Teachers’ Professional Development Problems and Possible Strategies to Enhance It

This paper highlights the main professional development issues faced by teachers in Moroccan schools, and presents a synthesis of challenges encountered as well as possible leadership strategies and opportunities to enhance teacher professional development in the North African country. The current manuscript analyses the matter of teacher professional development in Morocco, considering its educational system’s unique opportunities and challenges. However, these issues and strategies could apply to any similar context around the world. The current study aims to provide practical strategies to overcome the identified issues, as well as to organize existing knowledge, through synthesizing and categorizing the central issues and recommended strategies related to teacher professional development into groupings, which helps the readers have a better understanding of teachers’ professional development. The analysis of literature work concludes that problems related to teacher professional development can belong to two main classifications: quality and pertinence of teacher professional development programs, on the one hand, and the government’s efforts and initiatives, on the other hand. As for the possible strategies, the current study suggests grouping them into four main classifications. First, enhancing the quality of teacher professional development programs, second, developing an online approach, third, considering a participative and needs analysis approach, and finally, adopting a religious and role model approach. This paper first introduces the context of education and teacher professional development in Morocco, and then presents the different problems that teachers are facing in the Moroccan context. Finally, the manuscript emphasizes the major possible strategies aiming to enhance teacher professional development in Morocco. The issues mentioned and suggested strategies can apply to other contexts as well. Article visualizations: