paper. AMU conf published

VOLUME 9 ISSUE 4OCTOBER 2020 EXCELLENCE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 2349-8838 Intakhab Alam Khan Page 29 Exploring Areas and Opportunities of Professional Development for Teacher Educators Intakhab Alam Khan Associate Professor (Education), Faculty of Applied Studies, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah-Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT New educational policy draft-2019 emphasizes urgent need of professional development of teachers for quality in education. Though professional development (PD) in any profession is continuous and ongoing in nature yet the draft makers are somewhat aware that teacher preparation has not been up to the mark. However, it may not be interpreted that the teacher education in general has been inappropriate or ineffective. The ‘teacher factor’ itself is perhaps the most responsible variable for the decline of the quality. The areas of professional development for teachers can’t be explored unless teacher educators are appropriately trained in the crucial fields in order to cater for the need of future teachers. It requires an in-depth need analysis for accomplishment of the concerns of the draft policy which focuses on 4 major areas: Indian-ness, globalization, teacher quality and professional development. All these areas are important, but difficult to implement. In order to sort out the issues/ areas, there is a need of studying the existing opportunities in the area(s) continuous professional development (CPD). Quality and excellence in CPD can never be attained without quality research. This will also help the academicians to explore opportunities in open and e- learning which is a new focused area envisaged by the draft policy-2019. Key words: Teacher education, future teachers, draft policy-2019, quality, CPD.