Professional development needs of Turkish teachers in an era of national reforms

Abstract

An emerging consensus in the teacher education literature confirms that supporting educational reforms and improving designs for national programs can be accomplished simply by maximizing the match between teachers' expressed needs and the content by which those professional development needs are met. This paper presents an interpretation of findings on Turkish teachers' in-service training needs during an era of massive reform. The findings indicate that teachers do not report a strong need for any professional development program content. Analyses are based on survey data from 1,730 Turkish teachers from 352 primary schools. The results raise the discussion of whether teachers simply do not want to participate or actually do not need to participate in any more training during this era of massive educational reforms. The paper concludes by outlining policy and practice implications arising from the research.