Unexplored Potential in Online In-service Teacher Professional Development towards teaching with technology: Teacher Perceptions, Challenges and Spill-Over Effects in Kenya
Downloads
Online courses can provide a worthwhile alternative to on-site Teacher Professional Development (TPD) especially in developing countries such as Kenya. This study was based on a training intervention which helped teachers to cope with the sudden turn of events that came after the government closed schools as one of the COVID-19 containment measures. A private university in Kenya designed and launched an online in-service course to respond to the needs of teachers amidst the pandemic. The university’s Teacher Enhancement Programme (TEP) realized that the training proved to be a game changer for the group of teachers who participated. The online training intervention enabled the teachers to get in touch with learners who were otherwise inaccessible. This study is a descriptive survey with both quantitative and qualitative data from a post survey questionnaire and a focused group discussion. The outcomes of the study indicated that online teacher enhancement programmes are an uncharted potential option for TPD even though there were challenges. The training intervention boosted teacher confidence in using technology to teach, and encouraged them to venture and discover more technology-based teaching tools on their own. The training intervention also led to improved teacher performance in the employment of emergency remote teaching within their learning institutions.
Alzahrani, Y. F. & Althaqafi, S. A. (2020). Higher education studies. Canadian Centre of Science and Education. Vol 10 (1). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.vion1p121 on 20/4/2021
Belt, E. & Lowenthal, P. (2020). Developing faculty to teach with technology: Themes from the literature. TechTrends, 64(2).
Brook, C. & Gibson, S. (2012). Professional learning in a digital age. Canadian Journal ofLearning and Technology. 38 (2) 1-17
Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education. (2017). Emerging Design Principles for Online and Blended Teacher Professional Development in K-12 STEM Education. Waltham, MA: Education Development Center, Inc. Retrieved from http://cadrek12.org/resources/emerging- design-principles-online-and-blended-teacher-professional-development-k-12-stem on
/12/2020
Dol. & Owen, M. (2021). Teacher efficacy for online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Journal of Educational Research and Practice. 30(1), 95-116.
Hodges, T.E., Roy, G. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Keengwe, J. & Blanken, K. L. (2013). Virtual mentoring for teachers: Online professional development practices. Hershey. Information Science Reference.
Martin, C. & Polly, D. (2017). Handbook of research on teacher education and professional development. Hersey. IGI Global.
National research council. (2007). Enhancing professional development for teachers: potential use of information technology. Report of a workshop. Washington DC: The National Academies Press.
Niess, L. M. & Roschelle, J. (2018). Transforming teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics with technologies through online knowledge-building communities. Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp 44-58). Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.
Parsons, S.A., Hutchison, A.C., Hall, L.A., Parsons, A.W., Ives, S.T. & Leggett, A.B. (2019). U.S. teachers’ perceptions of online professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 82(1), 33-42. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved December 30, 2020 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/208294/.
Ross, D. J. (2011). Online professional development: Design, deliver, succeed. California: Corwin and Learning Forward Publishers.
Roy, M. & Boboc, M. (2016). Professional development needs of online teachers. Journal of Online Learning Research. 2(3), 283-302.
Wassenman, E. & Migdal, R. (2019). Professional development: Teachers’ attitudes in online and traditional training courses. Online learning, 23(1), 132-143. Doi:10.24059/olj.v23i1.1299.
All Content should be original and unpublished.
