The Importance Of Professional Development In Education

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Introduction Professional development, in its most simple definition, is learning opportunities. Under professional development, individuals are open to a wide array of these opportunities in order to gain knowledge and improve. The learning opportunities that make up professional development take up many forms. Conferences that aim to teach new skills and methods, formal pieces of academic material, training methods provided by an external or internal organizations are all learning opportunities through which professional development is attained. Professional development is a continuous process, that requires adapting to new techniques and approaches to improve a person’s technical capabilities. The National Staff Development Council (2009) shed more light on professional development in education. The definition put out by the NSDC (2015) in a proposed modification to the elementary and secondary education act, states that professional development is “a comprehensive, sustained and intensive approach to improving …show more content…

It provides the fundamental and advanced knowledge needed to improve the well-being of a country. Education is critical to the development of a country’s youth, as the popular saying goes, children are the future. The education received from teachers can either leave a lasting impact or have little or no effect on understanding. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation asserted that there is a need for “new paradigms, new practices and new people” (as cited in Holaday et al, 2007, 99). Professional development of teacher is required, as mentioned by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, “to build a culture supportive of a new generation of scholar citizens” (Holaday et al, 2007, p.99). Thus, it is imperative that the teachers’ in all institutions in a country receive the best possible training and resources needed to fulfil the responsibilities set before

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