TEACHERS PERCEPTION OF STAFF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES IN PUBLIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE KWABRE EAST DISTRICT

ABSTRACT Teaching profession needs to be mastered, and teachers need to be developed. Investing in teachers' professional development is important. Hence, this study aims to look into the structure of staff professional development practices in the Ghana Education Service (GES), and determine the relationship that exist between staff professional development and teachers’ performance. To achieve this, the study sought the perception of teachers towards the staff professional development practices and its associated challenges. Descriptive research design was used for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to sample out 210 teachers in the public senior high schools in the Kwabre East District. Questionnaire was used as the main data collection instrument. From the findings it was observed that teachers agreeably perceived staff professional development programmes of GES as being targeted to both their individual and organizational (GES) needs. Also teachers disregard the collaborative, reflective and evaluative nature of staff professional development of GES. The findings further revealed that staff professional development programmes are indispensable strategic tools for enhancing employee performance and organizations performance, but they are faced with challenges like the inadequate budgetary allocation, lack of resources, procedures and methods to evaluate the outcome of the programme, high cost in developing teachers professionally. The study recommends among others that staff professional development should be funded fully by the government.