Continuing Professional Development

The message for CPD of all kinds … confirms … that identifying teachers’ agendas is crucial to learning and change; that teacher learning needs to be inquiry oriented, personal and sustained, individual and collaborative, on and off site; that CPD means a range of learning opportunities appropriate to needs and purposes; that these need to be supported by school cultures of inquiry and be evidence based where evidence is collected and interrogated which acknowledges the complex worlds of teaching and learning, teachers and learners; and, that if it is to be effective its direct and indirect results need to be systematically evaluated.

(Day and Sachs, 2004:26)

According to Hassel (1999) professional development is the process through which the skills and knowledge of teachers are developed. This ultimately is beneficial for students through more effective teaching strategies and practices adopted by their teachers. However, such professional development for teachers is a complex process and it needs to continue for a long period of time, or preferably throughout the teaching careers of the teachers. This need for an ongoing developmental process leads to the idea of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). According to Day and Sachs (Day and Sachs, 2004:3) CPD ‘is a term used to describe all the activities in which teachers engage during the course of a career which are designed to enhance their work’.

Continuing Professional Development may have different meanings for different stakeholders. The teachers involved in the training have their own view about the kind of professional development they think might be needed and they have their own interpretation of CPD accordingly. One of the aims of this study is to gather teachers’ views about professional

development opportunities. Data collected from the teachers provide an outlook of the kind of teacher development activities that the teachers perceive as beneficial for their professional growth. Institutes (schools/universities) may also have its own interpretation; the educational regulatory bodies and educational policy makers (HEC and Ministry of Education, in case of Pakistan) may have their own definition and interpretation of CPD. Moreover, the reasons for undertaking professional development may also vary. Some of these reasons noted by Craft (2002) are:

- To improve the job performance skills of the whole staff or groups of staff - To improve the job performance skills of an individual teacher

- To extend the experience of an individual teacher for career development or promotion purposes

- To develop the professional knowledge and understanding of an individual teacher - To extend the personal or general education of an individual

- To make staff feel valued - To promote job satisfaction

- To develop an enhanced view of the job

- To enable teachers to anticipate and prepare for change - To clarify the whole school or department’s policy

Teachers in the last few years of their careers are commonly observed to have a rather skeptical view about the benefits of change (Day and Sachs, 2004:11). According to Retallick and Mithani (2003) the knowledge that the teachers bring to the classroom is important because their classroom practices and other job related activities are based on this knowledge. Understanding the depth and amount of such knowledge of a teacher may help in understanding the reasons for the choice of teachers in adopting the teaching practices that they use while teaching. This knowledge could be categorized into three components. The first kind of knowledge is the one that is gained from different trainings and development activities, the second kind is the knowledge gained from practical experience and the third kind is the knowledge about the local context and the contextual factors of the educational or social environment that may influence the learning/teaching practices. Rettalick and Mithani argue that it is not ‘sometimes understood that research-based knowledge, which is usually the basis of educational programs, is filtered through the other forms of knowledge in the process

of being applied” (P.408). According to them, if we are to analyze the impact of the teachers’ development, we may need to acknowledge the effects of all the three kinds of knowledge on the classroom practices. This will be done, in this study, by attempting to find answers to the following research questions.

5.8. Research Questions

1. What are the Higher Education English Language Teachers’ understandings and views of the changes that HEC has proposed/implemented at higher education level in Pakistan?

2. What are the factors influencing the impact of these reforms as perceived by the English Language Teachers?

3. Based on these perceptions and practices, what kinds of teacher development programs would be helpful in supporting and sustaining Educational Reforms in Pakistan at higher education level?

As already mentioned in Chapter 1, at higher education level in Pakistan any formal certificate in teaching is not essential for applying fo r a job at a University level. After completing the master’s degree, one can start teaching at the university level without needing to go through any pre-service teacher training programs. “Most teacher educators concur that a college degree is insufficient to render a person a successful teacher, just as a degree does not automatically make a person a successful doctor, businesswoman, policeman, or botanist” (Hansen, 2008b:12). Therefore, a need is felt for in-service training for teaching staff at university level. Especially in smaller universities where it is difficult to attract highly qualified and experienced teachers, it seems imperative for the universities to provide in- service training to their teaching staff. ‘This situation implies that teacher education, both pre- and in- service, needs to be vastly improved if teachers are to have opportunities to build the knowledge and skills’ that might enable them to teach more effectively (Retallick and mithani, 2003:407). Such training would improve the knowledge of the teacher about their subject as well as about the teaching processes in general.

Although providing training to teachers at higher level may, to some extent, solve the problem of the availability of skilled teachers, it may also be worth noting that after getting training and qualification a trend is noticed that teachers leave the public sector and join private

universities for better salaries. Due to this reason public universities seem to be in need for qualified teachers even after the efforts of Government in training teachers. The current influx of scholarships sponsored by government for higher education and foreign scholarships are based on bonds with the parent universities and this might help the universities in retaining their qualified staff for a considerable amount of time. Moreover, some other facilities like TTS (Tenure Track System) with high pay-scales and grade up- gradations of the teaching staff at University level are the steps taken by HEC in response to the requests of the public sector universities to help in retaining the qualified staff.

Due to the impact that teachers have on the learning outcomes at the classroom level, it might be argued that the main aim of professional development needs to be focused on improving the learner outcomes in the long run ‘by changing instructional behaviour and achieving a pre- determined goal whether in teaching, administering programmes or in designing PD activities’ (Hussain, 2009:107). Moreover, ‘It serves as a bridge between where prospective and experienced educators are now and where they ought to be if they were to meet new challenges of guiding all students in achieving higher standards of education. Thus, professional development of teachers should continue throughout their career and teachers may have to be ‘lifelong learners themselves’ (p.107).