Impact of discipline-specific professional development: implementation of core instructional practices

Abstract

A study of a discipline-specific teacher development project designed to prepare teachers to implement a series of core instructional practices for pre-collegiate history teaching is described as a model that can be applied to any content discipline. Teachers were surveyed concerning the success of the project in achieving the goals it set, implementation of and feelings about the new strategies learned for ‘doing history’ and the impact of the PD activities provided. A variation on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model was used to measure the levels of use and stages of concern of the teachers with regard to the strategies. Teachers reported a high level of adoption of and comfort with the strategies. Implications for structuring successful PD activities that are discipline-specific, collaborative, use active learning, have a coherent vision and sufficient duration are presented.

Keywords:

• professional development (PD)
• teacher development
• discipline-specific instruction
• core instructional practices
• history education