Teachers’ professional development… Whose responsibility?

Teacher education around the world is being planned for many years as a formal professional education. The paper explores various forms of teacher education programs and initiatives in Pakistan. Particularly focusing the last ten years between two successive National Education Policies (1998 and 2009), when many major initiatives were taken for teacher education. The focus of teacher education has shifted from quantity to quality with the efforts of Government initiatives and support of foreign agencies. With the assumption that teacher quality will only improve when the teachers themselves are willing to improve, we conducted a survey study to explore teachers’ views about their own professional development. The major objective of the study was to investigate the teachers’ perceptions, teachers’ practices, availability of opportunities, and responsibility of teachers’ professional development. The findings lead us to explore the ways of how to make teachers’ professional development an intentional practice rather than an imposed learning.