Abstract:

The changing context of the education system both internationally and in South Africa has shown major challenges in professional development of teachers. Such challenges present disagreements about effective strategies for implementing Continuing Professional Teacher Development for rural teachers. This paper draws from a completed study that assessed the effectiveness of the strategies for implementing Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) programmes for rural educators in one education district of the Eastern Cape. Differences of opinions between educators and district officials, where a top-down approach seemed to be vital towards district officials, showed a huge gap of understanding policy implementation. However, from Guskey’s (2002) theory of teacher change, high quality professional development is central to the constructivist approach to CPTD which must adopt the bottom-up approach and contextualized from the view point of the teachers themselves. It is against these circumstances that Wenger’s (1998) social theory of learning postulates the idea of adult learning as involving participation in a community of practice. Communities of practice, have a significant focus within the context of school development. These recognisable strengths have the potential to strongly influence the impoverished local context and can sustain and have command over the social patterns which are systematically induced through a history of marginalisation and impoverishment. The findings from the study indicated that school teachers were already engaged in communities of practice, with no support from the district officials.
Recommendations have been suggested.

Keywords:

Rural constructive approach, Effectiveness, Strategies, Implementation, Development.