Teachers' perceptions of professional development

Abstract

Professional development for teachers has taken on a new sense of importance and urgency in the light of rapid and wide-scale educational reforms in Singapore. The need to continually upgrade teachers knowledge, skills and abilities has never been more pressing. Given the impact of teachers quality on the outcome of student learning and hence the success of the entire educational enterprise, professional development as the key to enhancing the quality of teachers and teaching must only deserve greater attention from all interested parties, including policy-makers, administrators, educators and researchers. Some concrete measures have been recently implemented to address the critical issue of growing professional development needs among Singapore teachers. However, there is a lack of study and literature on this area in the local context, especially with regard to teachers perceptions of their professional development. Therefore, this research was initiated to explore how teachers perceive various aspects of professional development and to gain a better understanding of the condition of teacher professional development in the Singapore educational context.