During the summer of 1998, Northeast Louisiana University conducted two intensive professional development projects for science teachers in the Northeast region of the state. The participants of one project were middle school science teachers from the area and the other project served primary school teachers from rural school systems. The emphasis of both projects was inquiry based science instruction. The staff of both projects modeled constructivist teaching methods so that
participating teachers would experience learning that way prior to
attempting to employ constructivist methods in their classrooms. Both
projects used a thematic approach with participants investigating the
science around various themes which are an integral part of the lives of the students that these teachers instruct. Meteorology was an important component of both projects.
To assess the effectiveness of the methods employed during the professional development projects, the cognitive development of the participants of both projects as well as their ability to employ science process skills were assessed. An instrument developed by
Gilbert Burney was used to measure cognitive devlopment. The use of
process skills was assessed using a multiple choice instrument
developed by Michael Padilla. Both instruments were administered prior to the summer institute and at the first academic year session conducted in the fall after the completion of the summer institute. A comparison was done of the two groups. This paper will discuss the content and methodology of the summer institutes and the results of the assessments. It will compare the two groups of teachers and evaluate the changes which occurred in the results after the teachers experienced extensive exposure to inquiry based learning