Female Teachers’ Experiences in Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

This research entitled Female Teachers’ Experiences in Teacher Professional Development was an attempt to analyze the roles and challanges of female teachers professional development. In order to provide the viable insight about their journey as teacher, I adopted the narrative inquiry as the research design. Three female teachers of three different government schools at Kirtipur were choosen purposively, interviewed with semi-structured questionnaire, the information was transcribed, analysed and concluded. The findings of the study reveals that teaching is challenging profession because they have multiple responsibilities beside their profession. Further, the finding also showed that female teachers faced challenges, dilemmas and tension due to the gender most. Similarly, three different roles of female teachers were identified viz. professional, societal and familial, of female teachers.Thus, gender inequality and discrimination at home, society and institution made them feel depressed and marginalized. Due to these facts, female teachers donot have the significant space for sharing their stories to others. Time management, child rearing and caring, economic management and multiple role of mother, wife and daughter in law are the most influencing challenges for female teachers’ professional development. The present study consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introductory chapter. It includes background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitation of the study and operational definition of the key terms. Chapter two deals with review of the related theoretical literature, review of related empirical literature, implication of the review and conceptual framework in relation to experiences of female teachers, their challenges and opportunities. Chapter three includes design of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy, research tools, source of data, data collection procedures, ethical consideration. Chapter four presents the analysis of the data and interpreted of the result. Finally, chapter five includes the findings, conclusions and recommendation of the study. The study ends with my reflection which include my experiences regarding writing this thesis.