Teacher Evidences on the Instruction of Learning Skills for Science as a Basis for Continuous Professional Development

One of the critiques of continuous professional development (CPD) programs is that they do not lead to educational change in teachers' practice. This dissertation presents an approach in which CPD programs can effect teacher change. The context of the CPD was related to the 'Learning Skills for Science' (LSS) program, which advocates the incorporation of high-order learning skills and capabilities into science school curricula, in addition to content knowledge. The LSS comprises high-order scientific communication skills such as information retrieval, scientific reading, scientific writing, listening and observing, information representation, and knowledge presentation. In order for students to learn independently and develop scientific literacy, they have to be able to successfully implement these learning skills. The integration of learning skills with scientific contents instruction requires teachers to change their existing practice. This approach studied in this dissertation is Evidence-based CPD which is designed to achieve this change and improve teachers' LSS practice. Teachers in this CPD program were required to prepare and to submit a portfolio that demonstrates their collection of evidence of LSS practice. By the term "evidence", we mean a collection of artifacts that show the teacher's work concerning their instruction and the students' learning, combined with written commentaries. The artifacts and commentaries are aimed at promoting the teachers' reflection on their practice and at presenting the teachers' practice for public discourse with colleagues, thus creating a community of practice. The goals of the study were as follows: (1) Development of the Evidence-based CPD program and examination of its implementation in different in-service models (centralized and disseminated). The following questions were asked:  What are the characteristics of Evidence-based CPD and how are these characteristics implemented in the centralized and disseminated models?  Which kinds of difficulties occur during the CPD and how do teachers