Working with teachers: the implementation and evaluation of an innovative in-service programme.

This thesis is concerned with the development and evaluation of a new approach to helping teachers change their classroom practice. The model adopted combined elements from the action-research model and the 'coaching' model, and findings from the curriculum implementation studies. Governments are concerned increasingly to introduce new centralised curricula in response to social changes or economic pressures. In the community there are calls for widespread reform of schooling at all levels. Also, with changes in their career patterns it is imperative that teachers, who are likely to be teaching for thirty or forty years, have available a sustained programme of professional development. Regardless of the origins of the calls for change, to be successful the introduction of a new school practice must be accompanied by a corollary programme of teacher education. Typically, however, in-service education has lacked direction, been inappropriate and been poorly executed. While the focus of the thesis is upon the fidelity of implementation of the new teaching strategy, it also reports on the teachers' understandings of the classroom dynamics, their feelings of self-confidence and perceptions of his or her principal as a supporter of classroom innovation. In the present economic and political climate judgements must be made about the worth of particular in-service programmes. Several important dimensions of an in-service programme were used to compare the innovative model with an action-research model and a 'typical' in-service model. On the criteria considered the innovative model fared better than the other two models. Recent changes to in-service education in the U.K., announced in DES Circular 6/86, have meant a high degree of similarity in the espoused purposes and procedures of the British and Australian Governments. The in-service programme outlined here is well-suited to the new in-service policies and financial arrangements in both countries.