Teachers’ Perspectives on Interactive Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning Based Professional Development Program Ahmet Oguz Akcay Duquesne University, USA akcaya@duq.edu Halit Arslan The Turkish Ministry of Education, Turkey arslanhalit@hotmail.com M. Serhat Semercioglu Gumushane University, Turkey s.semercioglu@gumushane.edu.tr Abstract The reform began in Turkish education system to enhance students’ 21 st century skills, and the Turkish Ministry of Education launched a project (Fatih Project) to remove all barriers that teachers face during teaching. The main goal of this paper is to determine teachers’ perceptions related to using Interactive Whiteboard and understands effectiveness of professional development training. The results show that teachers who participated have positive perspective towards to use IWBs after professional development, and they believe that use of IWBs positively affects students learning. Key words: Interactive Whiteboards, Fatih Project, Professional Development Program Introduction The reform began in the Turkish education system to enhance students’ 21 st century skills, and the Turkish Ministry of Education launched a project to remove all barriers that teachers face during teaching. This project is called the FATIH project (Movement of Enhancing Opportunities and Improving Technology). The FATIH project has five main components: 1) providing equipment such as Internet Network, Tablet PCs, Interactive White Boards, document cameras, and software, 2) providing and managing e-content such as e-books and videos, 3) providing a professional development program, 4) changing curriculum to incorporate information and communication technology, and 5) providing reliable, measurable, and manageable usage of ICT (FATIH Project, 2014; Akcay, Arslan, & Guven, 2015). The Turkish Ministry of Education has tried to provide better learning and teaching environments by equipping classroom with the latest technology, and implementing of Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) is a part of this process. The Turkish Ministry of Education started to provide teachers professional development program on using the IWB, and all teachers must take this teacher professional development training. IWBs may be one of the most effective potential tools for delivering content knowledge and as Teck (2013) highlighted that IWBs have positive effects on student learning and rapidly growing in educational institutions. IWBs provide various teaching opportunities for teachers. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate teachers’ perceptions related to using Interactive Whiteboard and to understand the effectiveness of professional development training. Method This study investigates high schools teachers’ perceptions toward using IWBs after the professional development program. For this study, preliminary data was collected from 40 teachers during the Fall of 2015 (7-13 September) after professional development training towards implementing IWB into their classroom. Many of participants do not actively use or do not know how to use IWBs for instruction from various content areas, and all of participants were inexperienced in teaching with IWBs. -1739- SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016