Abstract
The chapter presents the Quality Management: Teacher Professional Development model for quality education as internal efficiency in Zimbabwe's primary schools. The model is a product of a qualitative phenomenological doctoral study. The researcher analyzes quality management practices from three rural primary schools consistently awarded the Secretary's Merit Award for performance ‘par excellence'. The model is cost effective and work embedded. Teachers get professionally developed daily as they work in schools. As a process quality management model, it involves planning, organizing, leading, monitoring, and controlling. Teachers participate in quality management by being members of school-based committees or teams. The QMTPD model develops teachers in some of these aspects: effective teaching; classroom management; setting, marking, and moderating tests; diagnosing and remedying weak learners. Effectiveness of the QMTPD model is manifested in the literacy rate of above 90% that Zimbabwe has attained.
TopIntroduction
This chapter analyzes the quality management teacher professional development (QMTPD) model for provision of quality education as internal efficiency. To facilitate understanding of the model, key concepts are first defined for the following terms: Quality Management, Quality Education, Internal Efficiency and Teacher Professional Development. The chapter presents the QMTPD model as a school embedded, cost-effective in-service teacher professional development program. The presentation of the QMTPD model follows this outline: First, a survey of educational issues in both colonial and independent Zimbabwe that give rise to the model are discussed. Second, an overview of the model is given. A detailed analysis of how to implement the model, its impact and lessons about teacher professional development that are drawn from implementing the model will follow.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Effective: Productive teaching and classroom management that results in high performance of learners.
Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE): The governing Ministry for Early Childhood Development, Primary and Secondary School Education in Zimbabwe.
Work Embedded: A staff development programme that is infused or is part and parcel of the work activities, duties and responsibilities of a teacher that takes place at the workplace or in the school.
Collaborative and Participatory Teams: Functional social quality management groupings of teachers set up in schools to achieve quality education as internal efficiency.
Staff Development: An informal, lifelong, and socially interactive professional development programme. The term is used interchangeably with teacher professional development to refer to training of human resources in the workplace.
Secretary’s Merit Award (SMA): An annual award given by MoPSE to those schools that manage to produce the highest pass rates in public examinations that learners sit for.
School-Based Committees: Groupings of people that are established in schools to carry out quality management work.