Impacts of a Student Engagement-Focused High School Teacher Professional Development Series

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Student Engagement: Technologies, Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), and Student Perceptions

Abstract

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental pilot study of the impacts of a high school teacher professional development series. The 10-session series, “Engaging High School Students in Academic Work,” was designed to equip teachers to deepen students’ learning and engagement and thereby increase course-passing rates. The study took place in a district in the U.S. Southwest that selected two of its interested high schools -- with similar demographic characteristics and course-passing rates -- to participate. The district designated one of the schools to receive the series and the other to be the comparison school. Longitudinal analyses found statistically and educationally significant impacts of the PD series on the primary outcome (course passing) and on teachers’ reports of providing “extra help.”

Authors

• Douglas J. Mac Iver, Johns Hopkins University

• Martha Abele Mac Iver, Johns Hopkins University

• Emily Clark