PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS IN LEADING TEACHERS’ CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN BALE ZONE

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.