Effective characteristics of professional development programs for science and technology education

Abstract

Science and technology education has become increasingly important. However, for most teachers, it is challenging to provide this content. Therefore, professional development programmes are used to support teachers in this regard. In this qualitative study, effective characteristics that should be present in such programmes were identified. Moreover, four particular professional development programmes were investigated to see whether they included these characteristics. Eleven review studies and meta-analyses were analysed to identify the effective characteristics of professional development programmes for science and technology education. Five content characteristics were distinguished: focus, activities, collaboration, coherence of content, and duration. In addition, three contextual characteristics were distinguished: coherence with context, individual factors, and organisational factors. The materials from four professional development programmes for science and technology education were collected and analysed and interviews were held with principal investigators who were involved in the design of these programmes and with educators who worked with these programmes. The characteristics duration and coherence with context appeared to be fully addressed in respectively two and one programmes. The other characteristics were incorporated to a limited extent or not at all. Overall, the present study illustrated the apparent challenges in designing professional development programmes. ARTICLE HISTORY

Enhancing Huber’s evaluation framework for teacher professional development programme

“…Similar reason was reported as part of the weaknesses of the New Opportunities Fund ICT training for United Kingdom teachers (Galanouli et al 2004). It is essential that the design of a professional development programme contain coherent contents in which the learning goals match the designed activities (Hubers et al 2020). These findings justify the addition of the second element (yellow box), incorporation of principles of adult learning, to enhance Huber's framework in order to ensure that the micro-didactic features are designed according to the learners' goals and needs instead of the organisation's goals, unless the programme pertains to the introduction of a new curriculum (Hayes 1995).…”

Building blocks of instructor professional development for innovative ICT use during a pandemic

“…According to several reviews, to be more effective, the PD content should focus on content knowledge of the subject the teacher is teaching (Cordingley et al, 2015;Darling-Hammond et al, 2017;Horvers et al, 2020;Postholm, 2012;Van Veen et al, 2011). However, focusing only on content is not enough (Hubers et al, 2020;Kennedy, 2016). Pedagogical content knowledge, concerning knowledge about how to support students in learning about the subject matter, needs to be included in the PD (Cordingley et al, 2015;Darling-Hammond et al, 2017;Dogan et al, 2016;Horvers et al, 2020;Postholm, 2012;Van Veen et al, 2011).…”

Supervision and Participation in Teachers Working Group Toward the Teach-ers’ Professional Competence

“…Another thing that is important in teacher training is that there should be a system that motivates the teacher to implement the knowledge that they got from the training in the teaching and learning process (Osman & Warner, 2020). Moreover, the duration of the training influences the success of the training to improve teachers' performance, it means that a training should be conducted in a sufficient duration (Hubers et al, 2020). Furthermore, in order to get the complete benefits of a training, complete participation is required (Jhang, 2019).…”