Task 2: Academic Writing

Based on teacher development stages that you have learnt, prepare a suitable personal and
career development plan to be professional teacher relevant to current developments in the
teaching profession. The plan should take into account current issues and challenges as well
as legislation involved.

1.0 Introduction

Today, all professions are under pressure in terms of the development and

production of high-skilled workers in line with the development of the 21st-century

demand. The teacher profession is not an exception to this situation. In addition, National

Philosophy of Education in Malaysia aims towards the development of individual

potential as a whole and their integration in efforts to create individuals who are

intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced and harmonious, founded

upon faith and submission to God to create a knowledgeable, responsible and capable

generation that will contribute to the nation and fulfill the 21 st-century demand. Therefore,

to achieve the implementation of NEP-based education, various parties have to play an

important role especially the educators in the teaching profession. Teachers are required

to continually improve their existing knowledge and to practice lifelong learning.

1.1 Concept of Profession and Teacher Professionalism

Professionalism of teachers has been observed extensively as one of the main

issues in education. Teacher professionalism has been improved time to time along

the growing of needs in education and it has been challenging the government and

educators to put all on the show. Teacher professionalism is the way what teachers

think about their profession, why they should be professional, and how they behave

and implement their knowledge and skills in which related to their profession (Cipto

Wardoyo, Aulia Herdiani & Sulikah, 2017). A profession is a disciplined group of

individuals who adhere to ethical standards which possessing special knowledge and

skills in a widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and
 training at a high level, and is recognised by the public (Rayment et.al, 2015) such as

teaching profession, medical profession and law profession. Therefore, a teacher

who sees the teaching profession as not just a job but also as a profession and

responsibilities have a high sense of professionalism.

2.0 Professional Development

Nowadays, education systems seek to provide teachers with opportunities for in-

service professional development in order to maintain a high standard of teaching and

to retain a high-quality teacher workforce. Teachers in today’s world are under a

growing pressure to perform. Higher expectations and greater needs now pressure the

teachers to perform effectively in classroom. It all comes down to quality teachers who

are the determinants of student achievement and even the most prepared and

genuinely qualified teacher still has a great deal to learn when they begin to teach. This

is because the pre-service that they received may be not enough and cannot be

expected to prepare teachers for all the challenges they will face throughout their

careers. According to TALIS (2009),

“Professional development is defined as activities that develop an

individual’s skills, knowledge, expertise and other characteristics
as a teacher ranging from formal to informal such as through
external expertise in the form of courses, workshops or formal
qualification programmes, through collaboration between schools
or teachers across schools, through coaching/mentoring,
collaborative planning and teaching, and the sharing of good
practices.”

Due to that, in developing students’ 21st century skills and render education more

responsive to the challenges of a knowledge-based society, teachers’ development has

been constantly called for. An effective professional development should, therefore,

encourage teachers to experiment with new ideas or tools in their teaching contexts,

reflect on how these impact their students’ learning, make further decisions to achieve

their intended objectives and share their experiences. It is vitally essential that teachers
 are well prepared when they begin to teach and they continue to improve their

knowledge and skills throughout their careers.

3.0 Personal and Career Development

Teacher development is an evolving learning process. Teacher development occurs

when these aspects of development are occurring: personal, professional and social

development (Djoub, 2018). Subsequently, if these aspects are developing well it will

also lead to their career development as they will be able to perform well and have clear

objectives of what they intend to achieve in their career as a teacher.

In teaching profession, it is emphasising the lifelong learning qualities in which

teachers develop their knowledge, skills and subsequently their careers so that they can

share their knowledge and expertise. However, the developmental stages of the career

path depend on the teacher himself. Based on Trettor as cited in Huitt, W. (2006), most

of the teacher educators expect the transition to be a rather lengthy process

incorporating several years of training and practice and also involved five different

stages. These stages are namely as novice level, advanced novice level, competence

level, proficient level, and expert level. Thus, below in Figure 1 is my planning toward

achieving personal and career development.

 Figure 1: My Personal and Career Development

3.1 Novice Teacher

Novice teacher is a title given towards a teacher who is just being placed in

school with less than 3 years of teaching experiences (Noredayu Ariff, Mahaliza

Mansor, & Hamidah Yusof, 2016). In Malaysia, novice teacher is usually those

teacher trainees that was already graduating and completed their five years training

in teacher institution campus. In this level, I will be posted in a school as an English

teacher. Firstly, as a new teacher, I need to adapt myself to the new school

surrounding and community by involving myself in various collaboration within the

community. Based on (Noredayu Ariff, Mahaliza Mansor & Hamidah Yusof, 2016)

novice teachers need to be equipped with the ethical, moral and professional skills to

thrive in an increasingly complex teaching environment. Therefore, in my opinion,

attending professional development activities such as workshop, conferences,

sharing group and talks can help enrich my knowledge and skills as a teacher. In

addition, I also need to familiarise myself with Teacher Code of Ethics in order to be

an ethical teacher towards the learning community. Teacher Code of Ethics is a

legislation which is a guideline to the teachers in obeying the principals on how to

taking care the professions’ image (Hamidah Yusof, Fariza Masood & Mohd Asri

Mohd Noor, 2017). Other than that, according to Sofiah Binti Zakaria, Khaliza Binti

Saidin & Rozi bin Mohamad (2016),

“Nowadays, novice teachers are said to have failed to adapt

themselves to the school environment, instilled knowledge and

skills in their students, effectively use knowledge and skills in their

lessons, class management and co-curricular activities, as well as

to not being able to convince others of the image they are

supposed to carry as teachers.”

