Continuous professional development is thought to be among one of the cornerstones of professionalism and quality of a teacher which ensures effective and sustainable teaching and learning experience. Without ensuring continuous professional development, it is impossible for an educator to update themselves according to the requirements of teaching English. In Bangladesh government college teachers are recruited through Bangladesh Civil Service examination with no requirement of pedagogical training or experience. However, to teach English as a second language, teachers need a set of skills and particular language teaching knowledge which requires them to be trained and develop them continuously. To explore the attitude of government college English teachers towards CPD, provided opportunities and to identify the barriers, a survey was conducted. The sample consisted of 112 English department teachers, from Lecturer to Professor from government colleges of 36 districts from all 8 divisions. The survey questionnaire comprised items regarding interest and efforts to CPD activities, availability, quality and relevance of the provided opportunities and the barriers to participation in those activities. Findings indicate that government college English teachers are highly interested in CPD activities but they find fewer availability of quality and relevant opportunities. Personal, institutional and administrative barriers play as significant obstacles to their participation. Participants shared that if barriers are removed, CPD participation will increase which will ensure the professional growth of government college English teachers as well as improve the quality of education. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 98-110
This paper argues that postcolonial first-generation diasporic children hold a distinct, but underrepresented position within diaspora studies that has been systematically overlooked by the existing scholarship. Through a reading of Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (2014), it examines the narrator, Ajay Mishra’s struggle for identity formation by drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorization on subjectivity, while challenging Homi Bhabha’s celebration of hybridity and the Third Space, both of which popularly empower postcolonial immigrants. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s concept of oppression, the article contends that the intersecting forces of class, race, diasporic status, colonial history, and familial tragedy can produce a unique form of oppression that ultimately hinders Ajay’s process of identity formation during childhood, and prevents him from articulating his subjectivity even as an adult. Additionally, by utilizing Sigmund Freud’s notion of melancholia, extended through Vijay Mishra’s conceptualization of the “impossible mourning,” the paper further posits that, unlike adult migrants, for whom memories of the homeland often function as a source of resilience to negotiate the hostile attitude of the host country, first-generation immigrant children like Ajay are denied of a stable past that could cushion them against the hardships of diaspora. Consequently, the absence of nostalgia transforms into diasporic melancholia, resulting in a fragmented sense of self. The paper thereby demonstrates how various faces of oppression, limited agency, and lack of a pre-migratory subjective identity can alter the process of identity formation within a postcolonial diasporic condition. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 83-97
