A survey on the perception of teachers in Belaga towards lifelong learning in professional development

• Main Author: Sarai, Got.
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, UNIMAS 2007
• Subjects: HD Industries. Land use. Labor; HT Communities. Classes. Races
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/6720/7/SARAI%20GOT.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/6720/

This study attempts to find out the perceptions of teachers in Belaga district towards lifelong learning in professional development. The samples used in this study were 122 teachers from one secondary school and three primary schools within the distri ct. This study focused on five aspects. The first aspect was the reasons for teachers participate in lifelong learning in professional development. The second was the perceptions of teachers towards lifelong learning and the third aspect was factors influe ncing the perceptions towards lifelong learning in professional development. The fourth aspect was the ways how teachers in the district participate in lifelong learning and the fifth aspect was to find out the relationship between teacher’s gender and per ception on lifelong learning in professional development. The research instruments used in this study were questionnaire and semi - structured interviews. The findings revealed that majority of teachers have positive perceptions towards lifelong learning in professional development with 96.7% perceived that teachers should continuously upgrade their teaching and female teachers agreed that learning is a lifelong process while only 92.3% of male teachers agreed. The main reason for teachers in Belaga to partic ipate in professional development is to gain more knowledge on the subject matter (subject content). The findings also revealed that lifelong learning is beneficial for their professional development especially with the inclusion of information technology (IT) in schools. Nonetheless, the teachers also faced some obstacles in making sure they are actively involved in professional development such as lack of distance learning centres, finical commitment, family commitment and lack of resources. The results f rom the interviews also revealed similar patterns from the data collected through questionnaire and thus further confirmed the five aspects studied. In general, teachers in Belaga respond positively to the concept of lifelong learning in professional devel opment.