Learning to design and enact context-based biology education - making an educational reform practical for teachers

Learning to design and enact context-based biology education making an educational reform practical for teachers In many cases, the primary aim of an educational reform is to improve learning outcomes. Teachers, however, do not seem to judge a reform proposal on the influence on learning outcomes, but on the practical merits for their classrooms. In this article, we propose and test three design principles for effective teacher professionalizetion with a focus on increased practicality. We performed a professional development program for secondary school biology teachers (n=8) in which teachers designed and performed lessons in line with a national reform, that is, the introduction of a context-based curriculum. In the professional development program, teachers worked rather independently within their own working environment and built upon evident successes to change their classroom practice step-by-step towards the ideas underlying the curriculum reform. The results show that teachers formulate new and strong intentions for each step in their development. Further results show several shared consecutive steps for teacher change, starting from regular practices towards the context based renewal.