During COVID-19 pandemic the teachers were suddenly forced to change their teaching and use distance learning practices, and become innovative in their ways of teaching online. In the current study we sought to understand whether teachers considered themselves innovative and how this affected their distance learning self-efficacy, accountability, and distance learning teaching practices. Two hundred elementary and secondary school teachers from Israel were asked to fill in a questionnaire comprising the four abovementioned components. Findings indicated that it was teachers' self-innovativeness which had significantly influenced their distance learning self-efficacy, accountability, and distance learning teaching practices. Findings indicate that work experience directly affected self-innovativeness, and older, more experienced teachers perceived themselves as more innovative in adopting and using distance learning compared to less experienced ones. The second finding was that professional development affected distance learning teaching practices but had no effect on teachers' self-innovativeness. The study shows that increasing teachers' self-innovativeness may affect their self-efficacy and accountability and lead to better distance learning teaching practices. Therefore, it is suggested to change the focus of professional development programs to promoting teachers' self-innovativeness and encouraging them to create novel and tailored combinations of hybrid learning. •Teachers' innovativeness directly affected their DL teaching practices.•Teachers' innovativeness directly affected their accountability and DL self-efficacy.•More experienced teachers perceived themselves as more innovative in DL practices compared to less experienced ones.•PD in form of a course on DL affected teachers' DL teaching practices but not their innovativeness.