Contribution of professional development to standards implementation

Abstract

Teachers’ professional development is a key to any educational change and is critical when leading and assimilating change, such as introducing standards into classrooms. A national professional development (PD) framework was developed for the implementation of science standards published by the Israeli Ministry of Education, which was activated before introduction of the standards into the classroom. In this research the authors examined the contribution of PD and instruction to the implementation of science standards and whether seniority (years of teaching experience) together with PD assisted in the implementation. The research combined qualitative and quantitative research methods. Seniority in teaching was found to help in implementation, even though veteran teachers usually find it more difficult to accept change. PD and instruction contributed to implementation of the standards by understanding the goals of the standards, focusing the teaching, implementing difficult standards, completing missing disciplinary knowledge, and mutual fertilization between teachers.

Keywords:

• professional development
• standards implementation
• elementary science education
• science teaching and learning
• standards-based elementary science education