Relationships between geography teachers’ SDL skills, participation in self-directed professional development and the use of learner-centred instructional strategies

This is one in a series of articles that reported on geography teachers’ self-directed learning (SDL) abilities, participation in self-directed professional development (SDPD) activities and the use of learner-centred instructional strategies in their classrooms. Geography teachers must act as self-directed learners through participating in SDPD activities to improve instructional practices. This study investigates the relationships between geography teachers’ SDL abilities, their participation in SDPD activities and the use of learner-centred instruction in geography classrooms. A non-experimental survey design was employed. FET phase geography teachers (n = 130) from two districts in the North West province completed three instruments, namely the SDL abilities instrument, the ‘Self-directed professional development activities in geography education’ (SDPDGE), and the ‘Instructional strategies in geography education’ (ISGE) questionnaires developed by the researcher. The researcher conducted Spearman rho tests to calculate Spearman correlation coefficients to determine the relationships between geography teachers’ SDL abilities, their participation in SDPD and their implementation of learner-centred instructional strategies. The analysis of the results reported strong positive relationships between geography teachers’ SDL abilities and their involvement in SDPD activities, as well as between their involvement in SDPD activities and the implementation of learner-centred instructional strategies in their geography classrooms.