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Professional Development & Student Learning 1

The Relationship Between Professional Development and Student Learning: Exploring the Link Through Design Research Beth Kubitskey, Barry J. Fishman, & Ron Marx Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education, University of Michigan 610 E. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Tel: 734-647-4229, Fax: 734-763-1504 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

The national dialogue on science education includes two themes. The first is the call for standards based reforms in education expressed both by the American Association for the Advancement in Science (“Science for All Americans,” 1991 and “Benchmarks in Science Literacy,” 1993) and the National Research Council (“National Science Standards,” 1996). The second is the call for greater accountability for student learning on a multitude of levels, as exemplified in the “No Child Left Behind Act” (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). One response to such demands is to increase teacher professional development in the hope of enabling the teacher to teach that deemed necessary, while holding the teachers accountable when they fail to do so. Despite the fact that the national spotlight is focused on teacher instruction and student learning, little research has been done linking teacher learning in professional development directly to student learning (Supovitz, 2001; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, and Yoon, 2001; Loucks-Horsley & Matsumoto, 1999). At the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (hi-ce) we developed a design approach to professional development that affords us the opportunity to address the key question of teacher learning from professional development and its link to evidence of student learning. Our method illustrates the interdependence between the study and implementation of professional development and its impact in the classroom. In this paper we use variations of our design approach for professional development as a template to examine professional development and the resulting learning, examining its usefulness both as an evaluative as well as a diagnostic tool in professional development design. We evaluate professional development through analyzing the workshop enactments and post-workshop interviews with teachers to identify the content and strategies used and the expressed impact on the teacher learning. Next we apply our design approach to professional development to two different classroom investigations. Through these case analyses we demonstrate both the diagnostic and evaluative nature of our design cycle for professional development. Our investigation examines teachers’ “knowing that,” as measured through teachers’ expressed learning from professional development, and “knowing how,” as witnessed in classroom observations. As Ryle (1949) has suggested, “knowing that” and “knowing how” are not only different, but distinct ways of knowing. Teachers’ “knowing how” manifests itself in action which we observe and we measure the professional development’s success or failure by investigating resulting student achievement. However, investigating the “knowing how” aspect of teacher learning is time consuming and labor intensive. By analyzing the workshops and teachers reported learning from the workshops “know that”, we create a sketch of the professional development activities and what the teachers believe they learned. By applying our design approach to professional development


we add color and life to the picture through illustrative examples of teacher learning examined at a finer grain. The combination of methods we employ in this approach creates a mosaic that has both form and substance when looked at as a whole, establishing the link between student learning and teachers’ professional development. Conceptual Framework Professional development is a cornerstone for the implementation of standards-based reform. Yet report after report depicts the state of professional development practice as deficient (e.g., CEO Forum on Education and Technology, 1999). Although research on the “quality” of professional development continues to be lacking, from that which is available we identified its key components. The ultimate measure of quality professional development is its influence on a teachers’ practice which leads to improved student learning (LoucksHorsley & Matsumoto, 1999), however this holistic understanding does little to inform the specifics of professional development design. What are the characteristics of “quality” professional development? We suggest four components of quality professional development which are supported through the literature: plan, structure, community, and activities. The planning of quality professional development begins with well-defined images of what the professional development is to be and allows for continual assessment of the professional development in order to adapt and improve (Loucks-Horsley & Matsumoto, 1999: Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love and Stiles, 1998). Professional development designers have clear goals in mind and incorporate an iterative design process which informs one professional development cycle to the next. The structure is internally consistent and contextualized around the needs of the teachers in their classroom, creating learner-centered environments (Garet, et al., 2001; Loucks-Horsley & Matsumoto, 1999). The professional development participants are a community of professional colleagues, for example teachers from the same grade, school and/or subject (Garet et al.; Loucks-Horsley et al.). Recent research indicates that substantive pedagogical change requires extended effort on the order of 160 hours of engagement (Supovitz & Turner, 2000). Professional development which extends over a long period of time also allows for the creation of communities and for teacher participants to emerge and develop as leaders within the communities (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). Teachers need ample opportunity to learn content; both subject matter as well as pedagogical (Garet et al.; Loucks-Horsley et al.; Darling-Hammond & Ball, 1998). Quality professional development includes activities which allow for occasions for active learning of such content (Garet et al., 2001). One approach is to model activities teachers will enact with their own students (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). With the criteria developed through examining the plan, structure, community, and activities we create a framework describing the properties of quality professional development. But how do we translate these properties into a description of what professional development looks like? Fishman, Marx, Best and Tal (in press) identify four key characteristics which describe the components of professional development activities: site, content, strategies, and media, in order to create a picture of professional development in action.


