Learning Trajectories as the Core of Teacher Professional Development

• In Event: Partnering With Practicing Teachers to Strengthen Inclusive Instruction Using Learning Trajectories

Abstract

Educational researchers have long complained that practitioners do not use the available evidence, and practitioners in turn bemoan the lack of research that provides practical solutions. We assert that learning trajectories can close that gap in two critical educational activities that depend fundamentally on teachers, and therefore on professional development: helping teachers implement, a truly research-based curriculum and scaling up implementation of the curriculum to entire districts.
Design of the Professional Development
To avoid the pollution and dilution that often plagues efforts to achieve broad success, the Learning Trajectories-based Professional Development (LTPD) was based on two principles: Focus on instructional change that promotes depth of children’s thinking, placing learning trajectories at the core, and provide professional development that is ongoing, intentional, reflective, goal oriented, focused on content knowledge and children's thinking, grounded in particular curriculum materials, and situated in the classroom and the school.
In LTPD, teachers learn the three components of learning trajectories: mathematical goals and content, developmental progressions, and instructional tasks and strategies. We engaged teachers in discussions and activities that developed their understanding of the mathematics content including—but also going well beyond—the content in the curriculum. Similarly, teachers engaged in presentations, discussions, and experiences to learn about the other two components, supported by the online tool (now free to the public, Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories at LearningTrajectories.org).
Evaluation
Our first study of 25 teachers showed an effect size of 0.62 and allowed refinement of the LTPD. In a large-scale evaluation of 106 teachers, LTPD classes significantly outperformed the comparison group, with an effect size of 0.72. Teachers implemented the intervention with good fidelity—quite literally, as on the 5-point Likert scale. Comparisons of teacher quality showed an effect size of 0.78 and accounted for more than 50% of variability in children’s gains in knowledge.
Even when researchers study long-term effects of an early intervention, the focus is usually on the persistence of student outcomes. We claim that the long-term, and most notable, effect of LTPD is sustainability— the continued use of program components over time, with a focus on the maintenance of core beliefs, values, and fidelity to the vision of the innovation, and the use of these to guide adaptability. Without sustainability, the challenging implementation efforts affect only a small slice of the student population. One might logically expect that, after the cessation of LTPD, teachers would show a pattern of decreasing levels of fidelity, however, these teachers demonstrated increasing levels of fidelity even two years later. In a second wave of evaluation, six years after the end of the intervention, teachers continued to demonstrate sustained or increasing levels of high-quality teaching, especially in their encouragement and support for discussions of mathematics and their use of formative assessment.
Conclusions and Implications
We end with a discussion of principles, pitfalls, promises, and potential of the LTPD approach.

Authors

• Julie Sarama, University of Denver

• Douglas H. Clements, University of Denver