From teacher professional development to teacher personal-professional growth: the case of expert STEM teachers

ABSTRACT

Following Self-Determination Theory, scholars theorize that professional well-being is essential for teachers’ satisfaction and personal-professional growth. However, teacher professional development programs (TPDPs) primarily focus on promoting student achievement and only partially and indirectly address teachers’ professional well-being. The lack of teachers’ voices in this discrepancy is noticeable. This study aimed at confronting teachers’ perceptions about their professional well-being needs with how actual practices in effective TPDPs address these needs. Well-being components (competence, relatedness, autonomy, and aspirations) were thematically identified within 20 interviews with expert STEM teachers. The findings show that teachers attribute importance to their professional well-being in all components. In particular, aspirations for personal-professional growth, pointed out by teachers as the most important, were totally ignored by effective TPDPs. The findings emphasize the need to establish well-being as an additional characteristic of effective TPDPs. This additional characteristic may have practical and theoretical implications for designing and assessing TPDPs’ effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-determination theory
• teachers’ professional well-being
• teachers’ personal-professional growth
• effective teachers’ professional development
• expert STEM teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We consider STEM teachers as experts if they: (1) hold an academic degree in a STEM subject, (2) hold an additional academic degree in STEM education, (3) have over 10 years of experience in teaching a STEM subject for the matriculation exams, and (4) have developed a STEM-related career. In Israel, the Ministry of Education requires teachers to complete at least 30 hours of PD each year in the field of knowledge, so we can assume that an expert STEM teacher has accumulated at least 300 hours of STEM professional training over the years.

2. The teacher refers to the reform ‘Oz Latmura’ (meaning in Hebrew ‘courage for change’). A concurrent agreement was signed by teachers’ unions and the Israeli educational system back in 2012, with the intention of inflicting significant changes in high school pedagogical aspects, administrative aspects, and in teachers’ employment conditions, including TPDPs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anat Even-​Zahav

Anat Even-​Zahav holds a PhD in Science Education from the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an MBA in Business Administration, and a BSc in Applied Mathematics. During the past 15 years, she has taught mathematics in Israeli high schools and for five years at MSU, NJ. Currently, she is a lecturer of mathematics education courses at the AL-Qasemi Academic College and at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and Arts, Israel.

Mirela Widder

Mirela Widder holds a PhD in Mathematical Education from the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an MA in Education and Psychology from the Open University in Israel, and a BSc in Mathematics from Tel-Aviv University. Mirela has taught mathematics in Israeli high schools for 30 years. During the last six years, she has been a lecturer of mathematics education courses at the Shaanan Academic Religious Teachers’ College, Haifa, Israel, and an academic advisor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Orit Hazzan

Orit Hazzan’s research focuses on computer science, software engineering, and data science education. She has published about 130 papers in professional refereed journals and conference proceedings, and seven books. In 2007–10 she chaired the High School Computer Science Curriculum Committee assigned by the Israeli Ministry of Education. In 2011–15 Hazzan was the faculty Dean. From 2017 to 2019, she was the Technion Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Additional details can be found in her personal homepage.