Distinct types of opportunities for organized professional development such as workshops, summer institutes, on-line support, educative curriculum and other opportunities specifically designed to inform teachers’ work make up sites for professional development to occur. Each of these professional development sites can utilize one or more strategies. Although Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love and Stiles define strategies as we define sites (1998), we prefer to define strategies as the pedagogical approaches of the professional development rather than the opportunities for professional development itself; for example direct instruction, model teaching, peer exchange, curriculum review, and planning (Fishman, et al., in press). Content either informs the enterprise of teaching or includes subject matter information. Finally, professional development utilizes different forms of media as a means of conducting the workshop: face-to-face interaction; video; audio; computers (dynamic multimedia, including the Internet); and print (Fishman et al., in press). We describe professional development through various permutations of site, strategies, content and media. Although in this paper we are not trying to define one best professional development design, we suggest that various combinations of these characteristics might be more successful than others and thus include such investigation as part of our greater research agenda. The literature identifies components of quality professional development and situates these into the characteristics of different types of professional development. Thus we know that professional development should meet the criteria established above, but how does this translate into the particular actions needed for professional development design? If the purpose of teaching is to facilitate learning and professional development is designed to improve teaching we suggest quality professional development need be “successful” professional development, and result in improved student learning. In order to address these issues we have created a research design approach appears cyclical in nature (see Figure 1). Our professional development is first informed by the national science education standards (e.g. AAAS, 1993 & NRC, 1996) and curriculum materials based on those standards (Singer, Marx, Krajcik & Clay-Chambers, 2000), in order to ascertain what we want students to learn. We investigate evidence of student performance to develop goals which inform the professional development design to impact the teachers’ enactment of the curriculum (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). After teachers participate in a professional development activity, we interview teachers in order to evaluate the professional development. We observe classroom teaching during the enactment of a lesson covered during the professional development and evaluate student performance of this activity, using this information to inform the redesign of future professional development, an essential component of quality professional development (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). Thus, rather than remaining cyclical, our iterative design approach develops a helical nature as we reapply our design model in attempt to ever improve professional development.


Figure 1. Design approach to professional development. Methods Setting The setting for this research is our partnership with Detroit Public Schools as part of the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS). Our goal is to develop and integrate inquiry-based science curricula with embedded technology. We collaborate with the district to develop and deploy technology and curricula for use by teachers and students in the district’s middle schools. This involves extensive curriculum development (Singer, Marx, Krajcik, & Clay-Chambers, 2000), design and integration of technologies to support student and teacher learning (Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1998), and broad-based professional development (Fishman, Best, Foster, & Marx, 2000). At the time of this study LeTUS involved approximately 65 teachers in Detroit from 20 middle schools. All teachers in LeTUS participate in a broad range of professional development activities, including intensive summer institutes, monthly Saturday workshops, periodic in-classroom support by peer teachers and graduate students, on-line materials, and graduate extension courses. Our curriculum materials are designed to be educative (Ball & Cohen, 1996), and we treat them as another potential source of professional development. Of course, teachers select from among these professional development options; few if any teachers participate in all of them. That is why our long-term research questions focus on issues of the affordances offered by different types of professional development and their potential linkage to productive teacher and student learning. The Curriculum Unit To evaluate the design approach to professional development, we elected to study the first full enactment of the LeTUS 7th grade Communicable Disease Unit “How Do Good Friends Make Me Sick” (Hug, 2002). Although piloted the previous year, this was the first full scale application of this curriculum designed to teach fundamental characteristics of cells, bacteria, viruses, and body systems through examining communicable diseases. Participants We selected 7 of the 15 teachers enacting the curriculum to interview about their evaluation of the professional development (what they believed they learned from their participation) and observed the teachers during various activities in the curriculum. Although we selected these teachers based on their availability and willingness to participate in the research, they represented a cross section of the teachers teaching the curriculum unit. Teachers enacting the Communicable Disease unit, on average, attended 4 of the 5 workshops, as did the seven teachers we studied. Three white women, three African American women, and one African American man participated in the study. The mean age


