Teacher Development: An Overview of the Concept and Approaches

Abstract

Teaching is an on-going professional activity rather than something that can be mastered once and for all through the acquisition of a restricted set of skills. It needs to be refreshed and developed with the passage of time as new ideas and approaches towards teaching and learning are discovered. This emphasises the need of development activities for staff to update and enhance their professional skills. This paper explores the concept of teacher- development giving a comprehensive account of the topic and discusses the teacher appraisal system as its integral part. A review of various approaches is also given to enhance the concept of teacher development. The paper also makes suggestions to implement a teacher development plans taking into account the phases in the successful implementation of change.