Important Issues in Staff Development are given below:
(1) Training or Development:
Training is about how to perform but development is concerned with how to be. ‘Training’ implies that there is a body of knowledge or a set of skills to be imparted to the novitiate and it has the connotation of a limited and even unquestioning acquisition of an accepted practice.
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On the other hand, SD shifts the onus from a trainer to the staff-member himself or herself and has the connotation of personal growth and maturity.
SD is concerned with the means by which a person cultivates those skills whose application will improve effectiveness and efficiency with which the expected results of a particular organizational segment are achieved.
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It signifies activities aiming at increasing readiness to accept and promote innovation (Jailing, 1980). Matheson (1981) describes it as planned influence of an individual’s psychological process, whose purpose is to gain from staff and attitudinal commitment to philosophy, values and goals of an institution.
Thus, SD is a process whereby competence and confidence of staff lie not in serving the educational system passively but becoming efficient and effective in fulfilling their job demands actively.
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In short, staff development, and not training, is the appropriate term since SD is about an individual and an institution, employees within employment and personal development inside the job. It has two main purposes:
(1) Job maintenance.
(2) Personal development.
(2) Who and How? Compulsory or Voluntary:
The next directly relevant question in SD is who should do it and how it should be done.
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There are several agencies who could perform this task. At the school level, each school can have its own Staff Development Centre. However, this may become financially unviable in the Indian context.
In that case, a few schools situated in the vicinity of each other could establish a common Staff Development Centre.
Besides, schools could also solicit help from University Departments of Education which can come forward with providing necessary expertise and academic support for SD in schools. The same is true for affiliated colleges.
Universities can have their own SD service centre or an academic committee representing a variety of disciplines.
Usually, a SD programme is structured to include theory mixed with workshops, practical hints, experiential learning, videotape recordings, etc.
Besides, the need for attending a SD programme should be decided jointly by the concerned teacher, his/her superior and feedback from students obtained in a scientific manner. Thus, the need for SD should be determined on the basis of performance appraisal.
(3) When and Why?
Initially, SD takes the form of pre-service courses or training for new recruits in terms of transmitting the accumulated experience of senior staff and orientating them towards institutional goals, policies, practices and procedures.
Later, the emphasis is placed on SD through in-service courses and by building up a coherent body of knowledge from which scholars can draw as they do from scientific theories in their own academic fields. SD also includes encouragement to innovation and experimentation.