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Alexandru Ioan Cuza Univeristy of Iai

Faculty of Psychology and Science Education




Dynamics of Continuous Professional
Development policies of teachers in the European
context
Abstract




Supervisor:
Prof. univ. dr. Carmen CREU
PhD Student: Livia OSTAFE







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Introduction
This paper is addressed from two perspectives, theoretical and practical approach, which
intends to clarify the importance of the result of the process of training and career development
staff to identify the main differences and similarities between Romania and one of the most
developed states of Europe, namely the United Kingdom.
The theme is divided into five main chapters, the first two being purely theoretical
investigation of the issues proposed, specifically, the process of European training and the last
three chapters are reserved for both theory and practical applications that have the ultimate goal
of identifying training needs of teachers, identify the quality of professional development
programs and training of Romania and the UK.
The first chapter entitled Theoretical and practical boundaries of teachers training in
the European Union is considering the conceptual clarification of terms to be used in this work.
It is also addressed the issues of professional standards for teaching career, taking into
consideration the professional qualification standards imposed at the European level.
However, the first chapter presents principles and models of professional development of
teachers recalling theories of Menter (2010), Lesne (1977), Lockhead, MA, Verspoor AM,
(1991), Lomax, D., (1972), Lort, D ., (1975), Loughran, J. (2006), Dempster, N., MacBeath, J.,
Oduro, G., Waterhouse, J., (2004), clubs, I., (1998), piles, A., Wedel, M., (2007), Mazurek, K.,
Winzer, M., Majorek C., (1999), McLaughlin, C., (2013), MW Oberman, I., (1996), Menter, I.,
Hulme, M., Elliot, D., (2010), Tardif, M., Lessard, C., (2005), Tatto, MT, (2008), E. Cummings,
J. Williams, ( 2008) Taylor, J. Dale, I., Brimer, M., (1971), The Bristish Council (1996), TIBB J.
(1971), tinning, R., (2000), Scott A. Freeman-Moir, J. (2000), Tudose, C., (2005), Turner, RL,
(1967), Vaizey, J. (1969) Vinovskis, M., (1999), Wideen, MF, Grimmet, PP, (1995), Wragg, EC,
(1974), Wubbels, T., (1993) and other specialists focused on the professional development of
teachers.
The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the concepts that are used throughout this paper.
The complementarities of definitions, diversity and complexity of the approaches led us to
realize a terminological and conceptual analysis by presenting the definitions and descriptions of
components and a series of correlative terms. The studies, articles and works consulted indicate
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the presence of several concepts that designate, in fact, the same core meaning of the terms
training and professional development.
We also distinguish between training and professional development, stating that training is
conceptual development that includes initial and continuing training. As the second part of the
first chapter we identify challenges of authors (some listed above) relate to this component
writing.
The second chapter is entitled "Policies for Professionalization of Teachers in Europe"
and it is a complex chapter divided in eight subchapters. The chapter will capture the general
aspects of the policies of the teacher training, European policy formation process and the size
and characteristics of it.
The chapter also debates the principles and models of training, Lang (1999) and aspects of
teachers professional identity.
The last three subchapters deal with the status of the professional development of
teachers in every state of the European Union. To achieve this we studied and analyzed the
reports OECD, Eurydice, the reports issued by the European Commission, as we bring to your
attention how to deal with the process of development and didactic training in Europe.
In the last subchapter we will focus on the dynamics of teachers. Furthermore, we
analyze teacher education reform after 1990. Imperative professionalism implies commitment
and the school should take it to students, colleagues and the community to right. All teachers,
educators, trainers have a professional obligation to improve the quality of education in relation
to standards.
The third chapter, entitled "Professional Development of Teachers in the UK" treats education
training for teachers in the UK. The first subchapter stops at the history of teacher education.
J. Tuck (1972) points out that the in the early nineteenth century, the education
department of the university was focused on teacher training, the initial one being offered by
colleges of teacher education. In 1886 almost 50% of all teachers were trained in these colleges.
The 43 training colleges for teachers were originally (1890) based on religious principles and
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prospective teachers were chosen from among students who attended schools founded by the
Church.
In the following subchapters we have outlined and explained what the Qualified Teacher Status
(QTS) is what professional development policies are for the British educators.
The OFSTED framework was the subject of the third chapter. The chapter deals with the
issue of Educational Leadership distinguishing clearly between the leadership of the British type,
which refers to the management of classroom activity and leadership of American type, which
refers to the administrative and managerial education component.
In the last part of chapter three, we presented a case study Barnwell School - considering the
training at a school in the UK. The study captures the idea of professional identity, cultural
context and professional learning in a school in the UK.
The fourth chapter of this work, entitled Policies for professional training of teachers in
Romania, deals with issues of both professional development of teachers and of factors that
may influence the teacher's job satisfaction. The 128/1997 Law on the status of teachers is, along
with 84/1995 Education Law, republished, laws base from which we started the design of
standards of the teaching profession. In this chapter we will analyze the standards for the
teaching profession, imposed by law.
The empirical research approach of this chapter aims to highlight both the training needs
of educators in Romania and determining the weaknesses and strengths of the process and the
training of teachers. To this end we opted for the application of qualitative focus group method,
and the results were recorded in a SWOT table.
Chapter five "Comparative Study of the Perception on the professional development of
Teachers in the UK and Romania" aims a comparative study of the perception of teachers in UK
and Romania on the process of teachers training. The study used a qualitative interview method.
Teachers were interviewed both in the UK (the Hertforshire) and in Romania (Iasi). Please note
that we chose as participants in this study schools with good or very good reputation an results,
from both countries, because ultimately we want to create a best practice guide for teachers.
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At the end of the paper we find the final conclusions and some proposals for policymakers.
Many of the articles and works consulted were a foundation for outlining the objectives and
investigative approaches to interesting issues for our future research directions.
The work is divided in 5 chapters. The first chapters objective is the theoretical approach
of the used concepts during this investigative endeavor; the second is centered on the
identification of the process of professional development in the states of the European Union.
The third chapters objective is that of presenting a case study which clearly underlines what
development and professional training mean in a school with a powerful context based on the
