Teacher Attitudes towards Research-Based Classroom Exercises and Intensive Virtual Summer Professional Development

Abstract

A study based on a survey questionnaire was conducted with 55 teachers across multiple high schools in the United States to understand their perceptions about their attitudes and confidence towards using research-based classroom exercises, which models they use to develop such exercises and their availability and preferences for an intensive summer professional development course. Our preliminary results indicate that while teachers are comfortable teaching research-based classroom activities, they are none-the-less very interested in paid professional development courses on teaching research practices to students (79%), more than two-thirds (69%) would be willing to devote at least one hour a week during the school year and three-quarters (75%) would be willing to spend 2-3 hours a week or more during the summer.