Abstract:

Learning to implement new teaching behaviors is important for the growth and development of educators. These teaching behaviors could be focused on academic and instructional practices or on social and behavioral practices. As educators learn new teaching behaviors, they should always strive to implement these practices with fidelity. Increasing the fidelity of the practice usually leads to improved outcomes for the students, who are on the receiving end of the new teaching behavior.

In order to implement a practice with fidelity, the teacher must both learn about the practice and receive feedback on implementation. Providing educators with efficient, valuable, and cost-effective training to learn these new teaching behaviors is important to increasing the fidelity of the implementation of the new practices. Unfortunately, in-person training may not be economical or even accessible for educators in some areas. Furthermore, providing them with in-person feedback may occur so infrequently that the teacher learns to engage inaccurately with the new behavior. This means that researchers need to identify means to both provide instruction and feedback in a manner that can support those teachers who are not always easily accessible.

The current study used a multiple probe design to determine the effects of an intervention package (asynchronous training plus emailed specific performance feedback) on the rate of opportunities to respond (OTR) of three preservice elementary teachers providing small group mathematics instruction at two elementary schools in the southeastern U.S. Using Swivl, participants recorded videos of engaging students in mathematics instruction using questioning to elicit student thinking. Data were collected through the audio and visual recordings and were analyzed by the researchers to evaluate the rate per minute of OTR. Baseline data for participants were recorded related to the number of times they provided students with OTR to a math prompt. Following a minimum of five baseline data points, a brief 30-minute didactic training was provided to all of the participants about ways to increase OTR. Email-specific performance feedback was provided individually and included feedback about a single observation, as well as visuals depicting performance across multiple observations and time.

Results show a functional relation between the intervention package and increased rates of OTR across all participants. Effect size calculations suggest strong effects using both Tau-U and Nonoverlap of All Pairs estimates. There was an immediacy of effect for participants following the viewing of the asynchronous training. Additionally, there was a level change and accelerating trend evident for participants as they continued to receive email specific performance feedback. Social validity was determined by semi-structured interviews in which all participants noted the intervention package to be effective at changing their behavior and simple to implement. Results of this study further add to the literature showing the value of this type of intervention in changing a variety of behaviors.

Keywords:

Asynchronous training, preservice teachers, mathematics.