ABSTRACT
Teacher Empowerment in the Continuous Professional Development
Program in Ethiopia
Sang Hee Kang
Global Education Cooperation Program
The Graduate School Seoul National University

To solve problems related to access, equity and quality of educational provision, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) introduced the Education and Training Policy in 1994. The Education and Training Policy (ETP) established the foundation for all subsequent strategies, guidelines and programs. The education sector programs were Education Sector Development programs 1, 2 and 3, which were developed in 1997, 2002 and 2005 respectively. Education Sector Development Program III (ESDP III) has given priority of strategies aimed at improving quality and efficiency of Education. The ETP has been directed toward a new approach to education; quality of education through Continuous Professional Development program. The failure of central authority to produce quality and the weak link between top-down policy and school-level practice is based on the approach of
decentralization. The MOE more focuses on teachers' bottom experience at school (Anderson 2002; Leu 2005; Tatoo 2000). It leads to create ‘school-based’ and ‘teacher-centered’ training system.
The active participation of the CPD is expected to bring the critical changes of the teachers in their professional ethics such as teacher autonomy, democratic, the moral of teaching and so on.
However, the implementation of the CPD program has shown several challenges in terms of teacher empowerment. The challenge is that the program was too focused on the expansion of the INSET program without consideration for what goes on inside schools and teacher’s personal situation. The government efforts alone cannot lead to teachers’ profession development and improvement of the quality of
education. What teachers learned from the CPD was not actively utilized by teacher in reality.
The study indicates that the 4 elements (Autonomy, Self efficacy, Opportunities for professional growth and Status) in teacher empowerment under 2 dimensions (Agency and Opportunity Structure) of empowerment have been taken to analyze the challenges and limitations of the CPD. There are four main factors related to two big categories; 1) Agency and 2) opportunity structure which have an influence on the effectiveness of the CPD. First, autonomy and self efficacy is under the aspect of agency. Autonomy in the CPD is mainly affected by three sub challenges: 1) the effect of principal Leadership, 2) CPD as a mandatory program and 3) increased workload. Second, this study mainly focused on three factors related with the challenges of self-efficacy; 1) Lack of Preparation, 2) Context matters and 3) Overlapping.
Under the aspect of opportunity structure, it implies that there are significant problems related to social-economic barriers that make it difficult for teachers to accept the training program positively.
According to the responses of the teachers, the social-economic barriers are not just related to the CPD program but also are related to teaching in general.
These findings were interpreted from the framework of the evaluation by Haramay University (2008). Adopting this framework, this study results are divided into 3 categories; the process, the system and the contents in order to represent the part viewed by teachers as a prominent challenge. When it comes to the process, there are four principles to ensure CPD is effective in teacher empowerment. Most of
all, the strong instructional leadership by the school administrator or supervisors which was elaborated in these finding is critical. It is closely related to the other principle, ‘involving teachers in planning programs’. Also teachers in INSET should be regarded as active learners in an adult-oriented model. Lastly, if the school focuses more to developing the pedagogical center to run field research and open it as life-long learning center, the pedagogical centers will work well as the teacher learning communities. In terms of the system, CPD program should be considered as in-service programs that are a part of a continuum of professional development. Also, for teachers, learning opportunities are closely related with the ability to change one’s careers and teachers are even willing to spend extra money. In this sense, it is important to foster cooperation with other colleges and district education offices to address this issue. Lastly, community members and
school personnel should recognize the need to actively participation in school issues.
This study has found that there have been challenges and limitations of teacher empowerment in the CPD implementation. Teacher empowerment through CPD system was examined in various ways to determine CPD’s effectiveness in empowering teachers. However, the program was unable to consider the importance of teacher empowerment as the main workforce and the necessity of motivating teacher by understanding and solving the social problems. This research opens to the extent to perspectives to examine variables related to teacher empowerment, which not only personal ability, competence and participation in school, but also social factors affecting on the behavior of teacher and their willingness to act. Analyzing the means through which the CPD for teachers is organized may help to understand not only the success of the CPD itself but also the motivation behind it for the better implementation.
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Keywords: Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Teacher Training System, Continuous
Professional Development, Teacher Empowerment