Professional development communities: the perceptions of Israeli teacher-leaders and program coordinators

Achieving the ongoing professional development of teachers is of international concern. Professional development communities (PDCs), also known as professional learning communities, developed as a means of attaining this goal. In 2015, Israel began to implement a teacher development program called Hashkafa that consists of school-based PDCs whose leaders, called teacher-leaders, receive support from a program coordinator provided by the Ministry of Education. This study utilized in-depth semi-structured interviews to examine how program coordinators and teacher-leaders consider the Hashkafa program to act as a framework for advancing the professional development of teachers, the factors teacher-leaders consider facilitate or hinder their PDC leadership, what outcome measures they use, and what improvements they recommend. Teacher-leaders (two groups, N = 30 and N = 10 from a population of about 120) and program coordinators (N = 4, being the entire population) were interviewed in a semi-structured manner in mid-2016. Participants named six ways in which the program advances professional development, four main facilitators, and five barriers, with majority agreement the norm. Interviewees spoke of three teacher-related and two pupil-related outcome measures and provided recommendations for program improvement. The range of in-school effects attributable to the PDC-based program are described for further investigation.