The three members of the SMT were asked if they anticipated that there was a link between Continuous Professional Development, learners’ academic achievement and school improvement. It is claimed in the SACE document (SACE, 2010) that CPD serves to empower, inspire and motivate teachers to perform at their optimum. To this end, all three participants’
insights and notions about the value of CPTD appeared to be compatible with each other. In expanding, Mrs Radebe posited that although she had countless years of experience in the teaching profession, she could not say that she was too old to learn new things. On this note of learning, Mrs Lloyd made reference to the novice teachers at her school and submitted that because she was mostly au fait with various methodologies, she always helped these teachers with their university assignments.
By the same token, Mrs Ally argued that recognising her area of weakness lay in teaching certain Mathematical concepts, she sought to remedy this by empowering herself with additional knowledge. The SACE (2010) alludes this empowerment as being type one activities. Elaborating, type one activities are ‘Teacher Initiated’ activities, implying that teachers may decide on their own, as was the above practice by Mrs Ally, to participate in activities involving reading educational material, listening to, or watching educational programmes. In further exploring Mrs Radebe’s postulation, she acknowledged that present day learners’ exposure to a variety of media has armed the youth with new, innovative and exciting ideas. Nevertheless, Mrs Radebe elaborated that learners could undoubtedly benefit from teachers’ wealth of experiences. On the issue of learning from others, Mrs Radebe purported:
Just as others in the profession ask me for help, I likewise enquire from other principals when I’m in doubt about anything. I also phone the SEM, even though it’s not always easy to get hold of him.
Taking into account the postulation by Mrs Radebe and her colleagues that, just as she learnt from others and so did others learn from her, Jehlen (2011) advances that peers possess the potential to impact on one another’s teaching. This leverage may be strengthened during casual and unofficial encounters in the staffroom, as well as during orderly and orthodox meetings during seated sessions of lesson preparation, lesson observations and non-teaching periods. It
is further suggested by Jehlen (2011) that peers are a source of instructional strategies and support for each other, more specifically the expertise offered by veteran teachers to novice teachers. This served to build these young teachers’ confidence levels and offered them a platform to be risk-takers in the classroom, where they became adventurous enough to try new teaching strategies, with the assurance that they had the back-up of their leaders, as was the case with Mrs Radebe. Thus, aligned with the above, was Mrs Ally’s effort to upgrade and empower herself. She further suggested that the department ought to take responsibility and facilitate CPTD workshops that would help teachers become acquainted with policy requirements and so on. This is found in the following claim by Mrs Ally, who advanced:
By teachers empowering themselves, this would filter into the classroom where learners may benefit. To enforce the same discipline across the school, teachers must become effective managers in their classrooms. I feel that teachers can acquire good management and organisational through professional development participation….
In like manner, scholars Totterdell, Hathaway and la Velle (2011) and De Jong (2013) postulate that CPTD demands the personal development of one’s professional role, advising that CPTD ought to support teachers’ professional growth so that it may lead to sustainable changes in their teaching practice. Taking into consideration the overall concerns of these members of the SMT from DPS who asserted that learners’ academic achievement, especially in English, was worrying, research confirm that their fears were not unfounded. Correspondingly, research was conducted by Howie, van Staden, Tshele, Dowse and Zimmerman (2012) on the influence of the home environment and parental involvement in promoting reading literacy achievement in South Africa.
The findings revealed that there was no difference in the overall English achievement in 2011 as compared to 2006. It was found that learners were still performing below the international centre point, with children of parents who liked reading achieving higher scores than those whose parents who showed no interest in reading. In anticipation that teachers’ engagement in CPD activities would add value to one’s professional development, Mrs Lloyd admitted that she only took cognisance of this in her latter, twilight years in this profession. To this end, I deduced that whilst Mrs Radebe’s and Mrs Ally’s postulations portrayed their acknowledgement of this link, Mrs Lloyd’s response additionally spoke more about the impact this professional learning had on student teachers under their care, who figuratively speaking,
were learners as well. Thus, together with attesting that her professional development through personal studies was important, she argued that her desire to assist student teachers also took precedence. Mrs Lloyd submitted that despite her engagement towards fulfilling requirements for a diploma contributed to self-empowerment, she admitted that it was only much later in her career that she realised just how valuable and empowering this was. In furtherance of the above, Mrs Lloyd averred:
After I graduated from training college with a diploma, I got married and was focused on my children. Then, after my husband passed on, I realised that I needed to study.
But by then I was finding excuses not to study. I became complacent. And I was afraid.
There was too big a lapse. I also didn’t realise how important it is to study, because besides empowering yourself, keeping abreast…by improving your qualifications, there’s also a salary increment. Then a couple of years back, when my children were out of the house, I did a diploma. And I felt so good because my results were excellent.
This motivated me to carry on studying.
Mr Lloyd’s narration is congruent with the concern of the SACE, who acknowledges teachers’
reluctance to engage in professional development. This is inherent in their postulation that a mammoth problem encountered is to inspire and encourage teachers to take full accountability for their personal engagement with PD initiatives. In my opinion, the SACE’s protestation that those teachers failing to earn the minimal 150 PD points over two successive cycles of three years are accountable to the SACE for not succeeding (DBE, 2007), ought not to be employed as a weapon to threaten teachers into submission. I believe that using this threat may have zero effect on teachers who have no intrinsic desire to engage in professional development activities.
Another challenge by SMT members is to encourage a collaborative culture in schools so that teachers may be inspired to develop themselves professionally, knowing that they have the support of their managers. By the same token, making reference to the student teachers whom she mentored, she alerted them to the fact that although schools were basically required to fulfil the same obligations, each one operated according to their own set of rules. To this end, she narrated:
…Together with the principal and the other HOD, I induct and orientate these new teachers…I also inform these new teachers about the school community. I make them aware of some of the challenges we face because there are many disinterested and unemployed parents…these parents hardly help their children, and they cannot afford our low school fees...
In pursuance of the above data elicited on the link, or absence thereof between teachers’
Continuous Professional Development, learner success and school improvement, it is clear that all three managers answered strongly in the affirmative, asserting that it was vitally necessary for teachers to engage in PD enterprises in order to bring about improvement in the school on the whole. On this note of community involvement, as averred to by Mrs Lloyd, the DBE (2014) outlines its intension to build up the quality of leadership in high-achieving schools, within the context of their communities, whilst concurrently making attempts to ensure that inadequacies such as weak governance and scant achievement by learners, is addressed, with the aim of improving learner achievement in South African schools.
Bearing the above contentions of Mrs Radebe, Mrs Ally and Mrs Lloyd, it is submitted that the vision of the CPTD management system may be deemed as one that supports and facilitates the process of continuing professional development. Thus, as laid out in the National Policy, the CPTD management system makes efforts to supply teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge so that they might fulfil their duties accordingly (DBE, 2007). It is envisioned that it will additionally offer recognition to members of the SMTs’ attempts at developing themselves and their teachers professionally, as appeared to be the practice of Mrs Radebe, Mrs Ally and Mrs Lloyd. Since these members of the SMT evidently committed themselves to the CPTD process with the intention of revitalising the COLT, their role in teachers’
distributed leadership enactment, will now be explored.