Preparing the Health Informatics Workforce for the Future

Africa is currently facing unprecedented growth in its cancer burden. Training an adequate number of skilled physicians is critical to addressing this challenge. We examine African oncology faculty's professional development (PD) activities, associated barriers, enablers, satisfaction levels, and highlight the implications for improving the quality of the oncology faculty workforce in SSA. We surveyed oncology faculty (n = 69) through the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer listserv and conducted semi-structured interviews with nine (n = 9) faculty involved in African oncology training programs to ascertain their views on PD activities including, method of delivery, curriculum development, teaching, learning, and mentorship. Descriptive, inferential, and thematic analytical techniques were used to analyze the data. Ninety-two percent of African oncology faculty have participated in a PD activity and about 34% were dissatisfied with their overall PD. Access to curriculum development opportunities (OR = 2.10, p < 0.05), mentorship opportunities (OR = 3.12, p < 0.001), and a longer duration of practice (OR = 8.66, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with better overall satisfaction with PD. Barriers cited for PD included the competitive nature of PD courses and programs, limited online learning opportunities, poor internet access, time constraints, language barriers, and high costs associated with PD activities. Enablers for improving PD include improving institutional culture of learning and ensuring greater access to local institutional support. African oncologists are faced with many professional development challenges. Addressing these challenges may improve faculty satisfaction levels, remove barriers, and improve expected outcomes.

This investigation was designed to determine the factors and conditions associated with graduate enrollment management practitioners’ participation in professional development (PD) activities. The sample consisted of members of a professional association, the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP), focused solely on supporting graduate enrollment managers and related staff, whose patterns of involvement in various PD events for the previous five years were classified as low or inconsistent. In an effort to identify member preferences, as well as characteristics associated with PD activities, the investigator sought to provide information useful to developing future PD programs for NAGAP.An electronic quantitative instrument, the Professional Development in Graduate Enrollment Management (PDGEM) survey, consisted of closed‐ended questions related to PD grouped under the following headings: Demographic Information, Support for and Knowledge of Professional Development Activities, Attitudes and Beliefs about Professional Development: Individual and Institutional, Components of Professional Development in Graduate Enrollment Management, Professional Development Plans, Participation and Involvement in NAGAP Professional Development Activities, Other Organizations’ Professional Development, and Professional Development Overall. It was disseminated to 1,461 members of NAGAP, with a return rate of 163 (11%). Descriptive and linear regression analyses were conducted in order to discern (1) the frequency of participation in PD and (2) the demographic and other variables predictive of participation in PD.The study's findings revealed that about one‐quarter of the respondents participated regularly in NAGAP‐sponsored PD and that the involvement levels of the remainder of the membership were inconsistent. Additionally, on‐site activities were favored over online, content relevance greatly influenced whether practitioners participated, and member interest in conducting academic research was low. Cost was also a primary factor in determining participation in professional development.

The change toward competence-based education has implications for teachers as well as school management. This study investigates which professional development activities teachers undertake related to this change and how these activities differ among schools with various human resource (HR) policies. Two types of HR policy were involved: (1) a government-enforced, national system of Integrated Personnel Management and (2) a voluntary, integrative approach of Schooling of teachers, Organizational development of schools and teacher training institutes, Action- and development-oriented research, and Professional development of teachers. Semi-structured interviews with 30 teachers in nine schools with different HR policies were held and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings show that teachers undertake professional development activities in five categories: maintaining knowledge base, applying and experimenting, reflection, collaboration, and activities indirectly related to teaching practice. Teachers’ professional development activities were found to be relatively similar across schools with different HR policies. It is concluded that neither government-enforced nor voluntary HR policies seem to play much of a role in the participation by teachers in professional development activities. Implications for further research and school practice are discussed.

التطور المهني | معلمي العلوم والرياضيات | حاجات التطور المهني | نشاطات التطور المهني | مصادر التطور المهني | مشروع تطوير الرياضيات والعلوم الطبيعية في التعليم العام بالمملكة العربية السعودية | professional development | professional development providers | science and mathematics teachers | professional development needs | professional development activities | professional development sources

In-service teachers' professional development and instructional quality in secondary schools in Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia

Bu araştırmanın amacı, okul yöneticilerinin kendi mesleki gelişim etkinliklerine yönelik algılarını belirlemektir. Genel tarama modelinde tasarlanan araştırmanın çalışma grubunda, Antalya ili devlet ilkokulu, ortaokulu ve liselerinde görev yapan ve “Okul Yönetimi Semineri”ne katılan basit seçkisiz örnekleme yöntemi ve gönüllük esasına göre belirlenen 100 okul yöneticisi bulunmaktadır. Araştırma verileri, Mesleki Gelişim Etkinliği anketi kullanılarak toplanmıştır. Araştırma bulguları, okul yöneticilerinin resmi mesleki gelişim etkinliklerinden en fazla kurs ve çalıştay türü etkinliklere katıldıklarını ancak en etkili algılanan mesleki gelişim etkinliklerinin meslektaşlara rehberlik etme, gözlemleme ve yetiştirme olduğunu göstermektedir. Okul yöneticilerinin ihtiyaç duydukları mesleki gelişim alanları arasında en fazla oranda okul (iş) sağlığı ve güvenliği, etkili iletişim becerileri, eğitimde bilgi teknolojileri kullanma becerileri ve öğrenci disiplin ve davranış sorunları konuları yer almaktadır. Okul yöneticilerimesleki gelişim etkinliklerine daha fazla oranda katılmak istediklerini ve katıldıkları mesleki gelişim etkinlikleri için ek ödeme yapılmadığını belirtmektedirler.

