Page 84 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

A Paradigm Shift for Teachers’ Professional Development Structure in Turkey

change as argued in the first part of the findings, and its impact on students’ academic performance and
skill proficiencies considered, one could argue that the PD program demonstrated measurable value-
added impact on both teachers’ professional growth and students’ science learning and competencies.
In their research on the development of thinking skills including project implementation, Gunel
(2013) and Gunel et al. (2014) reported that students’ performance in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test
(CCTT) depended on their group (ABI or control), their teachers’ implementation level, and the length
of their participation in the project. That is, students in the ABI group significantly outperformed those
in the control group. This was also due to teachers’ implementation level and the time the data was col-
lected. If a teacher’s ABI implementation level was higher, their students performed better in the CCTT.
Furthermore, since the teachers’ implementation levels improved over the course of the project, their
students’ performance increased; and the results obtained from the second and third years of the project
were higher than those obtained from the first year. However, the CCTT performance mainly depended
on the group and implementation level.
The findings of Gunel (2013) and Gunel et al. (2014) are particularly important since their assessment
tool was independent of science content and the skill development was dependent on the PD content (ABI
approach) and teacher development. The authors reported that the effectiveness of the PD programme
was reflected in the content (independent variable) and time. The effect of the PD programme was
observed in not only the understanding of conceptual science but also the development in the thinking
skills of the students, which can be considered to be the ultimate goal of any content teaching, even the
whole education system. In addition, the arbitrated impact of the approach, implementation level and
time give clear indication as to how effective the structure of the in-service training programme was in
terms of influencing the students. Findings also demonstrate the necessity of the PD programmes to be
comprehensive and longitudinal, two characteristics that lack in the current Turkish educational settings.
When the general structure of the on-going PD programmes are considered, it appears that MoNE
heavily concentrates on content delivery with only some emphasis on teachers’ needs. Furthermore,
those implemented programmes are evaluated not only to bring about a change in teachers’ pedagogy
but also to improve students’ learning. Despite the small sample size in this study, the structure of the
PD, implementation procedure, teacher change process and enhancement of student learning outcomes
make a contribution to the future direction for in-service training in the Turkish educational setting. By
far the most important implication for the future is the need to adopt the international norms of PD and
implement state of the art in-service training as discussed by Gunel and Tanriverdi (2014). That is, the
PD programmes needs to adopt the perspective of the teacher as learner by doing and interacting, being
longitudinal and structured around teacher change trajectory over the time, being related to and evaluated
in connection with students learning outcomes and demonstrating the collaborative learning partnership
between PD trainers, teachers and students. However, creating such a paradigm and initiating a practical
shift in a large system with inveterate perception is a challenge to be faced.
From our perspective evidence-based practices are the first and most important elements that can
trigger systematic change in the education world. While a small scale implementations or local success
stories framed around data driven frameworks always play important role in this process, there is a
strong need for comprehensive scale-up setups. We argue that PD studies such as that described in this
chapter can be implemented across larger populations of teachers. The most significant shortcoming for
the development of training programmes is the lack of qualified trainers. To improve the situation, it is
suggested that teachers who have attended training programmes can receive trainer training and assist
in the future scale-up PD programmes. Furthermore, following the PD programme, these teachers can

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