was 32 years, ranging from 25 to 49 years of age. They averaged 9.1 years of teaching experience, ranging from 3 to 28 years. These teachers were experienced LeTUS teachers with an average of 3.5years years of experience teaching LeTUS units, ranging from 2-5 years and three had enacted the Communicable Disease Curriculum during its pilot run the previous year. All taught in Detroit Middle Schools where the majority of students were African American (in 6/7 of the schools) or Hispanic (1 school) and more than 99% of the children qualified for free lunch. Data and Methods of Analyses To investigate the teaching/learning aspect of our professional development research design, we observed the five Saturday workshops associated with the 2002 enactment of one of the LeTUS educative curricula, the Communicable Disease Curriculum (Hug, 2002). We cultivated our relationship with the teachers during the arrival and departure times as well as at the breaks rather than during the instructional portion of the workshop and thus avoided some of the pitfalls of this “fly on the wall” approach (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,1995). The workshop notes represent a running record of what went on during the workshop including comments about the engagement of the teachers. We separated the workshop notes into discrete units of analysis by shift of strategy and then coded for types of strategies and content which emerged through the analysis. After each workshop we conducted phone interviews with those of the seven teachers who had attended primarily within a week from the workshop. Although Weiss (1994) suggests phone interviews lack the rigor of face-to-face interviews, due to the frequency of the interviews, the schedule of the teachers, and the need for quick responses, we elected this approach. Because of the on going relationship between the interviewer and interviewee, we reduced many of the major disadvantages of the phone interview, such as lack of depth due to the impersonal medium and inability to pick up on non-verbal cues. During the interview we asked the teachers to share their thoughts about what stood out from the workshop for them, what they learned from the workshop, if anything would influence their future instruction, and, if so, could we observe that lesson. In addition, we listened for markers to expand upon during the interview (Weiss, 1994). All interviews were transcribed. We separated the postworkshop interviews into discrete units of analysis by change in topic of discussion, often represented by turns, and mapped these onto the coded workshop notes. We coded units of the interviews that did not map neatly onto the workshop notes separately using grounded theory looking for emerging themes, e.g. characteristics of workshop, identity in context of workshop, perceptions of others etc. In addition, if applicable, we coded these isolated interview units for content and strategies mentioned by teachers in the interviews. From this analysis we identified what teachers expressed about different types of content and strategies in order to deduce the types of professional development activities teachers believed were salient. We compare the types of strategies and content the teachers identify as informing their instruction to the types of strategies and content evidenced in the workshop. To investigate how the teacher learning from professional development influenced their instruction we observed teachers’ enactments of activities covered during the previous workshops, taking jottings that were immediately transcribed into field notes (Emerson et al., 1995). During these observations, we looked for teacher’s use of techniques, strategies or


materials from the workshop in addition to the student’s response to these activities. These classroom observations allow us to observe whether the content knowledge of pedagogy translated to pedagogical content knowledge. We compared the field notes from the enactment observations to the directions given at the workshop, identifying the similarities and differences between the two. In particular we looked for “successful activities” (those resulting in both positive feedback from teachers and student learning) and possible areas for improvement where teachers mentioned dissatisfaction and/or student performance did not meet with expectations. We used the post-enactment interview as a means to determine teachers’ reaction to the activity and their perception of the impact of the professional development on their teaching. We identified the workshop activities that correspond with the enacted lesson, isolated the appropriate workshop field notes and post-workshop interview and conducted a constant comparative analysis between these two data sets. From the analysis of both of these cases we identified teacher learning from the professional development as it was demonstrated through teacher action. We used multiple means to identify student learning from the activities: classroom observations, teacher perceptions, pre- and posttest data, and student artifacts when available in various combinations. Teachers often shared their perceptions about their students learning during the post-enactment interview. Although depending on this as the sole source of measure of student learning is problematic, in tandem with other methods, teachers offer rich insight because of their experience with the students, experience with the content, and other characteristics that may not be obvious to the observer or through more formal means of evaluation. The in-class observations also allow for a means to examine student performance and infer learning as demonstrated through student participation and interaction with the observer. Such measures are often insufficient in isolation due to the sporadic nature of observations, but they do inform the analysis in conjunction with other types of evaluation. We examined student artifacts produced during the activities, developed rubrics based on the outcome objective and applied the rubric to the student work. We calculated gain scores from pre- and posttest data collected from the students and the standard effect size of these gain scores. We identified questions that reflected knowledge taught through the activities observed and looked at the performance of classes of the teachers observed. Finally, we used the information from the individual analysis of the activity with respect to the teacher learning and cautiously inferred the link to the resulting student learning. Thus we evaluated the quality of professional development from both the teachers expressed beliefs , observed teacher instruction as a measure of learning which resulted in action and student learning as a measure of success. From this evaluation we developed reasonable hypotheses about what was successful and what was in need of improvement for the observed professional development cycle. From these hypotheses we suggest possible adaptations for the next iteration of the professional development cycle. Findings and Discussion First Three Components of the Design Cycle The standards addressed in the professional development design for the communicable disease unit were two fold. First, the standards which motivated the creation


