Constructing a regional school learning model for teachers' professional development

Qiao Ailing and Jiao Baocong
Capital Normal University
Beijing, China

It is essential to invest in the professional development of school teachers to continually upgrade their professional skills -- and this has become even more important with the advances in information technology.

The purpose of this study was to construct a regional school learning model of teachers' professional development -- focusing particularly on the ability to integrate information technology into the curriculum-based on the PDS (Professional Development of Schools) system which has been used widely, and successfully, since the 1980s. An action research design was employed, and a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews were used to evaluate the outcomes. One hundred and sixty teachers from seven schools were selected to participate in the research, and a three-stage procedure was employed to develop the model:

• first, pre-testing the group for ICT competence, using the regional school learning model with them and post-testing the outcomes on ICT;

• second, adjusting the learning strategies to the group;

• third, getting feedback on how well the regional school learning model had worked.

After the action research, all the teachers were asked to fill in a questionnaire, with 154 (a 96% response rate) doing so; and then 45 subjects, randomly selected from the questionnaire respondents, were interviewed. The results showed that using the model could greatly enhance the teachers' ICT competence. It is hoped that the findings of this study will encourage teachers to use the model for workplace-based studies to increase teachers' effectiveness in using ICT.