PME-NA

Examining the Alignment of Teachers' Practice with a Professional Development Program's Instructional Vision

• In Event: Instructional Vision in Practice

Description

Adaptive programs of teacher professional development (PD) are designed to be responsive to the goals, interests, and priorities of teachers, schools, and districts. However, the field currently lacks frameworks to inform and guide adaptations to PD programs. We share an emergent framework for determining the alignment of a given PD program’s vision for mathematics instruction with teachers’ current instruction and goals for their teaching practice. We show how we used this framework to determine the extent to which teachers’ current instruction and goals for their teaching practice, as described in teachers’ responses to a brief questionnaire, were aligned with the vision of instruction emphasized by a large-scale, adaptive PD program for middle-school teachers of mathematics. We propose that this framework can guide PD designers and facilitators in adapting their PD programs to meet teachers’ needs.

Authors

• Rachael Mae Welder, Boise State University

• Michael Jarry-Shore, North Carolina State University

• Ryan Gillespie, University of Idaho

• Angela R Crawford, Boise State University