Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about professional development, along with tips for crafting them. If you want to build your own custom survey, you can generate a conversational survey using Specific in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for teacher professional development surveys
Open-ended questions dig into real experiences and motivations—nothing beats hearing what teachers truly think, in their own words. While these questions can be more demanding for respondents (Pew Research Center notes nonresponse rates for open-ended questions can hit 18% or higher compared to 1–2% for closed ones [1]), the insight you get is much richer, especially for professional development. Here are ten of our favorite open-ended questions for teachers:
What recent professional development experience has had the biggest impact on your teaching?
How do you usually find new professional development opportunities?
What topics would you like to explore more deeply in future sessions?
Can you describe a challenge you faced applying new skills from PD in your classroom?
Which professional development format works best for your learning style and why?
What’s missing from our current professional development offerings?
How has your approach to student learning changed as a result of recent PD?
Can you share an example of PD leading directly to better student outcomes?
What support do you need from leadership to make PD more effective for you?
How do you collaborate with peers after a PD session to reinforce your learning?
Using open-ended questions unlocks authentic feedback and lets teachers express needs that you wouldn’t uncover with multiple-choice alone.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher professional development
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want to quantify opinions or spot patterns quickly. They also serve as easy conversation starters—sometimes it's less intimidating for teachers to click a simple answer first. Once teachers select an option, we often follow up with an open-ended probe to dig deeper, generating both breadth and depth. Here are three examples for your teacher professional development survey:
Question: Which format do you find most valuable for professional development?
Workshops
Online courses
Peer mentoring
Conferences
Other
Question: How frequently would you like to participate in professional development activities?
Monthly
Quarterly
Once a year
Only when required
Question: Overall, how satisfied are you with current professional development options?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
When to follow up with "why?" Following up a closed-ended question with “why?” is a powerful way to get richer context. For example, if a teacher selects “Peer mentoring” as their preferred format, ask: “Why do you prefer peer mentoring over other formats?” That open probe can reveal motivations or unmet needs that inform future PD design.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? When none of the listed options quite fit, “Other” gives teachers space to express unique perspectives. Always follow up: If someone selects “Other,” ask them to specify—this often uncovers surprising trends or opportunities for new offerings.
NPS-style questions for professional development surveys
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven metric for understanding loyalty and overall satisfaction, and it’s highly relevant to teacher professional development. By asking, “How likely are you to recommend our PD programs to a colleague?”—on a scale of 0 to 10—you get a pulse check that’s easy to track over time. The real value is in pairing this with targeted follow-ups for detractors, passives, and promoters. If you want to try an AI-powered NPS survey built for teachers, check out this generator.
The power of follow-up questions
Anyone who’s run teacher surveys knows that the first answer rarely tells the whole story. With intelligent, real-time follow-up questions—like those baked into Specific’s automatic AI follow-up feature—you close the gap. In fact, studies show that conversational AI chatbots pull in more informative and relevant responses from participants, compared to static survey forms [2].
Follow-ups add context, clarify ambiguous responses, and uncover true motivations. And, thanks to AI, these are tailored in the moment, drawing on each respondent’s own words. Research finds that follow-up surveys conducted soon after the initial contact significantly increase response rates—46% compared to just 32% after a longer delay [3]. Even the way you follow up matters: a quick, conversational prompt (as in a chat survey) gets more engagement than distant reminders [4].
Consider what happens if you skip follow-ups:
Teacher: "I don’t find current PD useful."
AI follow-up: "Can you tell me more about what’s not working for you or what you’d improve?"
That follow-up turns a vague complaint into actionable insight you can use.
How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 follow-ups get you the answers you want—no more, no less. You can configure this in Specific, and respondents can always skip ahead when they’ve covered the key points.
This makes it a conversational survey: Each follow-up flows naturally, so the survey feels like a real conversation—not a tedious inbox exercise. Teachers open up, and you get better data.
Analyzing open-ended responses with AI: Don’t worry about sifting through heaps of unstructured feedback. With AI-powered response analysis (see our post on analyzing survey responses), what once was noise becomes a goldmine of insights—spot themes, pain points, and opportunities faster than ever.
Automated, real-time follow-ups are a game changer—try building a conversational survey yourself and experience the difference.
Prompt engineering: how to ask AI for great teacher PD survey questions
If you love experimenting with AI and want to draft your own survey, the prompt matters. Start simple:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Teacher survey about Professional Development.
Want even clearer results? Always add more detail about your goal, context, and audience—it gives the AI helpful constraints:
Our school is building a new professional development program for middle- and high-school teachers. Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions to identify gaps in our current PD and understand what supports teachers need most.
After generating a list, organize it for focus:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, explore priority themes one at a time:
Generate 10 questions for categories "technology in the classroom" and "peer support & mentoring".
This step-by-step approach surfaces a stronger set of questions, ready for conversational surveys.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey, like the ones you can build with Specific, turns static questionnaires into engaging dialogues. Instead of clicking through boring forms, teachers interact with an AI that asks, adapts, clarifies, and probes—delivering a natural, chat-like experience. Research confirms these AI-driven conversations result in more specific, relevant, and clear answers [2].
How is this different from manual survey building? Let's compare:
Manual survey creation | AI-generated conversational survey |
|---|---|
Lots of time manually drafting and formatting questions | Generate ideal questions instantly using an AI survey builder |
Static forms with limited follow-up logic | Dynamic chat with real-time, targeted follow-up questions |
Analysis is slow, often manual | AI-powered analysis uncovers themes, pain points, and patterns fast |
Respondent experience can be impersonal (form fatigue) | Conversational, mobile-friendly, and feels like a modern chat |
Why use AI for teacher surveys? AI-driven survey generation and response analysis taps into the full voice of your teachers, saves hours, and delivers insights you’d miss otherwise. Try an AI survey example and see how conversational logic outperforms static forms every time.
Specific’s platform provides the best-in-class user experience, with fast survey creation, real-time conversational logic, and feedback analysis that actually drives action. For a full guide, check our step-by-step article on how to create teacher professional development surveys.
See this professional development survey example now
Dive in to see a real conversational teacher survey in action—generate richer insights, strengthen your PD strategy, and make data-driven decisions effortlessly with Specific’s AI-powered survey platform.