Monitoring classroom teachers' development during professional development program for inquiry based science teaching

The aim of the study is to determine the effect of the professional development program for inquiry based science teaching on the development of classroom teachers. The teacher's development has been examined in terms of pedagogical beliefs, pedagogical content knowledge, affective and communicative field barriers. For this purpose, a qualitative case study has been carried out. It has been given a three-day training and three teachers, who were trained, were included in the participant group. The prepared professional development program was continued for 20 weeks. Teachers were provided with on-the-job support, scaffolding technique. The support that started at the top level ended on the 19th week. The data were collected by semi-structured teacher interview forms, student focus group interview form, weekly observation form, researcher diary and in-class video recordings. In the analysis of the data, content analysis and descriptive analysis were used. Pedagogical content knowledge, pedagogical beliefs, and possession of emotional and communicative barriers constitute a development path with a spiral net although the development of the teacher is differentiated by factors such as graduation area, gender, and socio-economic environment in general. The lack of pedagogical content knowledge leads to affective and communicative barriers. The presence of these barriers affects the pedagogical beliefs of the teacher and negatively affects the behavioral, normative and control beliefs that constitute the purpose of the behavior. Taking this coherence into account, it may be advisable to take a more holistic approach to teacher education and to take into account the support by scaffolding.