School-based continuous professional development of teachers: a case study of primary school teachers in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the nature of the continuous professional development (CPD) programme adopted in Ethiopian schools and the underlying contextual factors that constrained its implementation by examining primary school teachers’ perspectives. Twenty-four primary school teachers from four schools participated in the study. A qualitative case study design was employed, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document review to get insights about teachers’ school-based CPD practices. The analysis of the data found that CPD was considered a top-down, undifferentiated, less relevant in contents, and bureaucratic activity that has little to do with the professional development of teachers. On the other hand, CPD appeared to be dependent on the school and the local educational leadership contexts. The political, economic and social environment also tended to affect teachers’ motivation to aspire for teaching in general and CPD in particular.

KEYWORDS:

• Continuous professional development (CPD)
• primary school teachers
• school-based
• teacher development
• Ethiopia

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Hong Zhu of Northeast Normal University for her constructive comments and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and careful reading of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).