and promotion, national policies and campaigns.

There are a few things that may be pointed out with regard to our present efforts with the continuing education of teacher educators.

 

1. Development of Intra-personal skills

All of us have a personal or ‘inner side’ as well as an ‘outer side’ that is represented by our actions and behaviours. The two are intertwined. It is the inside that is the cause of the outside. The reality of our experience is totally subjective. All our actions and the results that we produce are in terms of the persons that we are. That is, all our behaviours are ‘inside – out’, but the illusion under which we live is the ‘outside – in’ paradigm, that is, we believe that our behaviors are caused by others and the situations. The tipping point is when we realise that all our behaviours are caused from the inside, and give away our ‘outside – in’ explanation. Doing so is totally transformative and empowering.

 

There is a lot of work that we need to do within our inner side, which consists of our thoughts, beliefs ,feelings and emotions, drives, motivations, aspirations, interests, values and principles, attitudes and commitments and so on. This is the engine/energy that drives us to do or not to do or how to do things. Working with the inner side leads to self- growth and self-empowerment. Education has neither acknowledged its importance so far nor attempted to develop it in a systematic way. Maslow had acknowledged that the problems that we face both as persons and as humanity is because people are not growing as persons.

 

2. Development of interpersonal / facilitative attitudes and skills

Teaching is as much or even more about learning to relate to students as it is about imparting knowledge and skills. Therefore, it goes without saying that the teacher educators’ interpersonal skills and attitudes, what we usually refer to as facilitative skills, are crucially important for an effective educator. When students resist learning, whether it is in the primary classes or postgraduate classes, it is often that they are resisting the teacher. If we observe the use of teacher power in the classroom, it is most of the time authoritarian or patronising, both of which inhibit and suppress students. If education is the cultivation of the whole child, the teacher needs to have the skills of facilitation for students’ overall growth and learning. Often it is the socio-emotional issues that the students are faced with that stand in the way of their academic learning.

 

3. Development of academic and pedagogic competence

Learning to teach is a lifelong developmental process and one gradually discovers one’s own style through training and learning through reflection as well as critical inquiry. Training is a process that amplifies and provides a context for learning in the three main areas, namely,

 

● Subject content and how to apply them (the knowledge base of teaching)

 

● Skills of teaching and learning the best practices (the Pedagogical base of teaching)

 

● Attitudes and values (the facilitative basis of teaching)

 

4.  Go digital

Teachers must immerse themselves in technology if they want to offer novel, engaging learning methods to students. Digital content consumption is just the first step towards a technology-enabled education. Teachers must learn to create digital content and participate in the vast online knowledge society. They can then help students do the same responsibly and constructively.

 

To start with, familiarise yourself with social media, wikis, and blogs. Why not blog (whenever you can) about your teaching experiences in the classroom? Blogs allow for reflection on what we do every day and give us a wider perspective on what works and what doesn’t in the classroom.

    The Internet offers other interesting as well as engaging teaching aids such as info graphics, images and video content, besides critical articles, studies and information on virtually any topic.

 

5. Teacher Development Groups

Join a teacher development group at your school or in your city. A support group that offers informed opinion and critiquing one’s work can be invaluable. Many teachers find mentors in such groups. Mentoring junior teachers can enrich your own growth.

 

Teacher Development Groups are ideal forums to present successes and learn from failures. They offer networking opportunities, whether within the school, in the larger community outside, those supported by the education boards, or communities online.

 

6. Seek out PD opportunities through school programs

Progressive schools have recognised that continuous teacher training is essential and are fitting in regular training hours for teachers in the calendar similar to corporates. The transformation is being felt in many schools as newly empowered teachers reach out and change their classrooms and students. Schools have found that getting their own teachers trained to deliver learning programs reap more long term benefits, rather than asking for a ‘resource person’ from the vendor. Teachers enhance their knowledge base from such on-the-job training. The school benefits with better integration.

 

7. Learn relevant new skills

century   skills”    –    learning   and   innovation   skills    such   as    communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking (the 4Cs) and others – are as vital for teachers as they are for students. If teachers do not recognise what the skills are and how to integrate them into the school curriculum, how can they teach children? Besides the 4Cs, the list includes information media and ICT literacy, and life and career skills such as flexibility and adaptability. These are vital for our students’ future success in life and work in the 21st century. Teachers must equip themselves with these skills and facilitate the environment and learning for children to acquire them.

 

8. Start a portfolio

A portfolio is vital for every teacher’s CPD. Besides recording all relevant personal information such as qualifications, employment history and CV, it may contain records and reflective commentaries of CPD activities, plans for development, self-evaluation of professional competencies and illustrations of skills and abilities. It is a handy resource when talking to mentors or school management, and a record of your personal CPD journey and growth as a teacher.

 

9. CPD online

The Internet offers many structured CPD programs and certifications that can be done at one’s own time and pace, without missing school – particularly attractive for school management, who may hesitate to let teachers go away for CPD during the academic year. Online CPD programs can be highly targeted and subject specific.

 

10. Networking opportunities

Many education and learning conferences, conventions and meetings are being held in our country that focus on the teaching profession and offer seminars, panel discussions and paper presentations on the latest developments in the field.

The school’s management should encourage teachers on attending such events, where they can learn about the latest developments, skills and pedagogies, and network with other professionals.

 

8. Summary

In order to sustain and grow in the teaching profession, the role of CPD programmes cannot be overemphasised. It needs to be ensured that teachers who are involved in developing their professional capacities are motivated to contribute and to learn from these programmes so that they can implement these in their classrooms.

 

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