In the South African context, geography teachers from the North-West Province can pursue learning through formal and self-directed professional development activities. The formal professional development activities are organized by the Department of Basic Education in the different provinces of South Africa, while in self-directed professional development, the geography teacher takes the lead role in facilitating his or her own professional growth. In this study, Further Education and Training phase (Grade 10 to 12), geography teachers (n = 130) completed a “Self-directed professional development activities in geography education” instrument developed by the researcher. At the end of each subcategory of the instrument, the geography teachers could add and list any other issue that was not included in the instrument. From the results, most of the geography teachers are involved, in some way, in self-directed professional development. The geography teachers indicated that they were mostly involved in the following self-directed professional development activities: sharing teaching and learning material and resources with fellow geography teachers; doing independent searches on the Internet (websites) for geography information; and watching online videos to enhance their geography knowledge and improve their teaching and learning skills. Interestingly, with reference to the geography subdisciplines and learning domains, most of the geography teachers highlighted that they usually did self-research in map work and aerial photographs, climatology and geomorphology.
Mots clés : geography teachers|professional development|self-directed learning|self-directed professional development
A103685AG