Using Social Network Analysis to Study How Collegial Interactions Can Augment Teacher Learning From External Professional Development

• In Event: Assessing Teacher Quality: Understanding Teacher Effects on Instruction and Achievement

Abstract

Objectives
This purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative analysis using social network data and longitudinal data on teaching practice that shows how collegial interactions can augment the mechanism of teachers’ learning from professional development.

Theoretical Framework

Research has found that organized professional development can enhance teacher knowledge and improve instructional practice when it is sustained over time, focuses on enhancing the knowledge and skill needed to teach in specific content areas, employs active learning strategies in which teachers practice new pedagogical skills and receive feedback from others, and creates opportunities for collaborative learning from peers (Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002).
A separate body of research has focused on teacher learning from informal collegial interactions. Under certain conditions, collegial interactions can enable teachers to reconstruct their practice through repeated interactions around artifacts and representations of teaching practice and student thinking (Kazemi & Franke, 2004; Little, 2003), opportunities to observe one another engaged in the act of teaching (Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006), and routines for scaffolding interactions about teaching (Horn & Little, 2010).
To date, however, investigators in large-scale studies studying strategies for supporting teacher learning for improving practice have modeled effects primarily of either organized professional development opportunities or teacher learning communities, but not both.

Methods and Data Sources

The study relies on social network data and self-reports of writing instructional practices from teachers in 20 different schools that were part of a longitudinal study of the National Writing Project’s partnership activities. Partnerships are co-designed, co-resourced initiatives between a local Writing Project site and a school or district. The survey measures used were collected over the first three years of the evaluation study, which included a baseline year for planning and two years of implementation. We collected data on teachers’ reports of their own participation in professional development related to writing, the colleagues that provided them help on matters of writing, and the frequency with which they engaged in different writing processes. The analyses focused on the teachers partnership schools (i.e., the treatment group) and the primary outcome of interest was the frequency with which teachers engaged in instruction related to different writing processes.

Results

The results indicate that organized professional development and interactions with colleagues who gained instructional expertise from participating in prior professional development were both associated with the extent to which teachers changed their writing processes instruction. Furthermore, the effects of professional development varied by teachers’ baseline practices. For teachers who provided students with fewer opportunities to practice writing processes at baseline year, both direct participation in professional development and collegial interactions were significant predictors of change, while for teachers who at baseline offered students with more opportunities to practice writing processes, they were more likely to learn from collegial interactions than direct participation in professional development.

Significance of the Study

These findings suggest the potential usefulness of tailoring professional development programs to teachers on the basis of their current instructional practices.

Authors

• William R. Penuel, University of Colorado

• Kenneth A. Frank, Michigan State University

• Min Sun, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

• Chong Min Kim, Korea Educational Development Institute