Now-a-days, teachers’ professional development is an important concern in the area of teacher education. It is confirmed in several ways that there should be professionalization of teaching at every level i.e. from primary stage to higher education. Teachers should develop their professional excellence. There are some essential questions related to professional development such as what is teaching?, How is it different from other professions?, Up to what extent teaching can be accepted as a profession?, What are the ways and means for professional development?, How can professional development be measured?
Teaching is not considered as everybody’s cup of tea. It becomes difficult when it comes to education, and looks very simple if we do not understand it. When it comes to teacher education, it becomes completely mess for us to cultivate teachers as well as defend teacher’s academic liberty. Teaching involves more than care, mutual respect and well placed optimism. It demands awareness and practical skills, the ability to make conversant judgment to balance pressure and challenges, practice and creativity, interest and efforts, as well as an understanding of how children learn and develop. According to Hough and Duncan, “It is a four pronged process including curriculum planning, instructing, measuring and evaluating”. Teaching cannot be completed without teachers because teachers can mould children’s lives-directly, through the curriculum they teach and indirectly, through their behavior, attitudes, values, relationship with and interest in pupils. Good teachers are always optimistic about their pupils’ achievement, regardless of their background or circumstances. Effective teachers are interested in both curriculum and curricular activity. Even in their free periods, they make their work satisfactory. But at the same time, length of teaching experience does not discriminate between efficient and inefficient teachers.
As it is said that time is an ever changing fact. Nothing is stagnant in the world and so is in the case of teaching profession. New concepts, methods and techniques take place in the field of teaching profession. Then it becomes must for oneself to deal with the new challenges and to be aware of his professional development. Professional development means development of oneself related to his profession. For the development of one’s profession one has to keep himself updated with the recent developments that are taking place in his profession. Currently, a teachers’ role is not limited to the teaching only, but he should take part in curriculum framing and other administrative work actively. To face the challenges and recent developments, a teacher need to develop his professional field because quality education comes with quality teaching and here lies the importance of continuous professional development. Hence, professional development facilitates a teacher to:
• Improve learning outcomes for students
• Play more active role in planning of curriculum
• Develop excellent teaching practices
• Participation in the evaluation of teaching practices and programmes
• Contribution in the implementation of local, state national curriculum framework
Professional development of teachers can be done in different ways such as through in or pre-service education, formal training course, professional development programmes on large basis such as content courses, refresher courses, summer institutes, seminars and workshops, faculty councils, study circles etc. recommended by agencies like NCERT, NCTE, IASE, UGC and different institutions as well as universities to improve the traditional system of teacher training. But in spite of all these efforts, the result is not as expected because no modifications are done in the training courses by the organizers, as the facilitators are not conscious about the professional development so they remain outdated and the courses offered by them also become unable to meet the preferred needs of the new generation learner. Thus professional development of the teacher is the need of the epoch as one cannot compete with the fast generation learner with his old knowledge skills and change is a natural phenomenon. In this regard, to enhance professional development of teachers online professional development programmes would be helpful to some extent. It becomes mandatory on the part of the organizers to make his teachers professionally developed so that they can compete with the fast changing technologies easily and for this they should always try to train their teachers with positive attitude and in effective manner.
