Abstract
M. Ed.
Professional Teacher Development (PTD) is an ingredient essential to the creation of
effective schools, positively impacting learners’ performance and enhancing teachers’
knowledge, skills and attitudes, which are imperative in improving leaner
performance. Effective PTD requires considerable time, must be well organised, be
carefully structured, purposefully directed and focused on both content and
pedagogy. It should be cost effective, in terms of time and effort persistent to
teachers’ needs, relevant, practical and educationally sound. It is not a single stroke;
one must work hard so as to attain mastery. PTD is an effective transfer of
knowledge-sharing from within the institution, supporting critical junctures in its
networks, ensuring integration within the externally. When carried out correctly, it is
the key to ‘recharging’ teaches, giving them the tool they need. Principals are being
challenged about what constitutes quality in education, and are forced to make efforts
to change the status quo – instead of cocooning themselves in isolation. They have
to design coherent and purposeful programmes effecting learning which is
accompanied by change in behaviour, perception, thinking, beliefs, values, and
awareness. It also will alter insight, and involve new patterns of operation, new
strategies and new procedures. A structural PTD is determined by the specific
institution’s context, helping to overcome teachers’ negative reaction to school-based
PTD. They will be changed in major ways, both in terms of their teaching practices
and their personal behaviour as there is no substitute for on-the-job learning with
opportunities to reflect on action. One potential way to enhance PTD is to utilise
constructivist strategies with the teacher. For PTD to be effective and bring
improvement within the institution, the teachers should meet regularly to explore
common problems and seek solutions based on shared experiences and collective
wisdom. School-based PTD will cause DCS teachers to shift cultural paradigms, instil
new values and goals, and help shape their professional identity, taking the microenvironment
of DCS into cognisance. A good PTD needs to be mindful of connecting
good theory to classroom practices, as quality PTD is the vehicle for providing the
knowledge needed to support effective teaching – an adult institution. No
improvement efforts can succeed in the absence of thoughtfully planned and wellimplemented
PTD.