English Teachers' Professional Development

Abstract

The present research entitled "English Teachers' Professional Development" has been carried out aiming to find out the teachers' activities for professional development and affecting factors as well. In addition to this, an attempt of finding out the support provided by resource persons/school supervisors, head teachers/principals and others for teachers' professional development has been done. This research was carried out using both primary and secondary sources of data. A set of questionnaire both open and close ended with filling up form was used as tools for the study. To carry out the research the researcher selected forty English teachers of community and private schools of Taplejung district. For this, twenty one schools were selected. It was found from the study that the professional support the English teachers were receiving from head teachers/principals, resource persons/ school supervisors and colleagues was seen insufficient. Along with this, factors like low salary scale, large classes, insufficiency of technologies, material inadequacy, teachers' less involvement in the activities for professional development were found as the factors affecting the English teachers of Taplejung district in their professional development. Similarly, teachers were found to have been involved in teaching profession due to their personal choice but their intrinsic motivation and self encouragement were found to be insufficient for their own professional development.

This thesis comprises four main chapters. The first chapter presents general background in relation to the topic of this thesis, review of the related literature, objectives of the study and he significance of the study. Likewise, the second chapter deals with the methodology used to carry out the research, sources of data, sampling population and procedure, tools for data collection and limitations of the study. The third chapter presents an analysis and interpretation of the data by using statistical tools like average, percentage and descriptive approach to find out the teachers' activities, affecting factors of professional development and state of the professional support provided to the English teachers by head teachers/principals, resource persons/school supervisors and colleagues. Similarly, the fourth chapter deals with the findings which have been outlined after analyzing of the data. Apart from this, some recommendations have also been suggested on the basis of findings. The final portion of this thesis volume presents references and appendices.