Boosting Teachers' Self-Efficacy and Use of Inquiry in Science Through Follow-Up Professional Development Supports

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Professional Learning in the Classroom Across Time and Levels of Experience

Abstract

Professional development offers a path to improve science education in elementary schools. However, for ongoing benefits, teachers must continue to teach science regularly and to use the strategies learned. In this study, we investigated the impact of an intervention of modest follow-up supports on elementary school science teachers. This longitudinal study found that the modest supports offered to teachers in the years after participation in three-year, science-based professional development programs helped to sustain long-term impacts on teachers’ sense of preparedness to teach science, self-efficacy, instructional time in science, and use of targeted instructional strategies and inquiry-based student activities in science.

Authors

• Judith H. Sandholtz, University of California - Irvine

• Cathy Ringstaff, WestEd

• Jessica Triant, WestEd

• Bryan Matlen, WestEd