Professional Development of Teacher Trainers in the Higher Teacher Training College Bambili (Cameroon)

Abstract

Teacher trainers are key stake holders of the educational training sector. As professionals, the consistent input to enhance knowledge transfer cannot be reduced only to aptitudes acquired at initial training. Continuous professional development constitutes a crucial aspect in colleges of teacher training. In spite of this importance, the practice /policy is usually treated with levity leaving professionals not to be tuned to the dynamic demands of the teaching-learning process. It is in this context that this paper appreciates the range of professional development activities and assesses the impact they have on the teacher trainers as well as identifies the gaps and needs to the teacher trainers for a more effective professional training. The design used for this study was a case study in order to have in-depth information on the professional development activities carried out by the teacher trainers of the Higher Teacher Training College (HTTC) Bambili within the past two years. A convenient sampling technique was used to select 30 teacher trainers from a population of 72 permanent teaching staff of HTTC Bambili. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire which comprised both open and closed ended items. Data was analysed using descriptive statistic specifically percentages and presented in tables. The findings revealed that a majority of the respondents attended professional development programmes during the last two years although they were some variations in terms of the number of days. Some of the professional development activities which they participated in were conferences, seminars, workshops, observation visits in other classes, mentoring and teaching practice evaluation, individual research and collaborative research/net working. It was also realised that some of these activities had very high impact on the participants while others had little or no impact on them. The participants also indicated that although they had been participating in professional development programmes, they still needed more pedagogical and psychological knowledge which would enhance the teaching-learning transaction. This therefore means that professional development activities should be regular and commensurate to the needs of the teacher trainers.

The Relationship between Career Development and Organizational Commitment among Faculty of Nursing Teaching Staff

“…Some of these components include notably students, teaching staff, university autonomy, academic groups, resources, and facilities, and there is no doubt that teaching staffs are one of the most influential components in higher education system's content components. Teaching staff are a vital asset of each academic collection, and therefore, promoting the teaching staff professional knowledge is believed to improve the quality of education delivered at a university level (Wiysahnyuy, 2019).…”

Psychometric Properties (Measurement Invariance and Latent Mean Difference across Gender) of the Learning Transfer Inventory System (LTIS) to Assess Thai Teachers’ Learning Transfer of COVID-19 Prevention Guidance in the Classroom

“…Although health guidance trainings have the potential to scale up teachers’ ability to prevent virus contamination in school [ 7 , 8 ], much less research has investigated factors that exhibit or inhibited such abilities to transfer in the classroom setting because of a lack of a better learning transfer assessment tool [ 9 , 10 ]. Past measurements of the scale of learning transfer were found to contain some flaws due to their inability to identify and evaluate all possible factors that influence learning and learning transfer both during training program itself and at the workplace [ 11 ] Further, in an epidemic situation, the lack of a cross-culturally valid tool to quantify learning transfer predictors has been the biggest impediment to health educators, school administrators, and government official to harmonizing strategies and replicating good practices [ 12 ].…”

“…In developing countries such as Thailand, there is a keen interest in upskilling teachers using in-service training [ 9 ] and in the evidence base for the benefit to work performance from the training [ 12 , 20 ]. In the past, the aim of in-service training was to address issues related to group heterogeneity among teachers (e.g., various development stages; unskilled, mechanical, routine, and professional stages) and to give regular updates to changes in curriculum and pedagogy [ 21 ].…”