Professional development for teachers has been a substantial issue in contemporary educational research and policy. Yet, opportunities for professional development activities have been very limited in Turkey. In this study, we examined Turkish teachers’ involvement in professional development activities by comparing their participation with the level of participation in top-performing countries in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011, including Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Then, we also conducted face-to-face interviews with 13 Turkish mathematics and science teachers in order to explore their views about the current professional development opportunities for teachers in Turkey. The results of this study indicate that, when compared with teachers from Turkey, a larger proportion of teachers in the top-ranking countries participated in professional development activities in most of the sub-categories of professional development in both mathematics and science. In line with this finding, results of the qualitative analysis suggest that most of the teachers in Turkey are not happy with the quantity of professional development activities available to them. In addition, teachers believe that the quality of professional development provided to teachers is low in terms of its connection to the practice of teaching. This situation might hinder teachers’ performance and negatively impact student achievement in Turkey.

Modern organizations are increasingly dependent on information technology (IT) enabled business systems. Development of IT systems requires a competent IT professional (ITP) staff. However, organizations are hampered by a severe shortage of qualified ITPs. Furthermore, the looming graying of the workforce will aggravate the shortage unless organizations learn to retain and enhance the skills of ongoing staff. Research from related disciplines indicate that over time technical workers participate less in professional development, but still little is known about the relationships between personal demographics and participation in professional development.The major premise of this study is that since most professional development programs are voluntary, ITPs must first be motivated to participate before participation will occur. In addition, research suggests that motivation of ITPs may be related to personal demographics and, therefore, should be considered when designing and implementing professional development programs. Based upon this premise, the major objective of this study is to examine the relationships between selected personal demographics and the motivation of ITPs to participate in professional development.Survey data collected from a sample of 186 ITPs were analyzed to identify relationships between selected personal demographics (age, education level, gender) and motivation to participate in professional development activities. Findings suggest ITPs generally perceive desirable work outcomes to be positively influenced by level of professional ability. Correspondingly, they are highly motivated to participate in professional development activities. Although participation rates do vary, there is neither discernible decline in professional development motivation nor decline in perceptions of reward probabilities and this potentially negatively impacts their professional development motivation and participation rates.

BackgroundTo improve professional development, it is important to understand the motivational factors behind nurses’ participation in specific types of continuous professional development activities. Effort–rewards imbalance (ERI) posits an imbalance between high efforts spent at work and low rewards sometimes received in turn. However, professional nurses have various ERIs that can influence their reasons to participate in continuous professional development activities.AimThe purpose of this article was to propose a model for selected ERI factors, which motivate professional nurses to participate in continuous professional development activities.SettingTwo hundred and forty-one professional nurses working in a public national referral hospital in Namibia participated in the study.MethodsSurvey data on professional nurses’ reasons and motivations to participate in the professional development activities were analysed using a literature-based framework on ERI and reasons for participation in continuous professional development. The survey data were analysed for reflective relationships of ERI and reasons for participation in continuous professional development activities. A confirmatory factor analysis method using IBM SPSS AMOS version 23 was used to develop and validate the effort–reward motives for a continuous professional development model.ResultsFour effort-reward imbalance factors were derived from sixteen CPD motives. The reflective factors were (1) extrinsic efforts, (2) intrinsic efforts, (3) reward motives, and (4) over-commitment motives. The four conceptual factors made up a second-order effort-reward motives factor for the nurses’ reasons to take part in continuous professional development activities.ConclusionsThe results of this study show that professional nurses consider taking part in continuous professional development activities in order to carry out their work better but not as a way to increase chances of promotion. The study also concluded that the older professional nurses tend to have higher intrinsic effrot motivation than their younger counterparts. Thus, nurses could use these findings to understand the reasons which motivate them to develop professionally.

This study examines the impact of teachers’ professional development on Canadian allophone students’ learning and reading performance levels. We used the data from the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program 2016 involving Grade 8/Secondary II Canadian allophone students (N = 2,244) and teachers in French and English Language Arts (N = 598). Our correlation results show that Canadian allophone students’ reading achievement was positively associated with teachers’ professional development activities such as academic pursuits (e.g., university courses) and marking or scoring sessions. The correlations also demonstrate that teachers’ professional practice of curriculum development had a positive influence on the learning levels of Canadian allophone students who were born in Canada, while teachers’ participation in professional learning communities had a positive effect on Canadian allophone students who were not born in Canada.

