•Teachers wrote about the main goals and intentions of the PD that they attended.•Teacher learning takes time perhaps more time than a randomized control trial may allow for.•Teachers require more ...time than the typical one-year study to incorporate PD learning into practice.
This study captured middle and high school teachers’ perceptions of what they learned from professional development (PD) 3–4 years after participating in one of three National Science Foundation funded year-long PD projects. We surveyed 66 teachers from three different PD projects on the types of content, pedagogy, and resources that they remembered learning and continue to use when teaching mathematics. Results indicate that teachers remember and use many aspects from their PD experiences 3–4 years down the road. Most residual learnings from PD also appear to be highly aligned with the goals and intentions of the PD developers and researchers and may be related to the kind of PD design on the adaptive-specified continuum.
Background
Determining whether a professional development program can be enacted with integrity in different settings and by different facilitators is critical to understanding efficacy. In this ...paper, we describe the two-stage preparation process of a facilitator as she prepared to use and adapt the highly specified Learning and Teaching Geometry video-based professional development materials with fidelity. The latter stage of the preparation process involved a rehearsal, during which the research team used two instruments to measure fidelity.
Methods
Two existing instruments were used to explore fidelity through different lenses, including timing and modification of activities and learning goals.
Results
Results from both fidelity instruments indicate that the facilitator used the materials as intended by the developers. However, these instruments did not capture important information regarding modifications the facilitator made, including timing and content-focused adaptations.
Conclusions
Suggestions are made with respect to measuring fidelity, preparing facilitators, and supporting productive adaptations.
Keywords: teacher professional development, online professional development, video-based learning, teacher noticing, mathematical content knowledge INTRODUCTION Incorporating video within a learning ...environment offers great potential for pre- and in-service teachers to unpack the relationships among pedagogical decisions and practices, students' work, and the disciplinary content (Borko et al., 2011; Brophy, 2004; Harford & MacRuairc, 2008; Rich & Hannafin, 2009; Rosaen et al., 2008; Santagata et al., 2007; Sherin, 2007). The VIM project draws upon the face-to-face Learning and Teaching Linear Functions: Videocases for Mathematics Professional Development (NSF; ESI-9731339) video and ancillary resources (e.g., lesson graphs, transcripts, mathematics and video commentaries) to develop 40 two-hour VIM modules intended to develop teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching algebra and noticing skills. Conceptual Frameworks The design and development of the VIM asynchronous modules are conceptually grounded in two main bodies of research related to teacher learning in PD. First, the development of professional knowledge that consists of deep and connected mathematical content knowledge, the knowledge of students' thinking and how students learn the content, and knowledge of pedagogical practices and norms to support student learning. ...the development of a professional vision that consists of teachers' ability to notice, analyze and reason about features of classroom interactions.
The main goal of the Learning and Teaching Geometry project is to build professional development materials that provide opportunities for teachers to learn about mathematical similarity through the ...use of videocases, in which specific and increasingly complex mathematical ideas are presented within the dynamics of classroom practice. The central component of the Learning and Teaching Geometry materials is the Foundation Module, which is intended to provide teachers with a thorough grounding in key mathematical and pedagogical issues related to similarity. Field test data indicate that the Foundation Module can promote gains in both teachers' and students' knowledge of similarity. By highlighting the design elements behind this successful professional development effort and documenting the urgent need for further supports in this content domain, the paper has important implications for mathematics educators.
Video is being used more widely in professional development to help teachers learn to notice and systematically analyze teaching practice. Video captures the authenticity and complexity of teaching ...and can promote the examination of classroom interactions in a deliberate and focused way. However, simply viewing video does not ensure teacher learning. An important question concerns how to facilitate substantive analysis of teaching practice with video so that it becomes a productive learning tool for teachers. In this study, we examine the in-the-moment moves facilitators make in two different video-based professional development programs to offer a framework for facilitation with video. We then examine patterns in facilitation across both contexts and identify practices that are unique to the goals of each setting. The findings from this study have implications for the design of video-based professional development and for developing a knowledge base for professional education.
This research study explored teachers' self-reported uptake as well as observed instructional change after participating in a year-long professional development (PD) program focused on supporting the ...learning and teaching of transformations-based geometry. Analyses illuminate the degree and nature of the pedagogical shifts made by teachers who participated in this highly specified, videocase-based PD program. The treatment teachers' lessons started out significantly lower on most aspects of their instructional quality relative to the control teachers' lessons prior to the PD. However, the control teachers stayed the same or showed a decline in their instructional quality scores, whereas the treatment teachers made significant gains after the PD that brought them to the same level as the control teachers. The article concludes by considering how engagement with intentionally designed videocases during the PD may have contributed to the teachers' improvement in targeted dimensions of instructional quality.
When the COVID-19 pandemic moved teaching and learning to remote and virtual spaces, teacher professional learning moved online as well. To create consistently high-quality teacher learning ...opportunities, many online asynchronous approaches need improvement, and they need to be tailor-made for the online setting. That was the authors' goal when designing and implementing Video in the Middle, an online professional learning program for middle and high school math teachers. The authors have learned that they can effectively embed evidence-based elements of in-person professional learning--such as the use of classroom artifacts, facilitation structures, and opportunities for teacher interaction--into an online asynchronous program. This allows districts and schools to personalize the professional learning to their educators' specific needs without the logistical barriers of scheduling and transportation.
This article explores how video can be used in practice-based professional development (PD) programs to serve as a focal point for teachers’ collaborative exploration of the central activities of ...teaching. We argue that by choosing video clips, posing substantive questions, and facilitating productive conversations, professional developers can guide teachers to examine central aspects of learning and instruction. We draw primarily from our experiences developing and studying two mathematics PD programs, the Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC) and Learning and Teaching Geometry (LTG). While both programs feature classroom video in a central role, they illustrate different approaches to practice-based PD. The PSC, an adaptive model of PD, provides a framework within which facilitators tailor activities to suit their local context. By contrast, LTG is a highly specified model of PD, which details in advance particular learning goals, design characteristics, and extensive support materials for facilitators. We propose a continuum of video use in PD from highly adaptive to highly specified and consider the affordances and constraints of different approaches exemplified by the PSC and LTG programs.
U.S. students' poor performance in the domain of geometric transformations is well documented, as are their difficulties applying transformations to similarity tasks. At the same time, a ...transformations-based approach to similarity underlies the Common Core State Standards for middle and high school geometry. We argue that engaging teachers in this topic represents an urgent but largely unmet need. The article considers what a transformations-based approach to similarity looks like by contrasting it with a traditional, static approach and by providing classroom examples of students using these different methods. In addition, we highlight existing professional development opportunities for teachers in this area.
This article discusses a set of tasks that introduce dilations using nonstandard figures, incorporating snippets of classroom conversations as students try to make sense of the specified tasks, to ...show how they progress in their understanding. The authors provide a theoretical foundation for the tasks and discuss the pedagogical implications for developing geometric proportional reasoning in students, where visual and spatial senses are invoked. The entire three-task set illustrates a learning trajectory that builds foundational understanding of similarity and congruence.
PDF
