Evaluating a Professional Development Framework to Empower Chemistry Teachers to Design Context-Based Education

Abstract

Even experienced chemistry teachers require professional development when they are encouraged to become actively engaged in the design of new context-based education. This study briefly describes the development of a framework consisting of goals, learning phases, strategies and instructional functions, and how the framework was translated into a professional development programme intended to empower teachers to design context-based chemistry education. The programme consists of teaching a pre-developed context-based unit, followed by teachers designing an outline of a new context-based unit. The study investigates the process of teacher empowerment during the implementation of the programme. Data were obtained from meetings, classroom discussions and observations. The findings indicated that teachers became empowered to design new context-based units provided they had sufficient time and resources. The contribution of the framework to teacher empowerment is discussed.

Strategies to support teachers' professional development regarding sense‐making in context‐based science curricula

“…Uncertainty about the science content, dilemmas in their teaching practice and students' abilities, and how teachers deal with this are as much a part of teaching as teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical experience (Rosebery & Puttick, 1998). In earlier studies, distantiation was demonstrated in teachers' coping strategies to avoid this stress and uncertainty (Dolfing, 2013;Evers et al, 2002;Parker & Martin, 2009;Stolk et al, 2012). These coping strategies included blaming the (lack of) abilities of the students and questioning the quality of the lesson materials, or expressing the intention to drop out of the particular PD program.…”

Designing context-based teaching materials by transforming authentic scientific modelling practices in chemistry

“…These tools proved successful to empower the teachers for context-based curriculum design. Stolk, Bulte, De Jong, and Pilot (2012) have described a number of conditions and recommendations for engaging teachers in curriculum unit design, among which explicating teachers' professional knowledge regarding curriculum unit design, delivery of relevant resources and tools for the designer, and the availability of a framework for curriculum unit design. In our study the resources and tools to engage teachers in curriculum unit design were delivered by the authentic practice, which was elaborated intensively in the first meeting.…”

Interaction of Vietnamese teachers with a social constructivism-based primary science curriculum in a framework appropriate for a Confucian heritage culture

“…1). The importance of general strategies, such as collaboration, sharing experiences, co-designing, and reflection are acknowledged by many studies on Teacher PD (Stolk et al 2012;Vos et al 2010). This study builds on the knowledge of effective PD programme (Borko 2004) with the establishment of the learning community in which the teachers act as facilitators and critical co-designers (Agung 2013).…”

“…This study can be situated within a larger research programme on developing a framework for Teacher PD with three main stages -preparation for teaching, teaching and observing, and reflection -and, as Stolk et al (2012) recommended, with quite a number of small iterations (nine iterations in this case; Fig. 1).…”

“…The programme of Teacher PD was adapted from a framework for empowering teachers to teach innovative units (Stolk et al 2012). The PD programme was also inspired by a lesson study approach and a collaborative work setting for CHC teachers to improve their class instruction (Lee 2008).…”