South African teachers' perspectives on continuing professional development: a case study of the Mpumalanga Secondary Science Initiative

Teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) is increasingly becoming a priority in most countries throughout the world. It is widely viewed as the most effective approach to prepare practitioners adequately and to improve their instructional and intervention practices when they are in the workforce. Despite the general acceptance of CPD as essential to the improvement of education, reviews of professional development research constantly point out the ineffectiveness of most programmes. Furthermore, many teachers express dissatisfaction with the professional development opportunities they get in schools and insist that the most effective development programmes that they have experienced were self-initiated. It appears that many CPD programmes have yet to be implemented on the basis of understanding professional development from the perspective of the participating teachers: What drives them to enlist in the programmes and how can such programmes make a difference to the teachers and their classrooms? The present study seeks to turn research back to the beneficiaries of professional development - the teachers. It explores teachers' perspectives of CPD in general and what it means to them personally and in the context of their work. We focus on a group of teachers who were part of a science and mathematics professional development intervention for six years and explore the teachers' conceptions of the intervention, its meaning for them and their work, and its impact on their classroom practices and students over the period of intervention and beyond. We also explore, in greater detail, data from an extensive and longitudinal study of three teachers who were part of the CPD programme. In discussing our data, we assert that CPD - however well intentioned and executed - will be received differently by the participating teachers because of their different personal circumstances and investment(s) in the process. We argue that the more there is alignment between the personal circumstances and motivations of the teachers and the CPD intervention, the more likely it is that the outcomes will be meaningful for the participating teachers - with better possibilities for sustaining the impact of the intervention.