didactic career. The fourth chapter is focused on the situation of professional development of
teachers in Romania, the chapter ends with the analysis of training needs for the Romanian
teachers and the SWOT analysis of the usefulness of professional development programs which
exist in Romania.
The diversity of approaches, their complexity and, sometimes, the complementary
character of definitions and term descriptions such as lifelong learning, professionalism have
been the ones which determined us to re-analyze a terminological and conceptual analysis, by
also presenting a series of co-relative terms, besides the ones that we have previously mentioned
(professional development, professional training, educational leadership, professional
evaluation, professional satisfaction). We have noticed that the studied research works, articles
and analyses indicate the presence of several concepts which practically refer to the same
nucleus of meaning just like the term professionalization. This fact has been established
especially after reading Anglo-Saxon literature where the term lifelong learning is rarely used,
it was preferred the analysis of a teachers activity from the point of view of permanent
professionalization, professional development and educational leadership. In this context, we
considered the difference between lifelong learning and professional development, our
organization was guided by the idea that we will report ourselves to professional development as
the process through which the teacher reaches or at least aims at reaching quality standards in
ones educational act and, consequently, one will improve ones pupils performances.
After defining terms, we completed this approach through the analysis directions imposed
by praxiology which analyze the conditions and general efficiency principles for the human
action, this fact seemed to us relevant for defining a professional teacher.
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The present research paper has as objective the analysis of official documents
(Eurydice, OECD, PISA, TIMSS, the European Commission) for the identification both of
development politics and professional training of teachers, but also the identification of the role
of this process for the educational systems of the European countries. We have noticed the fact
that the situation is not very different from one state to another, meaning that the field of
education is poorly financed, though it is the basis of any other field of activity.
Furthermore, we could notice the fact that there is a growing interest from the
European states for increasing the importance of DP for teachers and some of these states have
started a powerful financing program for this process. Romania is among the states whose
teachers still attend lifelong learning courses, most of them financed by the European Union by
different projects and grants. Moreover, the work brings into light the professional identity of
teachers from EU, and this thing helps us notice the fact that teachers have a powerful
professional identity; they can invest very many personal resources for their development and
professional training. Most EU countries do not offer very much paid time for this matter and
teachers prefer to do this during their week-end.
Another aspect of this endeavor is the one which underlines that training and professional
development increases in value in time and teachers understand the fact that in order to have
good results, they should be the ones who offer high quality services, they should be the ones
who have exceptional abilities for reaching this purpose.
The third part of the paper describes a case study of a school in Great Britain, a school
which had very good results at the OFSTED inspection, it is a school whose teachers have
identified the importance of lifelong professional development and they even started projects and
activities that offer them the certainty of acquiring and improving knowledge and didactic
practices. Teachers professional training becomes constructiviste; the pupil becomes the main
actor of the educational process. Everything changes. We move from the thinking based on
reception to critical thinking, from passive strategies of teaching-learning to active strategies,
from passive methos to active methods which are complementary.
The fourth part envisages the analysis of the process of development and education of
teachers in Romania. This process had a slow evolution from the point of view of teachers
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education, but, despite this fact, we are today in a positive situation, the teachers are more and
more preoccupied with their own professional development.
Despite all these, we want a quicker evolution of the Romanian situation of education;
this is the reason why Romania has been in a continuous reform since the revolution from 89.
Like in any public domain, the Romanian state is in the situation of making big changes
also in the educational system (UNESCO, 2000). Most changes are made through the reform in
the Romanian education al system, though the rhythm of the reform is not efficient and very
slow.
The end of the chapter brings forward an analysis of teachers training needs. They
declare themselves dissatisfied with lifelong e-learning programs, but they claim that if a teacher
wants to improve, he does this thing anyway; it is more a process of will than of educational
politic. The last part of the chapter contains a SWOT analysis of the quality of programs and
professional training courses. Based on the analysis, we understand the fact that teachers
appreciate the efforts of the European Union and especially the existence of POSDRU programs
which offered them various chances of training and didactic improvement, teachers being
grateful for the fact that they did not pay for training.
Chapter five brings forward the similarities and differences between the perception of
professional training seen by the teachers from Romania and those from UK. Though at first
sight, we would be tempted to say it is useless to compare the two states based on powerful
historical differences, cultural, political and even economic ones. Despite these aspects, we have
been surprised to notice that there is a significant series of similarities between perception and
needs for professional development.
We admire the fact that the Romanian teachers have managed to reach high levels of
performance and they have good results without too much support from the decision makers of
politics in the Ministry of Education. We admit the fact that schools in Romania are not at the
level of those from UK, but we cannot compare material equipment. We do not say that the
system is perfect and, of course there are various aspects which should be changed and
improved, but the Romanian teachers have managed to have a satisfying level of results even if
they have not benefitted from a significant budget.
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The vast directions of research and thorough study of teachers abilities are part of the
nowadays development tendencies of every educational context whose quality needs to be
improved in a correctly articulated system, where there are documents, rules and an appropriate
methodology for applying/implementing new things. This is the reason why we considered that
these development tendencies should be included in our research paper as analysis topics.
The endeavor has not always been easy because of the lack of relevant materials for the
area of Romania, but the topic is relevant and challenging for any practitioner and even decision
maker.
We can state that the mentioned information and studies, presented in the theoretical part
of the research paper and also in the investigative one are meant to make us continue the
approached topic, for it is a vast and complex one and the process of professional training is an
imperative one which makes us approach the matter of professionalism in education from many
angles especially from the point of view of teachers education and educational leadership.

