Causal Modelling of the Relationship between Professional Development Needs and Practitioners’ Effectiveness

This study examined the causal relationship between early childhood practitioners' professional development needs and their teaching effectiveness in the Free State Province of South Africa. It investigated the direct, indirect, and total effects of the professional development needs of practitioners which included in-service training, professional learning communities, coaching, mentoring, conferencing, and workshops - all pertaining to practitioners' effectiveness when using the structural equation modelling approach. A purposive sample of 211 early childhood practitioners from rural Motheo District communities was selected. They were presented with a structured questionnaire to complete for data collection purposes. The generated data was subjected to enquiry by utilising the Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) in order to ascertain the direct, indirect, and total effects of the predictor criterion variables. The formulated hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that in-service training was the best indicator of practitioners' effectiveness. It was also found that practitioners' effectiveness decreased when they did not have the necessary professional development opportunities. The framework's robustness and parsimony are confirmed by the path model's 97% explanation of the variation in practitioners' effectiveness. The model showed a good fit (CFI = 0.96) which confirmed the relationships that were hypothesised, thus emphasising the significance of practitioners' ongoing professional development in the rural areas of the Motheo District. This study recommends, among others, that professional development programmes be prioritised and sustained as ongoing structured initiatives that integrate collaborative and reflective practices.