The Relationship between Professional Development and Continual Improvement in Suburban National Secondary Schools

Professional development is an opportunity to improve teachers’ instructional strategies and increase the students’ achievement for school continual improvement. However, the short term courses and limited collaboration were ineffective in helping teachers to master their instructional strategies. Thus, teachers field competency problem affected the school continual improvement. Most of the empirical research in educational field in Malaysia focused on professional learning communities. The purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between professional development and school continual improvement. This survey research focused on two suburban national secondary schools which have the same characteristics in Subis. 97 respondents were selected randomly to answer the PDSCI instrument. The results showed that professional development and continual improvement had medium and positive significant relationship (r=.426, p<.001). The coefficient of determination of professional development standards was 18.14% shared variance. School continual improvement factors help to explain 18.14% of the variance in respondents’ scores on the professional development standards. The null hypothesis was rejected and alternative hypothesis was accepted. The findings highlighted that principals should put more effort on the relationship between learning communities standard and school climate, teacher improvement and principal leadership factors. Besides, professional development design and data driven standards should match the school climate. It also serves as a valuable information for stakeholders to improve the professional development program to achieve school continual improvement goal.

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