The academic staff professional development activities at public universities in Kuala Terengganu / Che Wan Khalidawaty Wan Khalid, Juliana Mohd Nor and Masliza Mat Zali

Many factors influence an academician’s professional development (PD) progress.
These factors could be the academicians’ gender, teaching experiences, perceived professional and personal reasons for involvement in PD activities, perceived attitudes, perceived benefits and perceived effectiveness of the PD activities that they attended. This preliminary study investigated which of these factors are believed to be the contributing factors that influence academician professional development progress. Questionnaires were distributed to 208 academicians from 3 different universities in Kuala Terengganu. The results of the study indicated that gender and teaching experiences are not the factors that influence the respondents’ PD progress.
Factor and regression analysis findings indicated that benefits and attitudes are the only significant factors as compared to perceived effectiveness and perceived reasons for PD involvement. It is concluded that factors that influence PD should be further investigated because these are important elements that contribute towards the success of the progress of Malaysian universities’ academic staff. Further research with more respondents will contribute précise information about Malaysian university academics’ professional development.