Model of Teacher Professional Development: The Partnership in the Primary Science Project

Teacher professional development is usually directed and governed by three agents: politics, pedagogy and innovation. For example, the responsibility for teacher professional development has shifted over the decades as politicians, policy makers and political activists decide on the nature and location of review and determine who should have and hold the authority to accredit and evaluate. Research on pedagogy now advocates pedagogical practice that moves away from concentrating on core content/skills/teaching strategies, to promoting the development of reflective, proficient thinkers and communicators, who are self-directed and well informed responsible citizens. Likewise, although innovation in education is constant, the introduction of various technologies for school use has seen the innovation challenge in science education step up a gear. The book begins by considering existing literature and ideas on teacher professional development. Chapter 2 briefly outlines some of the issues in science education that are of relevance to primary school science. The literature in the area of Teacher Professional Development and issues of relevance to primary science were used to inform the PIPS model of teacher professional development. The rationale for the model can be found in Chapter 3. Subsequent chapters focus on the methodology employed by the project including details of the evaluation, as the data collected was instrumental in determining influential facets of the project. The following chapters explore the notion of readiness, risk, reflection, recognition, resource and relevance. These were deemed to be key elements that contributed to the success of the project in terms of promoting professional development and in terms of seeing tangible change in classroom practice. There is a short chapter which outlines some of the other project findings and the book concludes with a chapter on the need and challenge for dynamic teacher professional development programmes that work in partnership with teachers rather than deliver things for teachers.