of the unit included national, state and local science standards. The AAAS Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1993) addressed in the curriculum include– the living environment, the human organism, and historical perspectives (discovering germs). The National Science Education Standards addressed include, but are not limited to, Content Standard A: Science as inquiry: and content standard E: science and technology (NRC, 1995). The state standards addressed include “Content Standard 1: All students will apply an understanding of cells to the functioning of multicellular organisms; and explain how cells grow, develop and reproduce” (Michigan Department of Education, 1996). Finally the local school district standards require the children be able to explain how selected systems and processes interact in organisms, compare and contrast four specialized cells of organisms, select three systems and show how they work together during physical exercise (this unit substitutes fighting off disease for physical exercise), design and conduct an experiment, and use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze and interpret data in their 7th grade curriculum. Second, our workshops also address the National Research Council’s professional development standards by incorporating inquiry (standard A); integrating content, pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge (standard B); lasting over an extended period of time (standard C); and being driven by a coherent and integrated curriculum based on national standards (1996). Because the unit included references to sexually transmitted diseases, the workshops included instruction on the legal responsibilities of the teachers regarding content and parental consent. Since this was the first full adoption of the unit, the professional development designer was limited to student performance during the pilot run of the unit the previous year to inform the design. Since she was actively involved with the teachers the previous year, she utilized the pilot pre-posttest data as well as feedback from the teachers to measure student learning and inform the professional development. In planning for the workshop, the workshop designer looked at three areas, comfort with curriculum, knowledge of technology, and knowledge of content. One main goal of the professional development designer was to get teachers comfortable with the unit. According the to university workshop designers and curriculum developer, “The first goal obviously was just to introduce them to the curriculum and to get them to a point where they weren’t intimidated by the curriculum...”. In addition, she wanted the teachers to learn to be comfortable with the technology and hoped the workshops would afford the teachers that opportunity. Finally, she was concerned that the teachers have solid content knowledge with respect to the sexually transmitted diseases. The content she felt important was “activity about and around HIV area, or something, your know the concept that they’re not familiar with. I’m not really concerned about cells and systems and defining all of that” (See Figure 2).


Standards: AAAS, NRC, Michigan and DPS

Evidence of Student Performance From pilot enactment - preposttest and teacher feedback.

Professional Development Design 1. Increase comfort with unit 2. increase comfort with technology 3. Increase content knowledge STD

Figure 2: First three component of design approach for Communicable Disease Unit – 2002

Workshop Analysis Content: Upon examination of the field notes from the workshop nine different types of content emerged. Fishman, et al. (in press) breaks content up into two main categories: (1) subject matter content which includes “skills related to using tools such as computer technologies or laboratory equipment related to that context” and (2) knowledge related to “general enterprise of teaching.” We identify subject matter knowledge as content knowledge of science (Shulman, 1996) and content knowledge of technology (Margerum-Leys & Marx, 2002). Content related to the enterprise of teaching consists of pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge of technology, and pedagogical content knowledge of technology (Shulman, 1986; Margerum-Leys & Marx, 2002). In addition, three other types of content related to the enterprise of teaching emerged during the analysis: knowledge of the learner, educational context and curriculum. The nine types of content are defined in Table 1. Table 1: Content and Strategies of Workshop Defined Knowledge Content Pedagogical

Shulman (1986) Content of the curriculum, in this case science. Knowledge of techniques for instruction.

Pedagogical Content

Represents those skills which allow the teachers to create metaphors and descriptions for the students in the context of science

Learner

Understanding of the needs of different learners and how to react or anticipate these needs. Understanding how that being studied, in this the communicable disease unit, fits in the context of the standards, the entire curriculum, or state of district demands.

Education Context

Curriculum

Understanding of the content of the curriculum.

Technology (Margerum-Leys & Marx, 2002) Ability to use and understand the technology. General issues of teaching while using technology. Understanding of the use of technology in the context of teaching and the strategies which support its use.


We examined the different types of content covered over the course of the five workshops and that which was discussed in the post-workshop interviews. We identified no trends in the types of knowledge covered over time with the exception of a shift in different types of knowledge and knowledge of technology when the workshops included activities involving technology. Interestingly, teachers consistently recast the content of the workshop into knowledge of learners as they discussed how their students might benefit from an activity despite the fact the workshops included multiple other types of content. One teacher commented on a modelteaching activity from the workshop about the relative sizes of cells and viruses which focused on both content and pedagogical knowledge. Yes, I think I’ll do that (use the worksheet) and I think it’s important for the kids, - even you and I have a hard time imagining how small a virus is or a bacteria … but if they can see in proportionate to something else that they can recognize, I think it will mean more to them.

