Senior High School Teachers’ Preference for Professional Development: A Case Study in the Central Region of Ghana Under the Current Free Senior High School Policy

Abstract

The critical role of the educational sector in improving and reforming society and the world has aroused the interest of governments and agencies to exert substantial financial resources to reduce the financial burden of parents in educating children and attaining a holistic approach to national development. This paper evaluates the impact of variables such as professional needs, form of training, duration period, perceived impact, and feedback effect on teacher professional development (PD) in Ghana. To facilitate the study objective, we used a survey design approach to collect data from 400 teachers in the Central region of Ghana. This paper adopted PLS-SEM for analysis. The study concludes that: (1) The duration period of PD training significantly affects teacher feedback effect and professional needs. (2) Feedback effect from teachers has a significant effect on PD. (3) The form of training that teachers receive has a direct effect on PD. (4) Perceived impact influences feedback effect and PD. (5) Teachers’ professional needs impact their feedback effect. To achieve the target goals, stakeholders, teachers, and PD planners for SHS, must ask more specifically from teachers about what knowledge or content they would like to learn and their prioritized mode of training and duration period needed.