Professional Development That Works: Shifting Preschool Teachers' Beliefs and Use of Instructional Strategies to Promote Children's Peer Social Competence
Source: Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Vol. 33, Issue 3, August 2012, p. 251-268
The author examined the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) experience on preschool teachers' instructional strategy development.
The author focused on supporting young children's peer social competence as a common interest.
Therefore, the preschool teachers were guided to design the specific contents of the PD workshops and were offered an on-site facilitation opportunity, delineating teacher-driven and job-embedded approaches, respectively.
Findings suggest that teacher-driven PD workshops significantly increased teachers' perceived feasibility of implementing instructional strategies, and their actual use of those strategies was significantly influenced by job-embedded facilitations.
In addition, preschool teachers considered physical classroom environment and children's language to be the most challenging factors in their instructional strategy implementation.