Continuous Professional Development: A transformational tool for effective teaching

A GNA feature by Kofi Ashiboe-Mensah, PhD.

Accra, July 3, GNA – Professional development enables teachers to improve their knowledge, skills and practices for the teaching and learning process in contributing to the collective improvement of the profession.

This consequently, supports teachers to gain the trust, status and self- efficacy to carry out their work with a high sense of competence and effectiveness.

Effective teaching

Effective teaching is at the heart of successful education systems, where there is the growing recognition that teachers’ professional development is critical and powerful to the development of the learner and to the nation at large.

While the selection into the teaching career and teachers’ initial education are key to ensuring that teachers are capable and prepared for their work, initial preparation cannot alone make teachers ready for all the challenges they face during their career.

Continuing professional development is therefore vital for teachers to refresh, develop and broaden their knowledge and skills in a bid to keep up with the new teaching, learning and research skills and practices that respond to students’ needs (OECD, 2020).

This notwithstanding, candidates admitted into the colleges of education and other tertiary teacher training institutions must first of all choose and give the teaching profession high regards and not taking the profession as a spring board to enter other professions that they desire most.

This point is buttressed by a research conducted by Ashiboe-Mensah (2021) for the award of a PhD degree in Mathematics Education, where only 34 per cent of teacher-trainees indicated their interest in the teaching profession as first choice.

Teaching is considered to be a profession such that role of the teacher in the learners’ academic and professional training and achievement has changed fundamentally in this current dispensation.

Anecdotes?

For example, students claimed that they understand concepts when their teachers use fun and interesting approaches in teaching, when teachers engage students actively in the classroom, when teachers show how the subject relate to their lives, when teachers help students outside the classroom, care about them, and demonstrate enthusiasm about the subject (Domino 2009).

So, teachers must evolve ways of improving instructional strategies to the benefit of their learners. Thus, teaching differs from the old “show-and-tell” practices to engaging the learner in various activities because instruction doesn’t consist primarily of lecturing to students who sit in rows, obediently listening and recording what they hear, but reasonably offers every learner a rich, rewarding, and unique learning experience through activities designed by the teacher that learners are engaged in.

In addition, the teacher must be aware that educational environment is not only confined to the classroom, but extends to the home and the community and the world, where teachers ensure extensions for students to exhibit the new knowledge, skills and attitudes they acquire.

By extension, information is not only confined primarily in books, but available everywhere with the guide from the teacher. With this, students are not consumers of facts, but active creators of knowledge if teachers facilitate rightly.

Again, schools are not brick-and-mortar structures, but centres of lifelong learning directed by the teacher. In this regard, teaching is acknowledged as one of the most challenging and respected career choices, absolutely vital to the social, cultural and economic health of nations and facilitated by a competent and effective teacher.

Teacher Development

It is in this direction that in acquiring these specialized skills, teachers must endeavor to develop themselves academically and professionally to find solutions to myriads of socio-techno-economic challenges of nations (Lanier, 1997).

From these assertions, it is clear that teachers must possess the ability to clear all hurdles to ensuring that they develop themselves professionally to give learners what they need to be academically and professionally successful. Accordingly,

Albert Einstein states that education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think. This statement resonates well with Margaret Mead’s quote which states that “children must be taught how to think and not what to think” because today’s world is overflowing with information from a multitude of print and electronic sources.

Fundamental role

Therefore, the fundamental job of the teacher is no longer to distribute facts, but to help learners how to discover the facts and use the facts to develop their abilities to think critically to solve problems and make informed judgments to create knowledge and skills that benefits the society.

Freed from the responsibility of being primary information providers, teachers must have time to work on one-on-one basis or with groups of students in lessons.

Leading the way, teachers must rethink about every aspect of their profession including the continuous development which exposes them to various ways of handling today’s sophisticated learners and how to relate with them, collaborating with colleague teachers and the community, employing teaching and learning techniques with the appropriate tools, espousing the content of the curriculum to set values and adopting strategies that meet standards.

In short, teachers are to rediscover themselves and their profession to better serve students and educational institutions adequately for national development.

For this reason, teachers must adjust and take on new practices that acknowledge both the art and science of teaching in a globalized world that encourage learners to build their confidences to explore the world.

This is because, the essence of education is a close relationship between a knowledgeable and caring adult and a secured and motivated learner that is an immense priority for every stakeholder in education especially the teacher.

Hence, the most important role of the teacher is to get to know each student as an individual to comprehend his or her unique needs, interests, abilities, learning style, social and cultural background.

To continuously improve and nurture learners to grow and be truly transformed, teachers need to significantly reinvent their roles in and out of the classroom to produce quality educated and professional graduates at the various levels.

Therefore, the quality of a teacher is estimated on how much students understand what he/she teaches (Remesh, 2013). However, research has it that negative dispositions to teaching stems from teachers’ personal experiences when they were in school with a growth cycle of adverse perceptions that is strengthened throughout their school-life (Ball, 1990).

Attitudes and beliefs

In addition, studies have shown that teachers’ attitudes and beliefs influence their thinking and behaviour, most importantly with their teaching practices and instructional methods (Wilson & Cooney, 2002; Philipp, 2007) with beliefs being the most influential effect on their professional development (Wilkins, 2008).

Following this revelation, Lowrie & Jorgensen, (2015) suggested that there should be vigorous attempts to address the dispositions of teachers by building their confidence and competences through continuous professional development (Carroll, 1994; Mayers, 1994; Schuck, 1996).

Recommendations

Government, parents, superintendents, school board members, teacher unions, employers and faculty must be willing to rethink their roles in education to support teachers to do the essential job of educating the child.

Finally, the teacher as the foundation builder of a nation needs to sharpen his/her intellect, professionalism, content knowledge and teaching skills to deliver effective lessons at all times.

The author is a Lecturer at the Ho Technical University

GNA

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