Professional Development Essay

In professional development teachers are treated as active learners (Lieberman, 1994; McLaughlin and Zarrow, 2001), these learners are engaged in the concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, observation and reflection (Dadds, 2001; King and Newmann, 2000; Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 1995). The process of professional development is perceived as a long term process during which teachers learn over time that will result in acquiring more new experiences that allow them to be more effective through relating the prior knowledge with the new experiences (Cohen, 1990; Lieberman, 1994; Ganzer, 2000). Professional development is also perceived as a process which takes place within a particular context by relating training to classroom experiences;

In other words, Professional development and teacher education play a great role in enriching and strengthening teachers' skills in order to achieve particular goals within the educational system. The latter is the most essential factor behind encouraging or neglecting professional development and teacher education programs policy. Lot of can be said in this manner, but briefly speaking professional development or teacher education is going to be well illustrated in the table number 1.1

When being linked to education, professional development means the development of a teacher in his or her profession role. Many scholars defined professional development in different ways. Glatthorn, more specifically, defines it as follows: "Teacher development is the professional growth a teacher achieves as a result of gaining increased experience and examining his or her teaching systematically"(1995:41). Fielding and Schalock(1985) affirm, in the same vein, that the one who looks at professional development has to examine the content of the experiences, the processes of professional development, and the contexts in which it will takes place. However, Ganser(2000) claims that professional development includes formal and informal experiences; formal experiences are all about mentoring, attending workshops and professional meetings, whereas, informal experiences are related to reading the professional publications and expanding the knowledge by what is related to the academic