Teachers-as-learners: The role of a multimedia professional development program in changing classroom practice

This paper describes a professional development program which involved the use of a multimedia package to develop teachers' understanding of a constructivist epistemology in science education. The program put the teachers in the role of learners in an attempt to enhance epistemological change a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Maor, D.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Australian Science Teachers Association. 1999
Subjects:
Online Access:https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/8718/
Description
Summary:This paper describes a professional development program which involved the use of a multimedia package to develop teachers' understanding of a constructivist epistemology in science education. The program put the teachers in the role of learners in an attempt to enhance epistemological change and subsequently influence their use of the multimedia package and constructivist teaching approaches in their classrooms. The multimedia interactive program, Birds of Antartica, was developed using constructivist principles. During the workshop, and subsequently in school classrooms, recordings were made of teachers' and students' interactions with the program and their reactions to the constructivist-oriented learning environment. the results of the study suggest that teachers who engage themselves as learners in a professional development program have greater opportunities to bring about the successful implementation of new ideas in the science classroom.