Do Teachers Make a Difference?

From the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Deborah%20Loewenberg%20Ball/teachers-make-a-difference_b_817096.html?ref=email_share&comm_ref=uopx

New book on social media (includes teacher professional development)

Who's Teaching Teachers?

From Inside Higher Ed, a story on how prospective teachers are taught in US Colleges of Education. See: http://bit.ly/dhQOHH

Analyzing Teachers' Attitudes toward TPD: Surveys of Enacted Curriculum

Survey of Enacted Curriculum is an NSF-supported tool for funding and analyzing teacher professional development. The Journal of Staff Development (August 2010) just published data from several hundred middle school Math-Science Partnership teachers that documents their assessment of professional development in their content areas.

Research documents effectiveness of teacher study groups

On August 31, in our session on Teacher-Centered Professional Development, we discussed models of professional development--classroom observation and assessment; teacher study groups; open lessons; lesson study, etc.--that may be more beneficial to teachers as professional development options.

An article by the American Education Research Journal documents the effectiveness of study groups as an professional development model. From the abstract:

Randomized field trials were used to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG), a professional development model, on first grade teachers’ reading comprehension and vocabulary instruction, their knowledge of these areas, and the comprehension and vocabulary achievement of their students. The multisite study was conducted in three large urban school districts from three states. A total of 81 first grade teachers and their 468 students from 19 Reading First schools formed the analytic sample in the study. Classroom observations of teaching practice showed significant improvements in TSG schools. TSG teachers also significantly outperformed control teachers on the teacher knowledge measure of vocabulary instruction. Confirmatory analysis of student outcomes indicated marginally significant effects in oral vocabulary.

For more information, go here: http://www.nsdc.org/learningBlog/post.cfm/report-analyzes-the-impact-of-teacher-study-group-pd-model

What Teachers Want from Professional Development

Journal of Staff Development (August 2010) publishes survey of US teachers and the types of PD they say are most helpful. On a scale from 1-4 (1=no benefit; 4=greatest benefit), teachers rate the following PD activities as most beneficial:

1. Having opportunities to connect with teachers: 3.59
2. Crafting new methods of instruction: 3.51
3. Receiving support to reflect on results of classroom work: 3.25
4. Having assistance with locating and selecting materials and resources: 3.09

Three Relevant Web Sites about Teacher Qualifications

The following topics were touched on in The Teachers We Want; The Teachers We Need. See the following three web sites on teacher qualification; professional development in the US; and measuring the value of teachers:

1. Getting to "Good"
A new radio documentary from American Public Media, "Testing Teachers," probes whether good teaching can be taught or is innate. The documentary looks at various measures underway in Washington, D.C., and issues these raise about effects of poverty versus effects of instruction. It also asks what makes a teacher "good"? Who defines it? And how can a teacher transition into the category of "good" if he or she is struggling? Based on years studying teacher impact, economist Eric Hanushek, whose 1970 study brought focus onto the potential effect of individual teachers, says good teachers are born and not made, and a body of research seems to bear this out. However, the documentary then turns to the efforts of the Public Education Foundation of Chattanooga, Tenn., a local education fund that has paired with the Benwood Foundation to help Chattanooga implement a system of professional development for every teacher, built into teachers' work on a daily basis, along with a program of extensive new teacher mentoring.
See a transcript of the documentary: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/transcript.html

2. TPD flagging in the US
A new report from the National Staff Development Council and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education -- phase II of a three-phase study -- analyzes the status of professional learning in the United States, and finds some progress in increased support and mentoring for new teachers, but also finds the country has moved backward in providing the vast majority of teachers with the kind of ongoing, intensive professional learning that research shows substantially impacts student learning. In 2008, teachers had fewer opportunities to engage in sustained professional learning opportunities than four years earlier. They were also half as likely to report collaborative efforts in their schools than teachers were in 2000. The intensity of professional development -- which is closely linked to teachers' perceptions of its usefulness and its effectiveness in changing practice and improving student outcomes -- has declined in many instructional areas, including the use of computers for instruction, reading instruction, classroom management, and teaching ELLs and students with disabilities.
See the report: http://www.learningforward.org/stateproflearning.cfm

3. LA Times: Value Added
Adding on to Mary Burns' presentation about "The Teachers We Want; The Teachers We Need," The L.A. Times has published its value-added teacher rankings.
See: http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/