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Investigating relationships between school context, teacher professional development, teaching practices, and student achievement in response to a nationwide science reform

Authors:
  • Intermate Media GmbH
  • UMass Boston

Abstract

Situated in the context of the Advanced Placement curriculum reform in the sciences, this quantitative study validates selected elements of Desimone's (2009) conceptual framework on teacher professional development. Using national data sets with data from 133 336 students and 7434 teachers, multi-level structural equation models indicate that professional development participation and contextual school- and teacher-level factors influence teachers' classroom practices. In turn, aspects of instructional enactments characteristics are significantly, but very weakly, associated with student performance. Thus, this study reinforces calls to provide teachers opportunities for high-quality professional development and suggests to advance research that identifies effective instructional practices.
Investigating relationships between school context, teacher professional development,
teaching practices, and student achievement in response to a nationwide science reform
Christian Fischer1, Barry Fishman1, Chris Dede2, Arthur Eisenkraft3, Kim Frumin2, Brandon
Foster4, Frances Lawrenz5, Abigail Jurist Levy4, Ayana McCoy3
1 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
2 Harvard University, USA
3 University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA
4 Education Development Center, Inc., USA
5 University of Minnesota, USA
Abstract: Situated in the context of the Advanced Placement curriculum reform in the sciences,
this quantitative study validates selected elements of Desimone's (2009) conceptual framework
on teacher professional development. Using national data sets with data from 133 336 students
and 7434 teachers, multi-level structural equation models indicate that professional development
participation and contextual school- and teacher-level factors influence teachers' classroom
practices. In turn, aspects of instructional enactments characteristics are significantly, but very
weakly, associated with student performance. Thus, this study reinforces calls to provide
teachers opportunities for high-quality professional development and suggests to advance
research that identifies effective instructional practices.
Full text available here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0742051X17314130?via%3Dihub
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Full citation:
Fischer, C., Fishman, B., Dede, C., Eisenkraft, E., Foster, B., Frumin, K., Lawrenz, F., Levy, A.,
& McCoy, A. (2018). Investigating relationships between school context, teacher
professional development, teaching practices, and student achievement in response to a
nationwide science reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 72, 107-121.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.02.011
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