TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
As teachers we all know that learning about educational practice in general and teaching in specific is an ongoing activity. The field of educational practice is ever emerging and hence there is always something new to learn. Most of us start learning about our profession through a formal teacher preparation program. Since, any such preparation is incomplete without practicing the profession, the learning continues even after starting the practice of teaching. Additionally, it is not practical to expect to learn everything through formal learning in an ever emerging field like teaching. Starting from the initial teacher preparation program to ongoing teacher learning activities, teacher professional development can be seen as a continuum. It is in this sense the teacher professional development is defined as follows:
Teacher Professional Development (TPD) is ‘a systematized, initial and continuous, coherent and modular process of professional development of educators in accordance with professional competency standards and frameworks’. Teacher professional development would also include training in the adaptation to the evolution of change of the profession of teachers and managers of education systems.
From the definition we understand that it consists of systematic activities with clear purpose. The purposes are concurrent with the needs of teachers that arise from time to time. With the evolution of professional practice, the professional competency standards and frameworks that are to be developed in tune with the philosophies that govern the educational theory and practice. All these would happen on a continuous but in modular process, but always coherent when seen together. The course you are presently studying is an example of your professional development activity.
The teacher professional development is now a developing area in teacher education. There are different models that are in practice for this purpose. One model proposed by Hart J (2010) that speaks of workplace learning looks useful to understand various avenues for teacher professional development in the context of ICT.