Page 19 - Mini-Module 12

2. Professional development for Liberal Studies teachers should be
targeted at activating teachers’ cognitive processes and
sustaining change.

In terms of knowledge construction, what is true for students is also
true for teachers. Therefore, the planning of teacher professional
development has to view teachers as learners “within a conceptual
stage framework” (Hunt, 1974, cited in Sprinthall, 1995). The selection
of content, learning contexts or environments, cognitive and social
tasks, and tools to enhance teachers’ capabilities has to be based on
and start from the teachers’ “concept learning capability” (Hunt, 1974,
cited in Sprinthall, 1995), later described as “cognitive complexity” by
Sprinthall (1995). Given this, professional development would be more
competent at promoting stage growth of Liberal Studies teachers.

Other than this, Guskey (2002) postulates that professional
development must be perceived as a process rather than an event,
such that teachers receive continued follow‐up and support toward
continuing educational improvement. This appears to be definitely true
for Liberal Studies teachers who need on‐site coaching when they
translate knowledge into practice. The approaches of collegial
coaching and challenge coaching (Garmston, 1987, cited in Hargreaves
& Dawe, 1990), being more responsive to teachers’ learning and needs,
are proved to be more effective than peer coaching of the technical
kind that focus mainly on the learning of new skills and strategies.
Further, this s also illuminated an implication on the form of
partnership between school and external advisor for teacher
professional development. Since teacher learning and collaboration are
teacher‐driven, support from an external advisor will not be
appreciated if the emphasis is put on the implementation of a task or
plan initiated by the external advisor (Biott, 1992, cited in Lam et al.,
2002). Because of this, Biott advocates giving up the ‘implementation

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