Teachers play an important role in teaching and learning process. Teacher quality matters. In fact, it is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. In this semester, I also had a chance to visit one of the government vernacular schools. I spoke to a few of the teachers in the school and got to know that they face various difficulties to adopt the new system. I was told that there are training provided by the government to enhance their skills to cater the new system. However, only one teacher will be sent for the training at a time because the rest of the teacher have stay back in school to teach students. The training is usually up to three days and once the teacher is back from training, they will have to brief other colleagues the details of training in one hour discussion. I was very shocked to hear this because how can a person share three days’ training details in just one hour? The briefing is limited to one hour because the teachers are caught with classes other than paper works and curricular activities. But, what can the teachers learn in an hour time for a syllabus that will be carried out through out the years to come?

When there is changes in the education system, training is essential for teachers as they are the one that will be executing the new plan. Thus, teachers have to be given proper training to develop knowledge and skills to cater the changes in the education system. If teachers are not properly trained, I'm afraid that what was planned will not only remain as a plan but this will give a great impact on student's learning.

Teachers generally face many challenges each day. Effective teacher training helps teachers to prepare new challenges that they might face in midst of adopting new education system. While teacher training and student teaching may not completely prepare teachers for every issue they will face, it can help teachers to feel more confident about many common problems that arise for teachers each day. I'm afraid without a proper training given to teachers, teachers might feel like failures and eventually give up.

Besides training for teacher, there are many other approaches can lead to successful implementation of the new curriculum. David Hayes have suggested several principles for teacher development. Principles for teacher development has been described in his journal In-service teacher development: some basic principles. Below are the principles from his journal that we can take into consideration and apply towards developing a quality teacher adopting new changes in curriculum;

1 Change is a slow process.

As Adams and Chen (1981) recognize, teachers are comfortable with the teaching strategies they have previously employed—often for many years—and see no real reason to alter them. What guarantee can be given to them, in any case, that the new methods are any 'better' or more effective than the old? There may also be a conscious, or subconscious, rationalization against change, an awareness that to adopt the new is to deny the validity of everything that has gone before. Prabhu (1987: 105-6) explains the processes at work: The threat to existing routines can make many teachers reject innovation out of hand, as an act of self-protection. Alternatively, a strong sense of plausibility about some existing perception may make some teachers see the

innovation as counter-intuitive and look on its implementation as pedagogically harmful. If rejection itself appears to be too great a risk (in view of acceptance by colleagues or official sponsorship) teachers may take on the new routines while rejecting the perception behind them, thus making them mere routines from the beginning. Or they may dissociate perception from practice, operating with the perception in contexts in which perceptions are seen to be relevant, such as professional discussion, but operating without it in the classroom. With the new curricula in Malaysia and Thailand, open rejection is not an option for teachers. It is indeed 'too great a risk'. In both countries the curriculum is officially sanctioned and, to use the terminology of Chin and Benne cited by Kennedy (1987), a 'power-coercive' strategy is therefore at work. However, 'rational-empirical' strategies of providing information and attempting to convince teachers of the intrinsic merit of the new curricula have had limited success. Given that a new curriculum must be implemented, how, then, can it be done? If 'power-coercive' and 'rational-empirical' strategies do not work, we need to acknowledge a second principle.

2 Normative-re-educative strategies offer the best prospect of securing changes in behavior.

Kennedy (ibid.: 164) explains that, underlying 'normative-re-educative' strategies, there is the idea that people act according to the values and attitudes prevalent in a given society or culture, and that accepting change may require changes to deep-seated beliefs and behaviour. These strategies seek to examine deep-seated beliefs, together with the principles underlying an innovation. They are concerned with the active participation of teachers in change, and they point to a third principle.

3 All teacher development activities should be classroom-centered.

The activities should be seen as having direct relevance to teachers' everyday school situations. It would help if some sessions were given by trainers with first-hand experience of confronting the issues raised by 256 David Hayes at Universiti Putra Malaysia on May 5, 2012 http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from implementing an innovation, or of examining teaching and learning in classrooms. The sessions should be essentially practical. Though practice is informed by theory, an understanding of theory alone is insufficient as an agent of long-term change. Teachers need to be able to see the impact of the proposed innovation on daily classroom procedures if it is to have any validity. Holding development activities in schools also raises their status. All PISET and RuPEP teacher development activity takes place in secondary and primary schools respectively, rather than in education offices or colleges: this indicates respect for the school environment rather than downgrading its importance.

