Practitioners’ Self-Evaluations of Contrasting Types of Professional Development

The effects of three types of in-service training on practitioners’ self-evaluations of evidence-based preschool classroom practices were evaluated in a study of 255 participants from 26 states. Participants attended either conference presentations or 1-day or 2- to 3-day workshops or received one of two types of intensive in-service training (weeklong institutes or on-site training in the participants’ classrooms). Study participants made self-ratings of the usefulness of the training content and the extent to which the training changed or improved their classroom practices, 1 or 6 months after training. Results show that both types of intensive in-service training are more effective than either conference presentations or workshops and that on-site training is more effective than weeklong institutes in affecting study participants’ judgments of the in-service training. The findings are discussed in terms of the characteristics of in-service training most likely to change or improve preschool classroom practices.