New Perspectives in Science Education

This paper presents a novel method for examining the impact of attending teacher-training workshops on teachers’ self-confidence. The workshops were organised by the ministry of education in Morocco and were delivered by academies of education across the twelve regions of Morocco. These workshops were introduced as part of continuous learning and teacher professional development for the newly-hired teachers of Science education in Morocco. One hundred and twenty teachers attended at least two workshops as part of their continuous training. All the participants are teachers who volunteered to participate in the study. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the impact of these workshops on expanding teachers’ ability to learn by regularly upgrading their skills and increasing their knowledge. The study deploys Barry J. Zimmer’s theory of self-regulated learning (SRL) and Michael Fullan’s concept of continuous learning to identify different attitudes of teachers towards these workshops and different delivery methods that make this training advantageous to participants. Questionnaires were administered to examine teachers’ attitudes towards continuous learning. The current paper proposes that these workshops will not only help teachers to learn new skills, but will also have a positive impact on participants’ self-confidence and self-regulated learning. It proposes that teachers will constantly reflect on their teaching practices in the light of what they have learnt from the workshops.  The work presented here has profound implications for future studies of teacher professional development and may help to solve the problem of lack of professional development courses and workshops for teachers.

Keywords: continuous learning; self-confidence; training workshops; teachers’ attitudes;