4 Teachers should be involved in the preparation of courses

This is a difficult principle to live up to, especially when a new, officially sanctioned curriculum has to be implemented. Within RuPEP the

'involvement' has often been reduced to asking teachers which topics they would like to see dealt with on subsequent courses. There is greater

scope within PISET and some, but by no means all, courses are preceded by meetings of heads of English departments, for example, to discuss proposed training (the heads are expected to have consulted with their own teachers beforehand). The intensity of courses within PISET—the preferred day-release model lasting over a period of two or three months—obviously gives room for collaborative development of the teacher development program. 5 Trainers should themselves be teachers. Teacher development activities should be derived from classroom experience, but as Duff comments: One of the inadequacies of much teacher-training activity throughout the world is that the trainers actively stop being teachers, and are training others to do something that they themselves no longer do. It is only common sense that you should practice what you preach, but training of others must be grounded in one's own practice and not in in some desiccated prescription deriving from almost forgotten—and even sometimes very limited—experience (1988:111). Selecting practicing classroom teachers as trainers gives immediate validity to the development proceedings. Trainers are able, in effect, to say 'I have tried this for myself and it works'. Teachers on the course recognize that what they are being asked to consider is grounded in the experience of a colleague, and is not the abstract theory of a ministry official or university lecturer, far removed from ordinary classrooms. There may, of course, be other problems deriving from this peertraining, such as status, for example; the question of trainer development also needs to be tackled.

6 Training methodology should be largely task-based and inductive.

I have already noted the failure of rational-empirical courses in Sabah to produce the officially required changes in teaching-learning behavior. In my own area of responsibility in Thailand, observation of courses held in ERICs before trainers received any trainer development revealed

Principles of in-service teacher development 257 at Universiti Putra Malaysia on May 5, 2012 http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from that they usually followed transmission models. That is, trainers simply exemplified a series of techniques or activities for various skills, then provided written handouts which detailed the steps for carrying them out. Little effort was made to get teachers to consider the rationales or principles underlying the use of particular classroom activities, or to encourage specific teaching-learning behavior—why teach in one way rather than another? Teachers therefore left courses with no greater understanding of the teaching-learning process than when they went in; improved analytical skills would have enabled them to continue to develop as teachers, but all they were offered was a series of one-off activities or techniques. This in turn seemed to be behind the kind of complaint one often heard from trainers that 'we keep giving them courses but they still teach in the same old way'. How, then, can a 'sense of plausibility' about a new curriculum, and new teaching and learning behavior be engendered? I would now like to examine the principles underlying task-based and inductive teacher development sessions. 7 Training/development sessions should value participants' existing knowledge. Wright, echoing Prabhu, and Adams and Chen, comments that: Too often teacher educators assume teachers to be in a state of pretheoretical or atheoretical ignorance before they embark on such [INSET] programs; yet participants have most likely built up theories over years of

actual experience in the classroom. The role of teacher educators might better be to make these theories explicit during the course. (1990: 92) In practice, this means that sessions should give participants an opportunity to talk about their perceptions of the teaching-learning process, and provide guidance in understanding its theoretical underpinning. This approach could be used to attack the teachers' perceptions, but the process does not necessarily have to work like this, and should not. PISET and RuPEP have found that existing perceptions are often based on long-established routine, the principles of which have largely been forgotten, or on the modelling of personal school learning experiences. However, there have been also many instances of teachers offering reasoned support for adhering to 'old' methods. The function of any course, therefore, must be to examine positive aspects of the existing and the innovative methodology, and to seek to demonstrate to participants that the new approach has something to offer. By recognizing that an existing perception is valid, participants will be more readily disposed to experiment and attempt to accommodate the new in their daily classroom practice.

8 Teacher development activities should raise awareness of the teaching learning issues behind the innovation, and give opportunities for in-depth analysis.

If one wants change to occur it makes sense to give the implementer of 258 David Hayes at Universiti Putra Malaysia on May 5, 2012 http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from the intended change the opportunity to fully understand it. However, Ellis (1986: 92) cautions against predicting the outcome: The assumption that underlies the use of awareness-raising practices ... is that the practice of actual teaching can be improved by making teachers aware of the options open to them, and the principles by which they can evaluate the alternatives. It is not known to what extent this assumption is justified. Do teacher educators, in fact, really influence what teachers do in the classroom by making them think about the principles and practice of teaching in sessions remote from the classroom? In this, however, Ellis also provides what both RuPEP and PISET believe to be the key to altering practice. That is, that sessions should not be 'remote from the classroom', and teachers should be asked to do more than just 'think about the principles and practice of teaching'. Sessions should provide models of the new practice, or introduce problems connected with it which have a direct connection with the classroom. Teachers need to be able to see the innovation in practice (in 'live' demonstrations, on video, listening to audio-tapes, examining tape-scripts, in the form of lesson plans and teaching materials, etc.); they need to be able to relate this experience to their own knowledge of teaching and learning; they need to be able to take apart and put together again the models of practice, to examine an issue from every aspect; they need to be able to uncover the principles underlying any proposed change in practice and relate principles to practice; above all they need to be able to extend knowledge gained from such an in-depth analysis to other, comparable, teaching-learning situations.

