The Praxis of Continuing Professional Teacher Development in South Africa : The Views of Teachers

Abstract

In 2007, South African Council for Educators (SACE) was mandated to implement, manage and exercise quality assurance of a Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) system. Key to the implementation of CPTD system is to enhance the quality of teaching in public schools by means of recognising, supporting and tracking teacher professional development. However, the introduction and implementation of the system did not come without controversial views and questions about the quality of some professional development techniques. Therefore, to theoretically and empirically position the arguments of this article, the mixed approach, which is predominately qualitative in nature was used to collect data from principals, deputy principals, heads of departments, and teachers in the three schools in one of the townships in the Free State Province in South Africa. This method was adopted in order to establish the views of teachers regarding the effectiveness of the implementation of CPTD system in schools. Consequently, based on the findings and the lessons from international practices, this paper recommends some measures that need to be taken into consideration in order for teachers in South Africa to be aware and understand the importance of the system and the reason why they need to support and promote it.