Suggestions Developed by Teachers to Increase Participation in In-Service Training Activities

This study aimed to identify teachers’ suggestions to increase teacher participation in in-service training activities planned to contribute to professional development of teachers in Turkey. The study group was composed of 35 teachers attending distance education Classroom Teaching MA program at Amasya University, Institute of Social Sciences. The study was conducted in the fall semester of 2013-2014 academic year. Teachers were involved in brain storming about in-service training implementations in Turkey and they were later asked to provide their ideas about the issue in written format. Obtained data were analyzed descriptively. Based on the findings, teachers expect the trainers assigned to in-service-training to be experts in their field. Moreover, the views most emphasized included that planned activities should be consistent with teachers’ needs, educational process should be organized in order to encourage active participation and the learning process should not be conducted in the format that includes solely reading aloud the content. Along with these views, a total of twenty-six complementary and related suggestions were developed by teachers. It is expected that research findings based on teacher views will contribute to the development of effective programs in the future in addition to identifying the elements that affect the quality of in-service training activities in Turkey.