She justified the usefulness of the activity by how it will inform her students. Teachers rarely discussed learning content knowledge during the workshops, with the notable exception of technology content. On the occasions teachers did mention content knowledge in their interview, they often related how learning the content would impact their students. One teacher mentioned learning content from examining an overhead of cells to be used in the curriculum. Well we were looking at some of the overheads that she [the workshop leader] had given us. I hadn’t thought that the colors are false colors before. That was a good point that she brought up because I’m sure I’m going to have a child that’s going to say “Hey Miss [teacher] are these really what they’re going to look like?” So that will help me be able to explain how sometimes things are stained so that we can see them better. It may not be the true color of it, but it just helps us in identification of the organisms and things.

The teacher clearly states the advantage to learning this content is that it would enable her to better inform her students. A more typical response represented below reinforces the teacher’s appreciation for learning technology content when discussing the advantages of investigating a Internet search engine, which is an integral part of the unit. Little changes [in the Internet search-engine] stuck out and I was glad to have a chance to play around with it because I wouldn’t want to be saying one thing to my students and getting really confused, [and my students would think] what is she talking about because its different [than what they see on the screen].

Teachers did express learning content from technology as informing their instruction without mentioning the students. “I’ve been on there [the website] probably four times….last week, I just went back through some things and restructured some lessons…. so it [the workshop] was definitely, definitely helpful.” However comments such as these were limited to when the teachers had opportunities to use the technology in the professional development as opposed to just hearing about it, which supports Garet et al.’s (2002) assertion that quality professional


development includes hands-on activities. This might suggest that teachers value the opportunity to learn content knowledge of technology through hands on model-teaching applications. Rather than conclude that teachers do not value content knowledge in general, we first note that direct instruction was the primary strategy employed for non-technology content knowledge. Thus the data suggests that future professional development might consider more hands on activities designed to teach content knowledge for the teachers. However, we must acknowledge a major caveat. Teachers may feel more comfortable discussing their own lack of technological content knowledge because this is expected. However they may feel that they should know the scientific content since they are science teachers which may cause them to be more reserved about sharing such information. This analysis might suggest focusing on knowledge of learners and integrating other types of content might resonate with participants and facilitate their learning. Another interpretation might be that teachers are capable of transforming different types of content to knowledge of learners so the professional development designer need not worry about this application. One suggestion that utilizes both the previous possibilities is have the professional development designers focus on other types of content but allow time for peer exchange that elicits the very important knowledge of learners from the teacher participants. Strategies: We identified five different strategies utilized during the five workshops: direct instruction, peer exchange, model teaching, curriculum review, and planning. If the workshop leader led a discussion as the primary source of information, we identified this strategy as direct instruction. If the topic of the discussion guided the teachers through the curriculum, we coded this as curriculum review since the intent was to direct the teachers about the written curriculum and where things can be found rather than to transmit knowledge. If the discussion centered about planning the unit, we coded as “planning” since this is a specific act that included information exchange as well as bookkeeping components. Often teachers shared ideas amongst one another, which we coded as peer exchange. Finally, if the workshop leader had the teacher go through an activity as if students, we coded this as model teaching. Strategies For All 5 Communicable Disease Workshop 2002 50

39

40

38

30

13

20

6

10

4

0 Direct Instruction

Peer Exchange

Model Teaching

Curriculum Review

Planning

Figure 3: Percent of strategies used during Communicable Disease Workshops – 2002 Over the course of the 5 workshops peer exchange and direct instruction monopolized the workshops, each contributing to almost 40% of the strategies employed (See Figure 3). Interestingly, the most frequently cited instances during the post workshop interviews were


those exchanges which occurred between teachers (40%) as well as model teaching (28%) however direct instruction was mentioned infrequently (5%). We hesitate to infer too much from this data since the percentages depend on the frequency of utterances which are heavily influenced by the interviewers follow-up questions and one might suggest that model teaching and peer exchange might need more clarification so result in more discussion. Thus we look at the content and context of the interviews to examine these numbers. Teachers valued the opportunities to share with one another. At the second workshop a teacher shared a pedagogical technique for encouraging the children to do their reading which involved giving a short quiz. Of the seven teachers interviewed, six referred to this idea in their post-workshop interviews (the 7th being the teacher who shared the idea). “Someone threw out [an idea]- like a five minute quick quiz…. I’m definitely going to implement that.” Another teacher expressed the fact that she had already incorporated this technique into her instruction with success. I gave three questions, one on each day and then on the fourth day I gave a three question quiz which had same questions over. And I told them you know if you don’t know the answers today you’ve got to go home and read it because it’s going to come back up again on the fourth day. I noticed there were more A’s definitely by the fourth quiz.

