Section archive - Professional Development

The author examined the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) experience on preschool teachers' instructional strategy development. The preschool teachers were guided to design the specific contents of the PD workshops and were offered an on-site facilitation opportunity, delineating teacher-driven and job-embedded approaches, respectively. Findings suggest that teacher-driven PD workshops significantly increased teachers' perceived feasibility of implementing instructional strategies, and their actual use of those strategies was significantly influenced by job-embedded facilitations.

The goal of this study was to investigate how science faculty members’ belief systems about inquiry-based teaching changed through their experience in a professional development program. The program was designed to support early career science faculty in learning about inquiry and incorporating an inquiry-based approach to teaching laboratories. Participants who were internally motivated to participate and held incoming positive attitudes toward the mini-journal inquiry-based approach were more likely to incorporate the approach in their future practice. Students’ responses played a critical role in participants’ belief systems and their decision to continue using the inquiry-based format.

This research project examined how elementary teachers in one Canadian school district were handling implementation of a new social studies curriculum over the 2009–10 school year, three to five years after they experienced a formal district-level program of professional development. The findings suggest that effective professional development needs to be based on teachers’ needs; involve active learning, collaboration and modeling; be supported by a culture of learning in schools; and considerate of teacher resistance to change.

This ethnographic study investigates the impacts of current curriculum reform on teacher learning using two subject departments from two schools in Shanghai, China. This study shows that teachers direct much attention towards searching for good practices and norms of practice to encounter new curriculum challenges. Findings show that outside experts who act as ‘boundary brokers’ are crucial in teacher learning.