Teacher development as enhancing descriptive intelligibility

The purpose of this study is to develop a general approach to planning, conducting and evaluating teacher development programmes. It is based on a case study of a teacher development programme for which the central problem is describing effective teaching and learning, intelligibly. Teacher development, defined as the enhancement of this intelligibility, is essential to improving teacher effectiveness. The problem of planning, conducting and evaluating this programme is considered in terms of the following constituent problems: (i) Planning and conducting the programme (P1); (ii) Developing the reading content for the programme (P2); (iii)Monitoring and assessing the changes in intelligibility of the programme participants' descriptions of effective teaching and learning (P3); (iv) Evaluating the effectiveness of the programme (P4); Assuming a holistic epistemology, the implications of applying both a touchstone approach to theory development and Kelly's (1955) Personal Construct Theory to the solution of the above problems are considered. This yields two sets of implications for each of the constituent problems. By applying a touchstone approach to these sets of implications, a theoretical and procedural basis for the study of these problems, and hence for the planning, conduct and evaluation of the teacher development programme, is obtained. This basis is used to develop the reading content for the programme, plan and conduct the programme and to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme in meeting its purposes. These evaluations are used to establish the procedures used as a general approach to teacher development programmes. In this case, teacher development means the enhancement of the intelligibility of descriptions of solutions to the problem being studied through this programme