Peer exchange impacted her instruction and, based on her observations, catalyzed student learning. Teachers listed these and other specific example of peer exchange which either impacted their instruction or they predicted it would. One experienced communicable disease teacher appreciated the opportunity for exchange because it allowed her a chance to reflect about her previous experience in order to inform her next enactment. “I like an opportunity to be reflective. I like that. I appreciate that.” This teacher feels peer exchange allows her an opportunity to interrogate and reflect on her practice within the community of teachers implying that the sharer benefits as well as the receiver. Peer exchange during workshops may offer teachers an opportunity to reflect within a community of people with shared experiences. In addition, teachers like the “refresher” aspect of trying to help their colleagues with an activity. “I have a co-worker that wasn’t as familiar in that she missed our staff development [on the Internet search-engine], so I went through it with her… like a refresher [for me]… to see if I have any additional questions.” Teachers value sharing of their own ideas and others as informing their own professional development. Model teaching impacted teacher learning as demonstrated by teachers mentioning every model-teaching activity they had an opportunity to participate in during their postworkshop interview. The unit incorporated three different types of technologies. The workshop leader modeled teaching two of the technologies and merely discussed the third due to lack of time. Teachers expressed learning from the two modeled activities in the postworkshop interview and failed to mention the third at all, implying little impact from the direct instruction lesson on technology as opposed to the model-teaching activities. In contrast to model teaching, direct instruction did not seem to have much impact on the teachers expressed learning. One teacher experienced with the unit found the direct


instruction strategy particularly problematic. “It seems like most of that workshop was more lecturer type where we had the curriculum in front of us and we’re just kind of looking through it.” and later said “I was there for five hours and the part that was helpful to me was maybe thirty minutes.” A telling observation from the analysis of the post-workshop interviews came from examining not just what was said, but also what wasn’t said. One area discussed in the professional development was a technique for collecting cells and viewing them through microscopes, which lasted for almost 45 minutes. Not one participant teacher who attended that workshop mentioned this in the post-workshop interview despite the fact that the activity was a critical component of the curriculum. During the next workshop teachers shared that they were having trouble using the microscopes, in particular they were not able to observe the bacteria described both at the workshop and in the curriculum. Direct Instruction

Percent of Stategies Used

80

Peer Exchange

75

70 60

55

50

50 40

45 33

30 20 10

52

23

17

17

8

0 Workshop 1b

Workshop 2

Workshop 3

Workshop 4

Workshop 5

Figure 4. Strategy shift over time during Communicable Disease Workshops – 2002 A dramatic shift in strategies occurred during the course of the workshops, with a distinct drop in direct instruction and increase in peer exchange (See Figure 4 above). The increase in peer exchange is not surprising because as teachers enact the curriculum, the more they have to share. Interestingly, the teachers consistently referred to the peer exchange and model teaching as two strategies that influenced their learning. Thus the increase in peer exchange might suggest increased value to teachers. One teacher who had participated in the pilot enactment the previous year and helped develop the unit was the harshest critic of the workshops suggesting some had been a waist of her time. After the first workshop she stated, “It’s a difficult thing because I understand that it’s beneficial to other people … People that have done it before should be there, but its kind of difficult when I’m not getting something for myself.” However she appreciated the later workshops because of the opportunity to exchange and attributed learning to those exchanges since everyone had started the unit and had something to say. “What I think is most helpful at this point is that everyone is doing it [the curriculum]…So it’s more helpful because there are more people doing the same thing, are actually doing it now, not talking about what we did last year.” A second experienced teacher was even more dramatic in her support of peer exchange. “That is what I like most about the meeting. Just talking to other teachers.” These suggest that peer exchange is highly


