Teachers' Lived Experiences of Professional Development and Its Influence on Instructional Quality: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

Teacher professional development is widely promoted as a lever for instructional improvement, yet teachers' own experiences of how it shapes their classroom practice remain underexplored, particularly in public secondary school settings. This study investigated the lived experiences of teachers regarding professional development and its perceived influence on the quality of their instruction. A qualitative phenomenological design, anchored on Moustakas's (1994) transcendental phenomenological tradition, was adopted. Fifteen secondary school teachers with at least five years of teaching experience were purposively selected from four public schools and engaged in in-depth, semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions. Data were analyzed through Moustakas's modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method, involving epoché, horizonalization, clustering of meaning units, and the construction of textural and structural descriptions. Five essential themes emerged, namely fragmented exposure to one-off training, the transformative power of sustained collaborative learning, the role of school leadership in enabling instructional change, the gap between training content and classroom realities, and the centrality of reflection in translating learning into practice. The findings highlight the importance of sustained, contextually grounded, and collaborative professional development models, and argue that instructional quality is most strongly shaped by ongoing professional learning communities rather than episodic seminars.