As mentioned earlier, teaching is a profession and people in the profession require training and retraining to keep them up to date with the content they transact, pedagogy they use and delivery mechanism they adopt. If we look at the definition of professional development as mentioned by The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it tells all. It defines professional development as "a body of systematic activities to prepare teachers for their job, including initial training, induction courses, in-service training, and continuous professional formation within school settings."

Teacher training as professional development happens at two levels, one prior to the entry to the profession (pre service) and another after the entry (in service). The duration of the training varies from a few days (in service) to 2 to 4 years (mostly pre service) depending on the policy of a given country. In some countries like India, China and Malaysia due to non availability of qualified/trained persons, people are appointed first and then after a few years of working they are enrolled in a training course lasting 2 or 4 years. To take care of the qualification requirement and upgrade the knowledge and skills of the untrained/under qualified teachers, they are encouraged/sponsored to take up the degree programmes of Open Universities. Let us see how ICT facilitates the professional development of teachers.

Technology and teacher training

The training of teachers in the use of technology is critical and essential. The use of technology in education should result in imparting quality education and to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills among students. The training could happen at the pre service level and also at the in service level. In the pre service level the focus of training is more about making them to develop competency in teaching, managing classes, reinforcing/enriching, content and knowledge and skills in using teaching aids. As part of using teaching aids to cater to multi-channel learning, some efforts are made by the pre service institutions in providing skills in the appropriate integration and effective use of writing boards, posters, charts, audio and video tapes, transparencies etc for transacting the content. So the skills developed in pre service stage to use technology sometimes may not be comprehensive. Hence many agencies like Microsoft, Intel, etc. in collaboration with various government agencies conduct short term in-service teacher training programmes to develop competency in identifying and integrating technology in teaching.

Chapter 8 "Teacher professional development in the use of technology" in the book Technologies for Education: Potentials, Parameters and Prospects discusses the theoretical frame work in which the professional development of teachers in the use of technology should be planned to make them shift from one end of the continuum to the other on the ten dimensions of interactive learning. For example with respect to pedagogical philosophy, the move is from instructivist to constructivist, and similarly on the teacher role from didactic to facilitative.

The chapter also details out what the training on using technology should accomplish and also the key elements for the success of the training programme. The other issues discussed include motivation and incentive to teacher participants, certification by the Ministry of Education, reduced isolation, increased professional satisfaction (extrinsic), and enhanced productivity (intrinsic).