THE EFFECTS OF A SCHOOL-BASED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM ON TEACHER PERFORMANCE

This study aimed at investigating the effects of the Professional Development segment of the Education Reform Support Program (ERSP) on the overall performance of the participating schools in the program as well as on its four component areas, namely school culture, planning, communication and project management. The ERSP is one of the largest professional development projects ever implemented to support the second phase of the Jordanian Ministry of Education's Reform for the knowledge Economy (ERFKE) project. Out of the 126 participating schools in the program 106 schools were included in the analysis. Differences between pre and post scores on the program rubric were analyzed and the effects of several independent variables were studied. Those variables included geographic location of the school (North, Middle, South), type of school (comprehensive, secondary, elementary), urban level (urban, rural), gender (male, female schools) and school principal attendance of the program (attended, did not attend). Means and standard deviations of the total and sub-scores were calculated for all the variables. T-tests and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were utilized to determine the effects of the program on the participating schools. The major conclusion of the study was that schools performed significantly better after the implementation of the program on both the total score and all sub-scores, i.e. the four major component areas, signifying that the training program produced the desired goals. Additionally, there were significant differences in both total score and all sub-scores between female and male schools in favor of female schools. There were no significant differences in the performance of the schools as a result of the rest of the variables.