Electronic Continuous Professional Development (E-CPD) for Teachers: Bridging the Gap between Knowledge and Application

ABSTRACT

The continuing professional development (CPD) is a concerted effort to ensure the educational service officers to equip themselves with professional knowledge, skill, values and practices of teachers through in-service training program organized based on competency development, lifelong learning and career path. Nonetheless, educators do not only teach or lecture but also have other stipulated duties such as involvement in research, committees and administrative duties. All these activities are time consuming and to achieve a proper balance will be a great challenge for educators.  Thus, an online training system, electronic Continuous Professional Development (e-CPD) was designed to provide training for primary school teachers virtually. This study aims to identify the activities that occur at every level of Bloom Taxonomy with the  integration Zone Proximal Development (ZPD) activities in e-CPD.   Qualitative methodology specifically content analysis was utilized during the data collection.  The content of e-CPD was analyzed searching for the activities in relation to Blooms Taxonomy embedded in ZPD.  The findings of the research indicated that the e-CPD system implemented the four levels of mentoring; coaching, self-coaching, fossilization and applications.  Apart from that, the system  also involved the teachers with the six levels of Blooms Taxonomy;   knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The incorporation of Blooms Taxonomy bridges the gap between the teachers’ knowledge and its application.  Hence teachers are able to apply their learning to authentic workplace situations to improve on-the-job performance.