Based on the statement above, it seems that novice teacher has problems in

their early stage as a teacher. As a novice teacher in the future, I will do my best in

avoiding those problems by finding ways for me to improve myself in every aspect to

be a knowledgeable teacher through many ways and stay positive in every challenge

that will come in my career path as a teacher. As an instant, through collaboration

with their mentors and peers in schools. Based on Mavroulis (2013), when novice

teachers are positive on their job, they are likely to increase their commitment to the

organisation they are serving. At the end of my novice level, I aimed to get approval
 as a DG41 education officer by portraying positive attitude, being active in various

collaboration and ethical in doing my duties.

3.2 Advance Novice Level

In advance novice level, a teacher would be more experienced in handling the pupils

and more comfortable in the profession. In this level, a teacher being more exposed to

teaching experiences such as being offered teaching other subjects that is not in his or

her expert field and more concerned in improving their pedagogical knowledge and

teaching skills. In this level, I plan to enrich my teaching skills as I already tackle my

social aspect in the novice level especially in creating a 21st century classroom by

applying the 21st century elements such as HOTs, ICT skills, collaborations, innovation

and creativity among my pupils by conducting various activities. Nowadays, the teaching

profession requires teachers that are knowledgeable and have a variety of skills to meet

the 21st century world education challenges (Noredayu Ariff, Mahaliza Mansor &

Hamidah Yusof, 2016). Furthermore, in this level, I also plan to continue my study in

Master Degree level related to education field and strive for DG44 level as education

officer. In my opinion, it is a need for me to further my study and enhance my education

level from Degree to Master Degree to increase my credibility as a teacher and enrich

my knowledge by doing research on certain field in education.

3.3. Competent Level

Based on PIPPK document (2016), it stated that a teacher in competent level should

be able to supervise and guide others based on his or her experiences and also be able

to make educated guess on organisation problem and ways of preventing it. Therefore,

in this level, I plan to guide the novice teachers by exposing them to various

experiences and opportunity in improving their professional development by being their

supervisor and someone they can talk about their challenges and problems in their early

stage of career. Asada (2012) concluded that a mentor should function as a role model

and should be responsible in training a novice teacher to use effective teaching

 technique which they have been using. I think it is a need for the schools to have good

mentoring system to be implement in schools to assist the novice teachers in their quest

to be a quality teacher. Other than that, I also plan to be the Head of English Panel and

Panel of Examiners for public examination to widen my experiences in leadership path

in teaching profession.

3.4 Expert Level

In this level, as a teacher you have reached the ultimate goal as an educator by

being able to mastered the pedagogical and content knowledge as a teacher wholly. An

expert teacher can be the main reference for the other teacher because he or she is

highly skilled and experienced which resulting that his or her opinions are always taken

into consideration especially in the conduct of classroom teaching. In Malaysian context,

expert teacher is well known as Guru Cemerlang. According to Portal Rasmi

Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (2016), excellent teacher is defined as a teacher who

are highly motivated, skilled, experienced and expertise in a particular field who is

teaching in school to empower the teaching and learning process. Therefore, I also plan

in achieving this level by applying to be ‘Guru Cemerlang’. By doing this, I need to

empower my skills as an educator from many aspects and practice my professional

development as well as having lifelong learning desire continuously to help in building

my path toward this goal. From my planning chart, activities that I plan to conduct is to

produce books related to content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge in sharing my

experiences and be the master of major subject content delivery and still adhere to

ethical values as my core values as an educator. This is because as the years increase

in service, the experienced teacher tends to forget about the principal of ethical values

which can make the reputation and performance of certain teachers decrease (Oon

Seng Tan, 2019).

3.5 Master Level

 A teacher who is able to reach this level is considered as holistic thinker (PIPK,

2016). It is the highest level in teacher development stages based on Trotter where a

teacher is holistically developed in all aspects needed as a professional teacher. In this

level, the teachers will be reaching near to their end in service. Therefore, some of the

issue arises in this level such as loss of interest and passion in teaching as they feel

burnt out throughout their career as a teacher. However, despite that, I plan to be the

best of me through my last 10 years of services. I will do my best to stay passionate and

positive towards my job as a teacher. I plan to try out a different state of place in

teaching which is at universities and higher education place after I completed my PhD in

education.

4.0 Conclusion

As a conclusion, every teacher should have their own personal and career

development plan to give them insights of what they want to achieve in the future. Being a

professional in a profession is not easy but it is a long journey of improvements and

challenges that we as a teacher need to face and experienced in order to achieve the best

version of ourselves. Teachers should always strive to improve self and career development

to produce quality education for the generations of students and meet the demand of 21 st

century education.
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