Pedagogical in-Service Courses and Novice Teachers' Professional Development

Abstract

Current study aims to investigate the effect of in-service training courses on novice teachers’ professional development. Moreover, the study seeks to examine the types of in-service courses that novice teachers need. The study population is 30 English high school teachers with teaching certificates in the southern district of Israel. The instrument of the study is an online questionnaire with additional open-ended questions. Study findings showed that 47% of the participants prefer courses in social interaction and educational knowledge. However, few participants showed an interest in self-esteem related courses. The researcher advises novice teachers to priorities their needs in social interaction and educational knowledge courses in order to steadily develop professionally. Moreover, further studies need to be explored in order to examine the effect of pedagogical in-service training courses on veteran teachers' professional development and compare the data between two studies.