‘It’s more than a prop’: Professional development session strategies as sources of teachers’ self-efficacy and motivation to teach outside the classroom

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses findings from a small-scale empirical exploration of how professional development (PD) programme session strategies influence secondary science teachers’ practice. It draws on a series of session questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and lesson observations from six secondary science teachers participating in a 2-year outdoor teaching PD programme in England. This paper explores session strategies as sources of self-efficacy resulting in practice change. It is argued that strategies most influential are those that combined several self-efficacy sources. However, alongside self-efficacy, the motivating role strategies play are important to the successful outcome of PD programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-efficacy
• Professional development
• motivation
• outdoor science teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-project sectors.