Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has launched a book on teacher professional development with a call on stakeholders to be concerned about the conditions of service of teachers.
It said the Government, Trade, Teacher Unions and other stakeholders must understand that professionalism of the teacher could not be separated from his or her conditions of service.
The 11-chapter document, titled: “GNAT – CTF/FCE @ 60; Achievements, Challenges and Sustainability”, was authored from the experiences, lessons and achievements of the 60 years of partnership between GNAT and the Canadian Teacher’s Federation (CTF/FCE).
The book talked about sustaining the partnership and the project components being In-service Training for classroom teachers and educational administrators and Nkabom Project that assists teachers in hard-to-reach communities.
Others are Women in Education Bursary and Beginning Teachers Mentoring Programme.
CTF, with 365, 000 teachers and education workers, shows international solidarity in teacher professionalism and has done so through projects in oversea countries like Togo, Burkina Faso, Uganda and India.
Its philosophy has been “teachers teaching teachers to teach” where teachers are in curriculum audit and development.
Dr Linus Linnaeus Tannor, Author of the book, said CTF, GNAT and Pan-African Teachers Centre, had maintained that teachers should not be passive producers of knowledge, but critical creators and developers of knowledge.
“What it technically means is that the best people to write our textbooks are our teachers, but the question is what opportunities have we created for our young teachers who have the interest?”
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Dr Tannor, who is also a research consultant, said: “We need a comprehensive rural education policy that can drive our interventions when it comes rural education. We need to come out with standardised definition of a rural area to ascertain how many teachers are in those areas.”
Rev Professor Emmanuel Adow Obeng, the Reviewer, in his remarks, said the book, through its documented projects, would impact positively on professionalism.
Rev Isaac Owusu, National President, GNAT, said the documented projects and initiatives would guide the future leadership of the Association.
