the UK programmes were divided into six to ten whole or halfday sessions over the
course of two school terms, with periods between teacher meetings utilized by the
teachers to explore and develop ideas in their own classrooms. In Israel, the
programmes generally began with an intensive 2-3 days of CPD, where the teachers
became fully immersed in the ideas and practices of the specific domain. This was
then followed by teacher meetings at roughly monthly intervals over the course of
eight to ten months.
Each CPD programme had some specific characteristics that were shaped by previous
CPD programmes that the developers had been involved in and each was also
influenced by the pedagogical content knowledge of the specific domain, in that the
CPD providers attempted to model some aspects of the approach (Hogan and
Berkowitz, 2000). However, several features were common to all domains. All the
programmes dealt with ways to implement the pedagogic approaches using concrete
instances derived from classroom practice. This provided the impetus for professional
dialogue as the teachers came to recognize particular techniques and to evaluate how
these might be incorporated into their existing teaching repertoire. Teachers were
then able to plan classroom activities and work out, with support from the CPD
providers and their colleagues on the CPD programme, how they might capture
evidence of their changing practice.
In all the domains, the first few attempts at collecting evidence of practice were
relatively prescriptive in nature, but as the teachers became more adept at collecting
evidence and gained confidence and competence within the specific domain they
began to select from a wider range of evidence sources. The teachers thus increased
their autonomy in line with their development towards accomplished teaching.
The goals and approach of the CPD programmes were designed to allow for this
evolution of practice and understanding in that the activities and sessions fostered
teacher learning in the particular science domains by:
• Helping teachers become aware of the need to stimulate and support students
in learning activities in the domain
• Exposing teachers to central ideas in the domain and a variety of instructional
activities
• Encouraging teachers to customise activities in the domain to their needs and
implement them effectively
• Providing guidance to a wide range of teachers enabling them to evidence
their practice and improve their knowledge and skills
• Guiding teachers in collecting evidence of accomplished teaching
• Facilitating meetings where teachers could discuss and reflect on the
documented practice, with presenting artefacts as evidence that demonstrated
their changing practice
• Helping teachers select documented evidence to illustrate their development in
their portfolio
The goals were achieved in each of the domains by ensuring that the CPD
programmes included the following elements: setting goals, learning from examples
by reflection on the evidences of practice that were produced, customising and
developing ownership of the next steps towards accomplishment. There were,
however, a range of ways in which this process was carried out in the different