Lessons Learned About Recruiting Schools and the Implementation of Professional Development

• In Event: Math for All: Lessons Learned From Piloting a Randomized Controlled Trial in a Large Urban District

Abstract

Math for All is designed to assist schools as they implement Common Core Standards-based math education for a wide range of diverse learners, including those with disabilities. Building on a neurodevelopmental framework for learning (Barringer, Pohlman, & Robinson, 2010; Levine, 2002; Pohlman, 2008), the program shows teams of general and special education teachers how to collaboratively plan and adapt math lessons to help all students achieve high-quality learning outcomes in mathematics. MFA helps teachers deepen their understanding of how to formatively assess students’ strengths and needs; identify and reflect on possible barriers for students’ engagement with standards-based math learning experiences; and use a variety of instructional strategies to teach standards-based math concepts and practices to support individual students’ strengths and needs.
Lessons learned from the pilot
• Given the organizational structure of CPS, we needed to work at multiple levels in the system to recruit teachers for participation in our pilot PD. This included central office staff from the Department of Math, and the Office of Diverse Learner Support Services, instructional support specialists who work in CPS’ networks, who in turn informed school principals and teachers about the MFA PD opportunity. Given the multiple levels of communication involved in the recruitment process, and the requirement to conduct the PD on Saturdays, we ended up with a less than ideal composition of our pilot sample. For instance, the teams of general and special education teachers who attended did not necessarily serve the same students (e.g., a general education teacher was paired with a special education teacher who taught in a self-contained special education classroom). Similarly, principals were not necessarily able to send teachers from both of our targeted grade levels (grade 4 and 5). These experiences helped to inform the refinement of our recruitment materials and procedures so that requirements for participation are clearly communicated and adhered to, to ensure that the composition of our study sample is most productive for the PD and meets the requirements of our research design.
• The context of CPS influenced the implementation of the MFA in several ways. First, since our PD sessions were conducted on Saturdays, some teachers had scheduling conflicts and were not able to attend all five of the PD sessions, resulting in a lower dosage of the PD. Second, our PD brings together teams of teachers from multiple schools, offering the possibility for sharing of experiences across school buildings. However, we found that the teachers who participated in our pilot showed very little interest to connect and share with teachers from schools other than their own. These findings helped us to refine our materials and PD in several ways, including the clarification of expectations for teacher participation in our recruitment materials, the development of make-up activities for teachers who miss PD sessions, the refinement of PD activities to foster more community building and exchange across schools, and the formation of cohorts of teachers based on common experiences such as a shared math curriculum to create incentives for cross-school collaboration.

Authors

• Babette Moeller, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Barbara Dubitsky, Bank Street College of Education