Professional development of a step towards effective teaching (Case study: Elementary teachers in Sanandaj)

This study had multiple objectives such as testing the validity and reliability characteristics of the "Effective Professional Development" questionnaire, identifying differences between teachers 'opinions based on demographic variables and helping to improve teachers' professional development by identifying effective career development priorities.

The approach of the present study was post-stability and its strategy was survey-descriptive. The research community included primary school teachers in Sanandaj who numbered 1,258. The participants in this study were 300 people who were selected using Karajsi and Morgan tables and by sampling using multi-stage clustering method. Sweeney and Lumpé's (2014) questionnaire was used under the heading "Characteristics of Effective Professional Development". Appropriate inferential statistics were used to test the hypotheses according to the type of data distribution. For the content validity test of the questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis and for reliability test, Cranbach's alpha test was used. The obtained alpha was 0.967, which showed the appropriate reliability of the questionnaire.

The results showed that the questionnaire "Effective professional development characteristics" has the desired validity and reliability for use among Iranian teachers. Among the components of effective teacher development in terms of teachers, according to Friedman's test results, the first rank of these components was the focus on teacher content knowledge and how students learn the content and the last rank was active learning beyond the classroom. There is also a significant difference between the components of effective teacher development. Keywords: Professional development, teachers, effective professional development, effective teaching, quality improvement.