Abstract:
Teaching profession needs to be mastered, and teachers need to be developed.
Investing in teachers' professional development is important. Hence, this study aims
to look into the structure of staff professional development practices in the Ghana
Education Service (GES), and determine the relationship that exist between staff
professional development and teachers’ performance. To achieve this, the study
sought the perception of teachers towards the staff professional development practices
and its associated challenges. Descriptive research design was used for the study.
Simple random sampling technique was used to sample out 210 teachers in the public
senior high schools in the Kwabre East District. Questionnaire was used as the main
data collection instrument. From the findings it was observed that teachers agreeably
perceived staff professional development programmes of GES as being targeted to
both their individual and organizational (GES) needs. Also teachers disregard the
collaborative, reflective and evaluative nature of staff professional development of
GES. The findings further revealed that staff professional development programmes
are indispensable strategic tools for enhancing employee performance and
organizations performance, but they are faced with challenges like the inadequate
budgetary allocation, lack of resources, procedures and methods to evaluate the
outcome of the programme, high cost in developing teachers professionally. The
study recommends among others that staff professional development should be
funded fully by the government.
Description:
A Project Report to the Department of Educational Leadership, Faculty of
Education and Communication Sciences, submitted to the School of Graduate
Studies, University of Education, Winneba in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the award of Masters of Arts (Educational Leadership) degree