valued amongst the teachers and is a means to make the workshop worthwhile for teachers who already are experienced with the curricular material covered in the workshop. Peer exchange affords the teachers an opportunity to not only inform content or pedagogical knowledge, but also fosters creation of a community and allows opportunities for teacher leaders to emerge which are both characteristics of quality professional development (LoucksHorsley et al.,1998). The aforementioned experienced teacher who was unhappy with the workshop was an active participant in the teacher discussion. However, she was also aware of those around her and made a conscious effort to try to encourage the other to share by asking prompting question or “counting to 10” before she would comment at times. Other teachers often referred to her contributions in their interviews as she appeared to emerge as a leader. From the analysis of the five workshops and the teachers’ post-workshop interviews we were able to identify five characteristics to inform the design of future professional development. 1. Teachers recast different types of “content” to “knowledge of learners.” 2. Teachers acknowledge learning content knowledge through model teaching and hands on activities more frequently than through direct instruction. 3. Teachers value peer exchange as a strategy for professional development both as a means of learning new content and reflecting on their own teaching. 4. Peer exchange contributes to the conception of community amongst the teachers and allowed for the emergence of lead teachers. 5. Experienced teachers do not have the same needs as inexperienced teachers and thus the workshop must be adapted to fit the needs of both. Based on our design model we take these assertions and use them to inform our next professional development cycle (see Figure 5). They become working hypotheses we will test, demonstrating the rigor of our design approach to professional development. However, this type of analysis tends to inform the characteristics we identified to describe “quality” professional development. In order to investigate “successful” professional development we turn to our application of our research design model through our analysis of activities. Standards: AAAS, NRC, Michigan, DPS

Evidence of Student Performance From pilot enacmtent - preposttests and teacher feedback

Professional Development Design 1. Increase comfort with unit 2. Increase Comfort with technology 3. Increase content knowledge about STDs

Continuous Re-Design of PD Include more opportunities for learning content through model teaching and peer exchange. Adapt to accomodate both experienced and inexperienced teachers

Evaluation of Student Performance

Evaluation of PD 1. Teachers tranform content to knowledge of learners 2. Teachers prefer model teaching and hands on activities 3. Teachers value peer exchange 4 Peer exchange contributes to community 5. Experienced and inexperienced teachers have different

Observation of Classroom Teaching

Figure 5. Design approach for workshop observations and interviews. Activities To situate the enactment of the activities, we describe the contributing professional development activity in detail; give a brief description of the teachers’ enactments, focusing


on the similarities and differences from the professional development; examine student learning, and with the information from the enactment identify strengths and weaknesses in the professional development; and what this means for the next iteration. Spread of Disease Activity The spread of disease activity had the students exchange water solutions, one or two of which, unbeknownst to the students, have been “spiked” with a base. After the exchange, the teacher placed an indicator in each student’s water cup to identify those that were contaminated by the base, demonstrating how “interactions” lead to the spread of “germs.” The activity is designed as an anchoring event to promote interest in the students at the onset of the curriculum. We observed three teachers implementation of this activity in their classrooms. Teacher A was a 29-year-old African American woman with 3.5 years teaching experience, and 3 years of experience with LeTUS curricula, however this was her first experience with the communicable disease unit. Teacher B was a 49 year old white female with 28 years of teaching experience and 4 years experience using the LeTUS curricula, although this, too, was her first opportunity to teach the communicable disease unit. Teacher C was a 32-year-old African American woman with 5 years of teaching experience, 2 of which involved LeTUS curricula. She participated in the piloting of the unit the year before. All three teachers taught in schools where over 99% of the student body is African American and over 99% qualify for free lunch. The school populations ranged from 700 to 800 students. Professional Development Design (as enacted): The anchoring event of the Communicable Disease Unit is designed to promote students’ interest and facilitate their understanding of the spread of disease. The teachers performed this activity during the January 5, 2002 workshop. The workshop leader modeled teaching by having the teacher enact the activity as students while discussing different pedagogical approaches, shared by both the university representative as well as the teachers who had previously done the activity (peer exchange). For four minutes the teachers “exchanged fluid” with as many or as few people as they liked while having a quick conversation with each person during the exchange. At the end of four minutes the workshop leader used an indicator to identify those that were now “sick.” Everyone was sick. The teachers discussed variations of the activity which included tracing the initial carrier (pedagogical content knowledge), although that was not the purpose of the activity. In addition, both by direct instruction and peer exchange, teacher learned content knowledge (how disease can spread and you can’t tell who is sick “by looking”) and knowledge of learners (sensitivity for the initial carrier). Evaluation of Professional Development: All three teachers mentioned the spread of disease activity during their post-workshop interviews. Teacher A was very enthusiastic about doing the activity and anticipating how much her student would enjoy it. I can envision my students and the conversations that they would have because as adults we were saying things that children wouldn’t say. We’re introducing ourselves and telling what we like about whatever. I can see my students sharing a little bit more and then when it comes time to explain why yours changed that color, you have to think about who you were in contact with and then they’ll start really conceptualizing the whole point of the unit. I really think that it would be a really good engagement type activity to help introduce them to the whole point of the next eight weeks for them. I

Professional Development & Student Learning 15 think it will have them actually start asking themselves more questions “Do I really need to be in this situation’, ‘Do I really need to be around these people.”

