The action research journey of Mandla Tshabalala, provincial teacher development official in KwaZulu-Natal
Teachers are required to report their participation in professional development in the continuing professional teacher development (CPTD) portal from SACE. They record their activities in their professional development portfolio (PDP) and then submit this to SACE to accumulate points. However, reports from SACE indicated poor recording in teachers’ PDPs and reporting in the system. Through action research, teacher development practitioner from the KZN Department of Education, Mandla Tshabalala, found out the reason behind these issues. His support actions lead to more interactive workshops with School Management Teams and better collaboration with stakeholders like SACE officials.
Mandla Tshabalala is a teacher development practitioner. In district teacher development centres (DTDC), he capacitates educators for better teaching and learning. His action research (AR) questions were: ‘How can I support schools to implement the continuing professional teacher development (CPTD) system? And how can I support educators to complete their professional development portfolios (PDPs)?’
The 'Why?' behind the problem
‘After analysing the interviews with the educators from 6 schools, I learned that one of the biggest reasons behind the no-reporting and no-recording is the way we build up our workshops’, Mandla states. ‘Most of our workshops had a big number of participants. For example, we would organise a workshop for an entire circuit cluster. This didn’t leave enough space for individual questioning and remarks. Sometimes, our workshops would be done at 3pm and people would not ask questions, because they were already rushing to their homes. Or some of them might have been intimidated. After the interviews, all school management teams (SMTs) of these schools were workshopped.’
Change
The identification of these challenges through action research, facilitated Mandla to come up with the following solutions: ‘We only cluster 3 schools together instead of an entire circuit, so that the participants feel free to ask questions and participate’, Mandla says. ‘This action research journey has strengthened my working together with partners. Most of my support visits, I now conduct together with the provincial representative from SACE. Moreover, most of my schools now have CPTD as a standing item on the staff meeting agenda.’ Mandla looks forward to seeing strengthened recording and reporting in upcoming SACE reports for the schools which he supported. ‘My action research trajectory was an eye-opener, filled with interesting activities.’
