Today, an increased impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the society at large has lead teachers to engage in professional development activities related to the use of ICT. Even though this development has been prominent for more than two decades, its long term effects seem complex to determine. This paper is based on interviews with twelve Swedish teachers who participated in a national program for promoting school development and use of ICT in 2000-2001. The program was aligned with the pedagogical approaches set out in the national Swedish curriculum, such as a shift from teaching to learning and giving pupils more responsibility, introducing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching in teams, and a problem based pupils-oriented pedagogy. The analysis of the interviews show that teachers still feel a high degree of appreciation for the program, and that they share a relative agreement of the importance of the program for their teaching with ICT in the last decade. The general intentions of the program to be more concerned with school development and pedagogy rather than technology and ICT seem also to be present today as a long term effect.
TopResearch On Effective Teachers’ Professional Development
Although the long term effects of teachers’ professional development seem complex to determine (cf. Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010), and several barriers to teachers professional development have been identified (Diaz-Maggoli, 2004), there are many studies trying to establish what makes professional development effective (Boyle, While, & Boyle, 2004; Boyle, Lamprianou, & Boyle, 2005; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birmann, & Yoon, 2001; Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi, & Gallagher, 2007). Studies have also been trying to establish if there is a relationship between different characteristics of professional development and student achievement (Huffman & Thomas, 2003; Johnson, Kahle, & Fargo, 2006; Shymansky, Yore, & Anderson, 2004; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, & Shapley, 2008). As previously noted, there are many stakeholders concerned with teachers’ professional development and there are different ways of conceptualising professional development (Desimone, 2009), as well as different ways of conceptualising what should be measured as its outcome (Wayne, Yoon, Zhu, Cronen, & Garet, 2008).