Even with probing she tended to focus on the more affective domain. Although this may be a fault of the interview design, this is not an atypical response to such questions based on the interviews during this research project. On the other hand Teacher B and C both previously enacted the activity; Teacher B learned about the activity from a “teacher journal” and did the activity “years ago” and Teacher C participated in the pilot enactment of the unit. Each previously did a variation of the activity where the students were told to interact with a specific number of people (Teacher B – three people, Teacher C – five people) rather than have the students interact with as many, or few, students they wanted to in a given amount of time. Teacher B liked doing the activity at the workshop and thought the activity gave the students a good visualization of how disease can spread. Despite the fact that she was experienced, Teacher C was happy to have the opportunity to re-focus herself on the communicable disease unit through revisiting the unit and doing the activity during the workshop. Observation of Classroom Teaching: All three teachers enacted the activity as modeled at the workshop with one exception: Teacher A adapted the time length of the exchange. Rather than interact for the full four minutes, as with the workshop, Teacher A had the students interact for two minutes to increased her odds of having some students remain “well” to attempt to trace the spread of disease (pedagogical content knowledge). She also demonstrated content knowledge of the chemistry of the procedure when she identified a glass contaminated with phenothaline from the previous classes enactment that had inadvertently been places with the clean glasses. Her class was able to trace the initial carrier. During the classroom observation it was apparent that she modeled her instruction after that of the workshops, with the thoughtful modification of reducing the exchange time to two minutes because she observed at the workshop that four minutes of exchange time resulted in everyone getting “sick” and she decided she wanted to increase the chances of having a few children remain “well.” Not only did she demonstrate learning of content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge of learners, but she demonstrated an ability to thoughtfully adapt this knowledge to meet the needs of her classroom. Teachers B and C allowed their students to interact for the complete 4 minutes. Although they did this activity in another context before, they enacted it as modeled at the workshop, without any modification. In these cases, all of the students became “infected.” Teacher B was satisfied with the activity. “In the end they (the students) were able to figure out that the interaction was not just with the person they interacted with but with everyone else they already interacted with.” During the post-workshop interview she only briefly mentioned that activity as being “fun” and she did it previously. However, during the post-enactment interview Teacher B identified a misstep in her enactment and remediated based on her experience in the workshop. She handed out the next worksheets after the spread of disease without showing the children how to do them, although the instructional method for teaching this activity was discussed at the workshop (lack of pedagogical knowledge). She turned the worksheets back to the students without grading and completed


the lesson on tracing initial carriers as demonstrated in the workshop. “I didn’t give them enough direction on it [the worksheet]. I didn’t go through the mapping like we did at the workshop a couple times ago…and so today I did that.” She demonstrated a strong sense of content knowledge through her discussion about the spread of disease during the enactment, pedagogical content knowledge with respect to enactment of the activity and her use of the activity as a metaphor for the spread of disease. She identified a mistake in her pedagogical knowledge when she failed to prepare the students for a worksheet she thought connected to the activity, but through reflection identified the mistake on her own and used knowledge from a previous workshop to remediate the situation. Teacher C also demonstrated learning from the workshop since she adapted the activity from the previous year to match that which she did at the workshop. Although all of the students became infected she attempted to model diagramming interactions on the board, however she failed to incorporate the order of interactions (you need only be concerned with those your “partner” interacted with prior to your interaction). During the class discussion a student brought up this issue and yet Teacher C continued with the discussion without incorporating this crucial fact. Unfortunately, her post enactment interview suggests that she might harbor another misconception about the relationship between the spread of disease and how mold spread. Student brought up “black mold” in class because it was in the news. Teacher C distinguished between “communicable diseases” and mold, but did not demonstrate an understanding of how these differ in their transmission during the interview. Although they did not specifically address “black mold” at the workshop, the essential components of this differentiation composed a direct instruction lesson during the second workshop (Lack of content knowledge). Evidence of Student Performance: Isolating student learning from this particular activity is problematic, since the purpose was primarily to motivate the children and the students produced no “formal” artifacts that could be used to measure this goal. Thus we depend mostly on the teacher’s observation of the students’ attitudes. Teacher A noted that the activity sparked an increase of questions in her question box. The question box is a safe place for students to submit questions either identified or anonymously. Teacher A added the goal that the students are able to trace the initial carrier, which the class was able to do as a whole. During the workshop teachers did discuss techniques for meeting that need. We identified three questions linked to the spread of disease and tracing initial carriers on the preposttest given before and after the unit. Of the three teachers, only Teacher A’s student demonstrated significant gains on the pre-posttest data on these questions (p