9 Teacher development sessions should enable teachers to form generalizable conclusions about the topic under review.

It is not enough for teachers to analyse a particular classroom activity in order to be able to say, for example, 'This communicative activity has the following features . . . '. They need to be able to extend what they have discovered, to be able to say, 'Communicative activities, in general, share the following features . . . '. This would reveal that they have fully understood the principles upon

which a teaching-learning activity is based. RuPEP and PISET teacher-training sessions have at their core a number of generalizable teaching-learning points related to the topic which teachers will be able to deduce through in-depth analysis. This, in effect, is theory derived from analysis of practice.

10 Sessions should give participants an opportunity to put into practice what they have learnt in a non-threatening environment.

If we are to engage teachers in new teaching-learning behavior they have to do more than just 'think about' the principles and practice of teaching: they have to be given an opportunity to try things out for themselves. This can take the form of micro-teaching or peer teaching, lesson planning, the making of visual and other aids, and so on. Initial attempts to come to grips with new ideas are best carried out away from the teachers' own classes, so that there is no loss of face involved should Principles of in-service teacher development 259 at Universiti Putra Malaysia on May 5, 2012 http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from things go wrong. It has to be clear that this is a form of practice, and not an examination; a process in which all the teachers can share, and offer each other support. The progression from practice to theory to practice should be a rewarding learning experience. In coming full circle in a session, we hope to bring teachers to a deeper understanding of some aspect of a new method, idea, or technique, which they will be encouraged to implement in their own classes, secure in the knowledge that what they are doing has pedagogic validity and is based on sound principles. Of course, this does not mean that teachers will wholeheartedly adopt change overnight: for the new to mesh with, or indeed to supplant the old, requires constant monitoring and adjustment of perceptions.

11 Teacher development sessions should offer opportunities for participants to share knowledge and ideas.

Teacher development should encourage collaboration between trainers and teachers, but perhaps just as importantly, among teachers themselves. Participants usually bring a wealth of ideas and experience to in-service sessions and sufficient resources to solve most problems that arise. Emphasis should therefore be given during the session to group-work tasks which allow this knowledge, hitherto restricted to individuals, to be shared by all in the resolution of common questions and problems.

12 Every effort should be made to provide follow-up for courses in participants' own schools.

In RuPEP, courses, classroom observation, and counselling have always gone hand in hand. Practical problems in PISET have tended to

prevent such extensive follow-up, though visits by ERIC managers to other schools, where they have been released from their regular teaching duties, have been very successful. Within PISET, therefore, alternatives have had to be considered. Where two or more teachers from one school attend a course, for instance, peer observation has been encouraged. Day-release courses also offer abundant scope for self-appraisal as part of in-school tasks from week to week. Whatever form the observation takes, and whether in Thailand or Malaysia, we have had to start by changing participants' perceptions of the whole purpose of lesson observation. There has been an unfortunate tradition of all lesson observation being an inspection or formal evaluation of one's performance, and inherently judgmental. Our intention was for lesson observation to be supportive, since observers do not come to criticize but to assist, to share their experience, and also to learn from the teacher being observed. In this way we hoped to promote lasting change, and to provide continuing support for teachers in the long process of gaining a sense of plausibility about the new teaching learning behavior which, in reality, they have no choice but to accept.

Curriculum development and change poses a range of challenges with regard to curriculum role teachers are to play when such a change takes place. The purpose of this study was to investigate the curriculum development role of teachers as key agents in curriculum change. In evaluating the curriculum development role of teachers as key agents of change, it was imperative to look at the curriculum development role with regard to the development phases and the seven roles as outlined in the Revised National Curriculum Statement and it became evident that there was a need to make certain as to whether teachers were empowered for their curriculum development role by looking at their level of empowerment. This investigation was prompted by school teachers who were and are de–motivated and lack direction as to what their actual role is in curriculum development for the changing curriculum in South Africa is. The literature study established the importance of teacher development in the South African context. Curriculum development or change as variously defined, relates to teachers' knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in reaching the aim of teaching and learning. In investigating the problem at hand, it was imperative to look at the methodology that would best suit the problem. A qualitative approach was selected where focus group interviews were administered at four schools in the district. It was established that the role which teachers play as curriculum developers in the changing curriculum of South Africa is pivotal and that change cannot be successfully attained if teachers' roles are not clear and if teachers' development is not initiated before and during change process and curriculum development. This research therefore draws a conclusion that teacher involvement and development in curriculum development is imperative if South Africa is to realize its education goals.