Insights from Teacher Professional Development in Assessment for Learning: Results from Two Dutch Studies

• In Event: Assessment to Support Learning Across Borders and Systems of Education: Examining Enactment at Scale

Abstract

Purpose and perspective
Assessment for Learning (AfL) allows teachers to gather valuable insights into student progress, tailoring instructional strategies to meet individual needs (Wiliam & Leahy, 2015). By fostering a culture of continuous feedback and adjustment, AfL contributes to a student-centered educational environment prioritizing growth and understanding over mere performance outcomes (Brooks et al., 2021). Teachers need a complex set of skills, which can be developed with the use of teacher professional development (TPD; Heitink et al., 2016). We organized and evaluated two experimental TPD interventions for Dutch secondary teachers (N = 47; N = 57; Authors, Year; Authors, Year, respectively). This paper synthesizes findings from the two projects and discusses their significance.

Methods and Results
The TPD interventions were based on two TPD models: (1) Dynamic Approach by Kyriakides et al. (2020) and (2) 4 C/ID-model (4 Components Instructional Design) by Van Merriënboer and Kirschner (2017), including five TPD sessions spread across 10 months. Both models focus on presenting teacher skills as an interconnected whole and involve real-life learning tasks helping teachers to transfer newly learned skills to daily lessons in the classroom. While the Dynamic Model asserts the importance of differentiating based on teachers’ diverse needs, the 4C/ID-model focuses on improving teacher behavior using video coaching. Secondary school teachers from different subjects participated in these studies, including their approximately 1300 students. These teachers were randomly assigned to either the experimental group participating in the TPD program or the control group.

Instruments. A teacher questionnaire and focus group interviews were used to evaluate teacher satisfaction with the TPD program and teachers’ stages of development in terms of their assessment skills. Two instruments were used on the student level measuring student achievement and metacognitive skills in a pretest and posttest design: (1) a Dutch translation of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich et al., 1993; Blom & Severins, 2008) (2) a mathematics test, including metacognitive questions.

Results. The results of the multilevel analysis showed that the TPD interventions had variable effects ranging from no effects to moderate positive effects on both student learning and aspect of students’ metacognitive skills (e.g. predicting, evaluating, elaboration, and critical thinking) (Authors, Year; Authors, Year; Table 1). An aspect that was a positive influence on the student outcomes by both teachers and TPD trainers was the subject-focus in TPD during the tasks (e.g., during video coaching), especially when more teachers from one school could participate and collaborate. A negative influence was that improving students’ metacognitive skills was of such complexity that we could not provide a TPD with an intensity required for improvement.

Significance
There is currently ambiguity regarding what works in TPD for complex teacher skills such as AfL (Sims & Fletcher-Wood, 2021), as there are a limited number of effect studies investigating TPD for AfL on student learning. The design principles applied in these two studies serve as an example for other studies and TPD programs for the development of complex teacher skills.

Authors

• Jitske de Vries, University of Twente

• Christel Wolterinck, Carmel College Foundation