Snacks, shoulders, and sleep: factors that influence teachers’ professional development decision-making
The professional development literature has identified characteristics of effective professional development and investigated teachers’ reasoning for their professional development choices. A thorough understanding of teachers’ decision-making about their professional development choices can assist providers in developing opportunities that teachers are likely to uptake. This article reports on a study that examined teachers’ self-reported decision-making around professional development with the intent of further refining the field’s understanding of their choices. The 22 participants were teachers who participated in semi-structured interviews that elicited their responses to questions about the types of professional development in which they participated. The findings reveal how teachers are influenced to attend professional development and shed further light on the nature of the considerations teachers make when faced with professional development choices. We argue that these understandings can be leveraged to design professional development opportunities that will appeal to teachers.
