The Higher Education Department Punjab has launched the need-based Continuous Professional Development Program for teachers and teaching-interns of public colleges across Punjab. In this program, the college teachers and interns of major subjects will receive one-day training every month. For organizing college-based trainings, the College Reforms and Training Section of Higher Education Department has designated 62 colleges in all the districts as Cluster Centers. Each Cluster Center will conduct monthly professional development days for the teachers and interns of 5 to 10 or more colleges, attached to it.
In the first phase of this CPD program, 350 District Subject Coordinators were selected from amongst the college teachers. The selected DSCs were given 1-week training by well-known resource persons, including educationists, subject experts, senior staff of higher education department and senior bureaucrats.
On 21st of April, the first professional development day was organized for more than 3500 teachers and teaching-interns at the 62 Cluster Centers all across the Punjab. The trained District Subject Coordinators conducted sessions on basic andragogical skills and subject-knowledge. The participants were of the view that the professional development of college teachers has long been neglected. They thanked the department for establishing a separate training section at the civil secretariat to identify the capacity building needs of college teachers and to initiate such continuous professional development on modern lines. The training section administers CPD with the operative collaboration of Directorate of Public Instruction (Colleges) Punjab and the District Education Offices (Colleges).
