Teacher training is one of the top priorities for educational reform in all the countries. They recognize that the quality of teachers the key to improve educational practices as well as that teachers need to be retrained continuously to cope with the fast changing trends in knowledge and information. It is important to note that teachers are recommended not to leave their classrooms for a long time, even though they are obliged to upgrade the professionality.
This paper aims to articulate the significance of distance education for teachers in an information age, to identify the effects and problems of the distance teacher training, and to suggest some tasks for the facilitation of distance education for teachers. The results of a case study, A Study on Evaluation of Teacher Retraining Programs of Teacher Training Center at Korea National Open University(2001), done by the authors for another purpose, were utilized to identify the effects and problems of distance teacher training.
It is distance education that many countries including Republic of Korea began to take into account for teacher inservice training. Distance education for teachers is said to have some advantages in terms of expansion of learning opportunities, cost-benefit, and the quality of the training. The problems of distance teacher inservice training are identified as follows: limits in two-way communication between instructors and students, ineffective utilization of resources on the internet, and the inadequate learner support system, etc.
The authors recommended the following tasks for the development of distance education for teachers: 1) To strengthen the administrative and financial support from the government; 2) To collaborate among the distance teacher inservice training institutes; 3) To establish the adequate learner support system; 4) To fortify the quality assurance system; 5) To fully utilize the internet technology; and 6) To recruit learners through effective public relations with the support of Ministry of Education and Provincial Educational Offices.