Context-Specific Professional Development for Business Studies Educators

This study explored the experiences of Business Studies educators of the professional development (PD) programmes available to them and how such experiences translate into pedagogies applied to achieve the BS lesson objectives. The Business Studies subject, also referred to as business education in various contexts, equips learners for contemporary working environments frequently defined by technological advancements. However, the dynamics of the modern BS educational landscape require educators who are immersed in everyday trends and advanced technology support; as such, this demands continuous professional development of educators for effectiveness in their everyday teaching and learning. Grounded in transformative learning theory, this interpretive case study examines how Business Studies educators’ PD programmes enhance and translate into the achievement of lesson objectives. Purposive sampling was adopted to select six educators, two in each school, from three schools in one South African Education District. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and non-participant classroom observations, with qualitative content analysis employed to analyse the data. The findings revealed a dual reality of benefits, such as support from subject advisors, with deficiencies such as a lack of context-specific training, disparities in PD, time-workload constraints, lack of resources and institutional support. Thus, the formation of a targeted professional development framework responsive to context-subject-teacher-learner-based reskilling to augment teaching and learning effectiveness aligned with modern world demands is established.