Comparing Two Measures of Professional Development Effectiveness: Teacher Self-Reports Versus Classroom Observations

• In Event: 70.047 - The Diverse Contexts of Teachers' Growth in Mathematical Content Knowledge

Abstract

Designing teacher professional development (PD) which supports teachers to learn challenging and ambitious mathematics instructional practices poses numerous design and measurement challenges to researchers. One challenge is finding valid measures of PD effectiveness which can both assess the impact of PD on teachers’ practice and inform iterative improvement of PD designs. This analysis uses correlational analysis, including multiple regression, to compare two different outcome measures of PD used in a large-scale study of mathematics instruction: teachers’ self-reports of change following PD and coded classroom video data. We find teachers’ self-reports of instructional change based on PD not predictive of observed reform-oriented teaching practices in mathematics classrooms. The paper concludes with implications for ongoing research and practice in PD and measurement.

Authors

• Charlotte Jean Dunlap, Vanderbilt University

• Thomas M. Smith, University of California - Riverside