Instructional Supervision and Staff Professional Development in Public Primary Schools of the English-Speaking Sub-System of Education in Cameroon

The study sought to investigate the relationship between instructional supervision and staff professional development in public primary schools of the English-speaking sub-system of education in Cameroon. The study specifically intended: to examine the relationship between head teachers’ staff placement and staff professional development, to investigate the relationship between head teachers’ assessment of staff and staff professional development. The researcher adopted two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated. The researcher used mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative approaches with two research designs including a cross-sectional survey and a case study. The accessible population was 915 head teachers and 5004 teachers. The multi-stage sampling procedure which involved simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select a sample size of 300 teachers. The purposive and expert sampling techniques were used to select 10 head teachers for the interview. A questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guide were used to gather data. The instruments were validated in both face and content validity with CVI of 0.75 and reliability Cronbach’s coefficient of 0.805 for the questionnaire. Data from questionnaire were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Data from the interview were analyzed thematically to corroborate the findings from the questionnaire. Hypotheses were analyzed using Pearson Product-Moment Correlation. The findings revealed that head teachers’ staff placement (  = 2.79±.86) and (?xy = 0.377*); assessment of staff (  = 3.09±.83) and (?xy = 0.577*) both have a moderate and significant relationship (p = 0.000) with staff professional development, rejecting the null hypotheses. It was therefore recommended that the Ministry of Basic Education and other educational authorities, should develop a strategic plan on periodic sustainable capacity building workshops/seminars for head teachers on: i) staff placement to enable them place teachers for instruction in order to identify their needs for in-service training ii) assessment of staff to enable them assess teachers’ instruction so as to identify their strengths and weaknesses and sort them for professional development programs.