Structures and Procedures in Organising College-based Departmentalised Continuous Professional Development Programmes for the Academic Staff of Selected Colleges of Education in the Volta Region of Ghana

Abstract

Houses are built on sound footing and foundation to make them withstand any hardship in times of storms and other external challenges. The case of continuous professional development is no exception. Continuous professional development programmes that have sound footing prosper throughout their implementation. It is based on this universal fact that this research was conducted into discovering the structures and procedures that would favour the conduct of continuous professional development at the colleges of education. The research was qualitative with case study design and pooled participants from 4 selected colleges of education in the Volta Region of Ghana. Interviews were employed in gathering data from 4 Principals and open-ended questionnaire used for seeking information from 4 Vice Principals and 12 College Tutors. In the findings, the major structures needed for effective organisation of departmentalised continuous professional development at the colleges of education were functional departmental heads, professional development committee, academic planning and quality assurance committee, functional department, academic board, and proactive college management. In respect of infrastructure, faculty development fund, departmental conference hall, and internal policy in the domain. The procedures discovered include general sensitization about the programme, need assessment or skill and knowledge audit of staff, identification of competent resource persons, sourcing for funds, organizing professional development sections with effective supervision of components of the programme and conduct of post reviews for further planning. It was recommended that all colleges should have functional departments and departmental heads including departmental continuous professional development coordinators that would see to organisation of sessions of the continuous professional development.