The Role of Teacher Training Programs in Optimizing Teacher Motivation and Professional Development Skills

This study presents the role of in-service teacher training sessions in motivating and developing professional skills among teachers in Pakistani context. The study had two main objectives. The first was to analyze the role of teacher training sessions in enhancing teachers' motivation for training programs and for staying in teaching profession, and the second was to analyze their role in improving teachers' professional skills, building self-efficacy and confidence. The study applied a survey research design for data collection. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect the data from 450 teachers of both private and public schools in Punjab, Pakistan. The data collected through the questionnaire was analyzed by using statistics analysis. The results of the study show that training sessions are not very effective in motivating in-service teachers and developing professional skills in them as they are supposed to be. The chief factors for the teachers' participation in these training sessions are the social and financial benefits of these sessions. The study shows that these in-service training sessions lack some necessary components of effective teacher trainings. Therefore, the study recommends that training programs should leave the traditional approaches and upgrade themselves according to the present-day needs of the teachers. Training sessions should be more than just formal sessions and should train the teachers for real learning outcomes. The findings of the study might be useful for teacher training providers and future researchers. [Note: The publication month (April) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct month of publication is August.]