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Abstract
The present article reports the results of a study performed to investigate and examine the characteristics of a teachers’ professional development program (Teachers’ Professional Development Program for Differentiated Instruction [PDD]) specially designed to support teachers in the design and application of differentiated instruction. Considering the characteristics of high-quality professional development programs (i.e. active learning, collective participation, closely related to the curriculum and the existing teaching realities, sufficient duration and continuance), the PDD aimed to facilitate change in both attitudes and practices of the participants. The study provides evidence of the success of the program, both in terms of teacher professional development and student achievement, and discusses the elements that made this program successful.
Notes
1. Teachers Professional Development Program for Differentiated Instruction (PDD).
2. In terms of student learning, the program is considered to be successful since, according the findings of Valiandes (Citation2015), students of the teachers that participated in the PDD demonstrated positive changes in their learning. Utilizing a quasi-experimental research, Valiandes compared the progress made by students in classrooms whose teachers took part in the PDD (experimental group) with the progress made by students whose teachers didn’t have any training or support in differentiation (control group). As the results indicated, the student experimental group’s achievement was greater than the achievement of the control group, suggesting that progress in the experimental group was significantly higher than the progress of the control group, even though the control group’s achievement in the pre-test was lower than that of the experimental group.
