Teacher Empowerment in Education Practice: Strategies, Constraints and Suggestions

Abstract

Education is a gradual process through which individuals acquire general to specific knowledge, skills, information and attitude from educators that would enable them develop powers of reasoning and judgment in their everyday experiences. This makes it an empowerment process as individual over time attain rightful status in the society. It is in this that the role of the teacher may not be overlooked but rather be emphasized as they remain to be the main contributors towards student learning. But for educators to be able to accomplish this noble task they need to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn in order to gain more knowledge, skills and right attitude towards their role. This entails empowering themselves with the right knowledge, skills, attitudes and development of competence that would enable them respond adequately to challenging and demanding needs of the modern society. This demands that empowerment be a continuous process where individuals are developed, a journey where people gain lifelong experiences which would enable them exercise power over their own practices and circumstances. As a result of this, educators are therefore expected to respond adequately to the pressing and dynamic demands of the modern world, those of the educational community, to act professionally and be able to use their expertise to guarantee successful education process for our youth. It is for this reasons that the writers of the paper looks into why we need to empower teachers amidst their busy and demanding task, strategies the school management as well as individuals may use to empower themselves and possible constraints that may hamper the empowering process. It is our hope that this will shade light on the importance of empowerment and strategies to be utilized in the 21 st century where there is a paradigm shift on the role of the teacher.