Abstract:
The General Education Quality Improvement Package (GEQIP) document of the
Ministry of Education (2003) shows that, the ongoing teachers’ CPD program is still in
pain from the low attention and commitment of secondary school principals, teachers and
other concerned bodies. The purpose of this study was to investigate Practices and
Challenges of Secondary School Principals in leading teachers’ Continuous Professional
Development in Bale Zone. In this study, descriptive survey research design was used
with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Among 59 government secondary
schools in the Zone, five secondary were taken as a sample by simple random sampling
technique. From 230 sample teachers were selected by using available sampling
technique. On the other hand, school leaders (17) were selected by purposive sampling
technique. The instruments of data collection were questionnaires, interview, and
document analysis.The data were analyzed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The
quantitative data was analyzed by descriptive statistics of mean, frequency, percentage
and combined mean to compare the means of two groups, teachers and school leaders.
From the result of data analysis, special attention was not given in the area of practice of
teachers (CPD) like, analyzing, planning, doing according to plan and evaluating its
result. There are also different challenges that face school principals in the process of
leading of CPD. In summary, as the finding of the study revealed secondary school
principals of Bale zone were not effective in leading teachers’ continuous professional
development. Therefore, it is recommended that, secondary school principal should be
committed with great responsibility for themselves and to encourage teachers to
understand the purpose of teachers (CPD) and motivate teachers’ in the implementation.
