School-Based Professional Development of Teachers: The Role of School Heads as Leaders

Introduction

Professional development is part of the trajectory of teacher learning and professional practice. Postholm (2012) sees teacher professional development as teachers’ learning with attention to how teachers learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support students’ learning. Professional development of teachers is a process that begins with initial preparation of teachers in the Colleges of Education/Universities and continues through induction phase for beginning teachers, to continuing professional development opportunities for veteran teachers who have made teaching in the schools their career (Knudsen, Hadzibegovic-Bubanja, Nielsen, Petkova & Nikolovska, 2013). It is also considered as a “lifelong, career-wide process that starts at university and ends at retirement” (Knudsen, Hadzibegovic-Bubanja, Nielsen, Petkova & Nikolovska, 2013, p. 7).

Professional development of teachers hinges on the understanding that improving the practice of teaching-learning to teach better—does not necessarily mean having many years of teaching experience nor come nor people who are born as good teachers (DeMonte, 2013). This is because experience does not automatically translate into effective teaching skills, since effective teaching, is based on purposeful and sustained learning and practice among teachers either pre-service or in-service (DeMonte, 2013). Furthermore, “enhancing skills, knowing strategies, and understanding content and how to unpack that content in ways that students can understand—these are aspects of teaching that can be learned and improved upon” (p.3).

The importance of professional development for teachers cannot be over-emphasized. Well organized professional development opportunities enable teachers “master content, hone teaching skills, evaluate their own and their students’ performance, and address changes needed in teaching and learning in their schools” (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson & Orphanos, 2009, p. 7). Professional development of teachers enhances the capacity and performances of teachers because it serves as an “essential driver of good quality education” (Mphahlele & Rampa, 2014, p. 3131) in a nation. As Ajani (2018 rightly stated,

Indeed, well organized and targeted professional development activities change teachers’ professional knowledge, understanding and skills, which impact positively on their practice as well as students learning (Bandara, 2018). The importance of teacher learning to their practice has “variety of well designed, purposeful, relevant, learner-centered teaching skills and regular professional development structures for all teachers to promote quality education and excellent performance in learners’ academic” (2018, p. 9). Investment in teacher learning and quality, through professional development avenues, is gaining prominence and currency because of the prevailing and emerging situations in education front, globally, which calls for change. Some of these happenings, according to Leu (2004, p. 3-4) include: widespread curriculum reforms that emphasize active learning,

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  the accompanying necessity of rapid and effective teacher change,

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  growing realization of the central role of teacher quality in educational quality,

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  career-long ongoing teacher professional development viewed as a necessity to improve teacher quality and therefore educational quality,

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  rapid expansion of student enrollments requiring much larger numbers of teachers and the necessity of finding suitable means to support relatively inexperienced or “unqualified” teachers,

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  declining quality as a consequence of the rapid expansion of education in the absence of sufficient resources, and

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  willingness on the part of governments and donors to invest areas that promote teacher quality.