Taisia MUZAFAROVA
3.4. Personal gains for teachers
Quality managers did not consider teachers’ personal gains to be related to professional development and practice, moreover, in some cases development of a program was considered disconnected from the development of a teacher as a professional – “working with teachers’ professional development is not our direct goal but we are working with the development of the programs” (QM2).
Teachers, on the other hand, found higher motivation and confidence in teaching the direct personal gains from their professional development; the more substantial gain was finding solutions to practical problems in classes, and in some cases beyond the professional practice:
“I use many things for my children; teaching techniques, dealing with adolescent years, how to approach [them], how to assist so not to be seen that I am assisting…”
(TE4).
Teachers also mentioned the development of the personal attachment to the institution as one of the gains of the well-established professional development mechanism – “when university organizes [professional development] events for free, and in work time it stimulated the development of institutional loyalty” (TE5).
Teaching and learning
Both quality managers and teacher educators agreed on the importance of quantifying the progress to increase overall institutional quality in teaching and learning – “Quality management and quality assurance, we need to have these kinds of procedures, so we come up with certain measurable data” (TE3). Measuring the development and keeping the log of the activities was confirmed to be one of the practical tools for reflective teaching.
Quality managers reported to take up the roles of overarching ‘supervisors’ of the quality teaching and learning at the university – “QA serves not only as detectors of the problems and challenges but at the same time supporters for academic staff as well as
administrative staff to make the processes go smoother” (QM2). Nevertheless, one of the teacher educators agreed on the supervisory role of QM though expected the expanded area of influence:
“That [quality teaching and learning] might not be their direct obligation to develop certain activities, but they could be offering certain ideas, they could be identifying positive practices at university…so that there is a common policy, a common practice for the whole university” (TE3).
Another teacher educator reported motivation to grow at the main result of professional development activities targeted at improved teaching and learning, and stressed the importance of establishing a personal connection with students to become a better teacher:
“…you care about them [students] as personalities…you are not telling the same story for twenty years, you are modifying the story…their motivation to learn increases, their quality of knowledge increases” (TE5).
Expectations
Quality managers expressed their willingness to develop a ‘more systematic approach’ to enhance teachers’ professional development. They also agreed that the teachers must be actively involved in quality management activities and be the main initiators of innovation for quality teaching.
Teacher educators discussed a range of factors that would improve the quality management and professional development at the university ranging from capacity building to smaller, more personalized aspects. The following recommendations for improving teachers’ formal professional development activities were articulated:
• increased flexibility in choice and attendance
• increased academic incentives
• balanced workload
• adjusted performance measurement
• feedback and follow-up
• increased (formal) teacher collaboration
• shared leadership
• increased frequency and duration
• introduction of new techniques, such as peer-observation, teacher contests, etc.
Teacher educators expect to be offered “more tailored training for people with different skill-sets instead of one-size-for-all training” (TE1). Nevertheless, teacher educators expressed the sense of ownership of their professional development and were willing to take up the leading roles in it – “don’t expect that all your needs will be solved by the administration, because the administration does not know exactly what you want, what you need, you should be the initiator” (TE5).
The following table was designed to categorize the factors influencing teachers’
professional development on each level according to the themes discussed during the interview.
Table 1 Perspectives on teachers’ professional development and quality teaching: factors and levels
TE: internal documentation QM: meso TE: micro, nano
TE: filling the gaps in administrative processes and institutional capacity, teacher initiative
QM: meso TE: meso
The results of the study display the inconsistencies in the target levels were quality management, and professional development occurs. The quality management is focused
on meso level, having the whole institutional gains as a goal; while teachers’ professional development often relies on more individualistic, personal approaches and small stakeholder groups (students) on meso, micro, nano levels.
Teachers and quality managers share the views on the importance of documenting the processes of professional development; student satisfaction and teachers’ involvement in research and publication are also mentioned as crucial factors by both groups.
Nevertheless, quality managers tend to focus more on keeping up with the bureaucratic administrative procedures targeted as the satisfaction of internal and external requirements. Teachers, on the other hand, develop more abstract features such as self-reflection, reflective teaching, confidence, motivation, loyalty, sense of community, sense of ownership.
4. Conclusions
There is inconsistency in the levels where professional development occurs. National policy often presents a broad view of professional development and defines its goals.
Institutions then invest in context-specific goals derived from the broad national policy;
while teachers’ professional development usually happens on an individual, often personal, level. The bottom-up approach where educators set goals for themselves and their institutions and determine the focus of professional development suggests the difficulty to alight those to the nation-wide accountability, which in its turn, hinder the standardized measure of development. Decisions about professional development that are based mainly largely based on personal goals are disconnected from the collective knowledge and sharing of the best practices.
Same applies to the perception of quality; teachers refer to the quality of their teaching and set the goals accordingly, while institutions perceive quality as an organizational goal thus creating a tension between institutional evaluation and individual practices and development. A conclusion can be made that each group is performing the necessary actions on their niche; overlapping and intertwining the established practices, as well as the application of the new innovative methods suggests to increase the effectiveness of quality management for teachers’ professional development.
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