Bulgarian Teacher Preparation and Continuous Professional Development—Problems and Perspectives for Change

Abstract

The teaching profession is one of the most profound in society because it is called upon to underline, accompany and promote the spiritual-value formation of young people, their personal growth and transformation into highly educated people adequate to meet today’s global challenges. Thus, by actively contributing to the development of younger generations, teachers as representatives of educational institutions, together with parents and local communities, are becoming an instantaneous factor in ensuring the socio-cultural reproducibility of the societies we live in. The quality of education depends on many determinants and components, but undoubtedly the most important among them are the quality of the initial preparation and the continuous professional development (CPD) of the teachers. There is unequivocal empirical evidence that the high quality of preparation and continuing qualification of pedagogical staff is related to students’ motivation for learning and achievements, while at the same time verifying the assumption that their importance as a cumulative factor in influencing learning success is greater than factors such as the nature and type of school organization, the way the school is managed and the financial conditions in it (Vasquez Heilig et al. in Kansas J Law Public Policy 20(3):388–412, 2011). In 2015, a national representative survey was commissioned by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Bulgaria, aiming to identify the actual state and crucial issues in key areas, such as teacher preparation and their continuous professional development from the perspective of key stakeholders—the teachers themselves, educational managers, inspectors from Regional Inspectorates, university lecturers, students preparing to become teachers and active citizens. Another main focus of the research was to propose working measures to tackle socially negative trends in the teaching profession within Bulgarian context, such as overcoming the ‘ageing’ of the profession, young people’s refusal to choose the teaching profession as their professional career, outflow or premature leaving of highly qualified teachers from the school education system. The analysis of the collected data confirms a stable and negative trend regarding the status of Bulgarian teachers. It is clearly established that this status—especially in its two main aspects, social prestige and material well-being—is extremely low. Another finding from the study concerns the preparation of teachers from middle and upper secondary school grades. It turns out that it is insufficient, in terms of both volume and content, which in itself is an obstacle in the process of providing quality education to adolescents. These and other similar results are indicative of the strongly diminished confidence in the teaching profession in Bulgarian society at present.