Abstract:

With the established link between professional development (PD) models and student achievement, countries around the globe have focused research attention and millions of dollars to support the development and implementation of PD models in an effort to increase student learning in mathematics and STEM education. Research on the impact of PD on teachers’ instructional practices have shown mixed results and there has not been an accretion of findings to steer or direct decision making. Moreover, findings related to sustained teacher learning have not provided guidance to clearly inform the field. It is important to ascertain what teachers learn from PD that have an impact on their instructional practices over time. Developers, teacher educators and policymakers need more guidance based on rigorous evidence that describes how PD impacts the likelihood of program success, specifically teacher and student mathematics and STEM learning. This study was guided by the following research question: What is the nature of what teachers take up and use two to five years after participating in various PD workshops?

We are collecting data from seven large scale PL programs that were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Each of these professional development models share many similar design features and structures but each falls on a different place on the a continuum from adaptive-specified. These seven programs all focus on developing STEM and mathematics teaching practices but are uniquely different in their goals, intentions, and structures.

This paper is focused on a survey given to teachers from all seven projects (N= ~400) two to five years after participation in PD program. The survey includes questions asking participants to reflect on their PD experience and characterize their past and current use of the PD content, pedagogy materials, and community support. The survey included both Likert items, in which participants responded to statements on a scale of 1-10, as well as follow up questions that allowed the participants to provide more details about their numeric responses.

The analysis of this data is currently underway and will be complete during the conference. We are using descriptive statistics to analyze both Likert items and the percent paired samples t-tests, and analyses of variance and covariance with pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni test to identify and understand the differences and similarities between uptake by project related to the scores from the Likert scale questions as well as percentage of comments by teachers and project. This analysis will provide a foundation that helps us understand the four broad categories (content, pedagogy, materials and support) and subcategories related to uptake to better understand teachers’ sustained learning across the different projects.

Keywords:

Education, professional development, professional learning, mathematics education, STEM education, teacher learning.