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Teacher professional development is a key policy lever to redress ongoing concerns about teacher quality and student academic success. This policy lever has been and continues to be employed by the U.S. federal government despite modest and uneven results of federally sponsored professional development in the past. Fortunately, a growing body of research has accreted as a consensus view informing how the enterprise of professional development might better support educational reform. To increase its potential effectiveness, professional development itself will have to reflect this consensus view. This study identified federal policy intentions for professional development activities within a grant program authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and examined how federal policy intentions for effective professional development were interpreted and implemented by state and local policy actors in one state. While federal policy espoused intentions related to characteristics of effective professional development, no single policy intention remained consistently unaltered across state and local policy sites over time. Policy intentions were augmented, compromised, or omitted whether in part or whole. Change was the norm. Transformations of intentions did not arise primarily from conflict but rather through the process of seeking of agreement with policy intentions. Furthermore, despite multiple transformations, federal policy intentions informed by research may influence professional development practice. State and local policy actors exhibited intentions that were more so aligned than disparate to federal intentions, and local professional development activities exhibited characteristics of effective professional development. A variety of contextual factors and types of transformations of intentions were identified as potentially supporting or hindering the integrity of policy intentions. The interaction of these contextual factors as well as different types of transformations of intentions simultaneously shaped the level of fidelity to federal policy intentions. Findings revealed policy intentions, even if explicitly stated, were not immune to the confluence of concurrent contextual factors and multiple types of transformations of intentions.

In the last twenty years in US science education, professional development has emphasized the need to change science instruction from a direct instruction model to a more participatory and constructivist learning model. The result of these reform efforts has seen an increase in science education professional development that is focused on providing teaching strategies that promote inquiry learning to learn science content. Given these reform efforts and teacher responses to professional development, research seems to indicate that whether teachers actually change their practice may depend on the teachers' basic epistemological beliefs about the nature of science. The person who builds the bridge between teacher beliefs and teacher practice is the designer and facilitator of science teacher professional development. Even though these designers and facilitators of professional development are critical to science teacher change, few have studied how these professionals approach their work and what influence their beliefs have on their professional development activities. Eight developers and designers of science education professional development participated in this study through interviews and the completion of an online questionnaire. To examine the relationship between professional development providers' science beliefs and their design, development, and implementation of professional development experiences for science teachers, this study used the Views on Science Education Questionnaire (VOSE), and interview transcripts as well as analysis of the documents from teacher professional development experiences. Through a basic interpretive qualitative analysis, the predominant themes that emerged from this study suggest that the nature of science is often equated with the practice of science, personal beliefs about the nature of science have a minimal impact on the design of professional development experiences, current reform efforts in science education have a strong influence on the design of professional development, and those providing science education professional development have diverse views about epistemology and the nature of science. The results and conclusions from this study lead to a discussion of implications and recommendations for the planning and design of professional development for science teachers, including the need to making equity and social justice issues an integral part of inquiry and scientific practice.

We investigate how eTwinning, the community for schools in Europe that promotes teacher and school collaboration through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), has grown in its first five years. eTwinning currently attracts over 130'000 teachers in Europe who can be identified as in using ICTs in cross-border school collaboration projects. Using the indicator called eTwinning reach, we find that on average, 2.64% of European teachers already participate in eTwinning. In this paper, we investigate the synergies between eTwinning and professional development. We argue that in order to grow beyond innovators and to attract early adopters in innovative use of ICTs in education, eTwinning should be given a more prominent and official status among national teachers' professional development activities. This, in turn, would greatly enhance both formal and informal teachers' professional development schemes in the countries that participate in the eTwinning action.

Taking into account the pressing need to understand more about what teacher educators’ professional development characterises, this article adopts a mixed method approach to explore Flemish (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) teacher educators’ professional development needs and opportunities. Analysis results of a large-scale survey study with 611 teacher educators and analysis of five qualitative focus groups (with 24 teacher educators) are presented. The results confirm the lack of attention for teacher educators’ professional development in the Flemish teacher education system. Moreover, the findings indicate a structural need for participation in professional development activities that are linked to teacher educators’ own practices, organised as long-term sustainable professional development trajectories, and formally recognised. To conclude, a professional development agenda for research, policy and practices related to teacher educators’ professional development is discussed.

Purpose: This study described professional development (PD) among public school physical education (PE) teachers and compared PE teachers to teachers of other subjects. Method: Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of public school teachers in the United States. Descriptive statistics were used to describe teachers’ support for PD and the types of PD activities in which they participated. Also, types of professional support received among newly hired teachers and their perceptions of professional preparation were described. Results: PE teachers reported fewer PD activities compared to teachers of other subjects. They were also less likely to receive release time from teaching and to be financially compensated for PD activities. Newly hired PE teachers, compared to other newly hired teachers, reported higher levels of professional support. Discussion: Based on the results of this study, recommendations are provided concerning support for PD among PE teachers and newly hired PE teachers.Subscribe to TPE