Proposals
Permanent preoccupations for nowadays tendencies of professionalization tendencies of
the didactic career, the accent falling on the importance of the contributions brought to teachers
formation and preparation materialized in theoretical and investigative endeavors.
Participation at lifelong professional training tends to become, for many teachers, a
complex and expensive process. In most cases, teachers are forced to the countys centre of
lifelong learning. Though it is not a very complicated process, for many teachers from pre-
academic learning, this become a problem from two point of view: lack of time and lack of
financial resources.
Furthermore, lifelong learning courses last relatively a short while (2-3 days), during
which the trainer is forced to transmit an impressive quantity of information. After this endeavor,
we can conclude that the applicative aspect of training is lost. Moreover, the physical tiredness
from the training period prevents teachers from paying the required attention to acquiring new
knowledge.
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We have as objective an in-depth analysis of this field, this is why we are going to
propose things for each category of the educational process. Thus, there are the proposals:
based on this information regarding the lifelong learning system
and from the data obtained after the practical endeavor of this study, our
recommendations are the following:
the necessity of having a de-centered system of professional
training for teachers;
the necessity of having a transparent system of financing teachers
professional training;
the necessity of making schools responsible for the process of
professional development of teachers, in this way training will be done depending
on school necessities and not ad-hoc;
having a special budget for the process of professionalization of
teachers;
the necessity of creating training politics during professional life,
connected to the evolution and requirements of the Romanian educational system;
Introducing the concept of educational leadership in schools, this
term refers to what the teacher proposes as a leader of ones own didactic activity
and, more than this, a leader of an improvement program focused on an
educational component, in a group of other teachers. This concept offers the
teachers the possibility of having initiative for a specific aspect that they consider
as necessary to be improved (e.g. didactic evaluation);
Paying teachers who participated in professional training thus
having the possibility of increasing the level of professional development.
Lifelong learning is for teachers a very important factor in order to reach performance
and increase the level of professional satisfaction. Politics connected to lifelong learning will
suffer many changes until they become truly useful for teachers in Romania.
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