Report on Evidence-Based Teacher Preparation
t Prof e s s ion a l D e v e l o pm e n t f o r Cu r r e n t T e ac h ers
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uch of the research and policy regarding professional development (PD) among teachers has focused on the factors that professional developers need to consider when designing an effective professional development experience. However, little discussion has occurred about how professional developers conceptualize and enact their designs to ensure desirable outcomes.
Associate Professor Fran Arbaugh’s research investigates various aspects of professional development, specifically for mathematics and science teachers. For eight years, she and her colleagues served as the evaluation team for a midwestern state’s Improving Teacher Quality Grants, a state-funded professional development program in which they evaluated more than 40 science and/or mathematics professional development projects. The professional development projects had leadership teams consisting of university faculty members and school-district personnel.
“Our evaluation efforts provided outcome measures on the impact of the professional development on teachers and their students and supported project personnel as they reflected on effective and ineffective aspects of their professional development design and implementation,” said Arbaugh. In the first of a pair of studies regarding these evaluations, Arbaugh and her colleagues established a theoretical construct, called “The PD Project Orientation” framework. Through data collection and analysis, they found that each of the professional development projects had one of five orientations: (1) activity-driven in which professional developers engage teachers in activities that they hope the teachers will then use with their students; (2) science/mathematics content-driven in which professional developers try to help teachers learn new science content and laboratory techniques to enhance teachers’ understanding of selected concepts; (3) pedagogy-driven in which professional developers encourage a particular
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