Abstract
In 1994 the democratic government of South African was mandated to develop an integrated and non-discriminatory education and training system that will lead the country to economic growth and, simultaneously, to redress the injustices of the past. However, recent reports from various national and international organizations revealed that the quality of post-apartheid education in South Africa fares poorly in comparison with that of other poorer African countries. In particular, they show that the gap between what is envisaged and what is achieved at the classroom level is widening despite concerted efforts on reforming the educational system. Most of these reports have conclusively identified ineffective continuing professional teacher development (CPTD) provisions as one of the major contributory factors to low educational standards.
The purpose of this research was to engage teachers in action research with the intention of exploring how CPTD could be improved to sufficiently address teachers’ professional needs, and thereby empower teachers to make a meaningful contribution in advancing the quality of education. Ten teachers from a township secondary school were purposefully selected to partake in the study. They were selected on the basis of having had more than five years of teaching experience and/or attended no less than five CPTD programmes. This study employed a range of data gathering methods, however the main sources of data being the discursively-oriented interviews and participant observations.
As a way of triangulating in order to strengthen the trustworthiness of the research, two methods for data analysis were employed for this study, namely qualitative content data analysis and critical discourse analysis. Both methods proved to complement each other as they seemed to share the similar procedures, that is, of dividing data into smaller units and organizing raw data into workable units. The study revealed that teachers view the CPTD system as a life-long learning activity which is aimed at expanding their professional knowledge and skills. In spite of this description, teachers were highly critical of the CPTD workshops they have attended as they viewed them to have been poorly organized and inappropriately scheduled...
Ph.D. (Education)