Page 83 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

A Paradigm Shift for Teachers’ Professional Development Structure in Turkey

The project was framed around relevant measurement areas of students’ learning outcomes including
academic achievement, critical thinking skills, argument competencies and writing comprehensions. While
some studies reported on the practice of a single teacher to explore the impact of the implementation of the
ABI approach (experiment) as opposed to traditional practices (control) on students’ learning outcomes,
other studies investigated the differences in students’ learning outcomes depending on the group (ABI-
experiment or control) as well as the teachers’ implementation level (such as exploring and developing,
etc.). Furthermore, there are also studies focusing on teachers’ ABI group competency developing over
a term or a school year. In this section, the above-mentioned assessment areas are discussed in light of
the findings of the previously published research.
Researchers have conducted small-scale studies to investigate the impact of PD programmes on students’
learning of various science subjects in different learning environments. Arli and Gunel (2012) investi-
gated the impact of the ABI implementation on the academic achievements and argument competencies
of students who were also seasonal agricultural workers. They studied a single teacher and her students.
The participant teacher worked in the south-eastern part of Turkey and the students attended school only
three months in a year due to their seasonal agricultural work, and their academic performance was quite
low compared to the national average. The findings suggest that the ABI implementation group, aligning
with the PD project, significantly outperformed the control group on academic achievement tests and
argument generation scores of students’ writing samples (Arli & Gunel, 2012; 2014). Furthermore, in
the ABI group, the students’ skills for generating questions, claim, evidence, and reflections increased
over the school year (Arli, 2014).
Similarly, Yesildag-Hasancebi and Gunel (2013) investigated the impact of the ABI approach on sci-
ence achievements and writing comprehensions of students from lower socio-economic classes in com-
parison to the control group students. They also reported that when compared to traditional approaches,
the ABI implementation significantly increases students’ understanding of scientific concepts as well
as their writing skills (Yesildag-Hasancebi, 2014). Furthermore, small-scale investigations focusing on
different science concepts; such as electricity, and force and motion all indicate that the content of the
PD programmes and the ABI approach create significant learning enhancements, which add to the teach-
ers’ existing teaching methods. These findings in an individual teacher’s case provide evidence on the
measurable effects of the in-service training programme on students’ science learning outcomes as well
as their argumentation and written comprehension. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the comprehensive
impact of the programme on students’ learning outcomes when all teachers participating in training
programme are considered.
In their annual project impact evaluation studies, Gunel et al. (2012), Gunel et al. (2013), and Gunel
et al. (2014) reported that when all participating teachers were considered, ABI instruction groups out-
performed the control group on unit-based science achievement regardless of the topic. Moreover, the
participating teachers’ implementation level of the ABI approach was found to have considerable effects
on students’ academic achievement. That is, while ABI group students collectively outperformed the
control students, the achievement gap was greater when the teacher’s implementation level got higher.
On the other hand, Cikmaz (2014) analysed the writing samples of the students of three teachers over
the course of the project to explore the relationship between the teachers’ implementation levels and the
development of their students’ writing skills. Cikmaz found that as the teachers’ implementation level
improved, their students’ writing skills enhanced. Considering the teachers’ pedagogical competency

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