Developing a Responsive Professional Development (RPD) Survey for High School Physics Teachers
By taking a responsive approach to the design and enactment of teacher professional development (PD), PD instruction can be tailored to teachers' needs, interests, and concerns. This is of considerable importance in the high school physics teacher PD space, wherein teacher needs turn out to be particularly complex and diverse due to differences in teacher preparation within the discipline. More generally, understanding the degree to which PD programs are responsive to their teachers' needs can support increased responsiveness.
By taking a responsive approach to the design and enactment of teacher professional development (PD), PD instruction can be tailored to teachers' needs, interests, and concerns. This is of considerable importance in the high school physics teacher PD space, wherein teacher needs turn out to be particularly complex and diverse due to differences in teacher preparation within the discipline. More generally, understanding the degree to which PD programs are responsive to their teachers' needs can support increased responsiveness. To this end, having a validated survey can assist in measuring the criteria for this responsiveness. This study presents the initial development of a responsive professional development (RPD) survey based on interviews with 13 high school physics teachers.