Centre for Program Evaluation—The University of Melbourne
This research summary provides interim findings from an ongoing study on the impact of the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) professional development (PD) model, practices and services. The first portion of the summary highlights findings from the literature review. The second section presents outcomes from pre- and post-surveys of educators who had participated in select IB professional development workshops along with a comparison group who had not. Based on the literature review, the researchers identified nine features of high-quality professional development. Some of these features include the importance of practice when implementing new skills and the importance of engaged and supportive school leadership. Based on the surveys, for those who had participated in IB professional development, positive changes were particularly pronounced for measures of self-efficacy, with medium to large effect sizes. In general, similar changes were not observed for the comparison group. After attending IB professional development workshops, participants, on average, reported significantly higher feelings of general self-efficacy, context-specific self-efficacy, and collective self-efficacy. Lastly, this phase of the study also identified factors that contribute to success before, during and after PD workshops.
