Teachers’ Continuing Education (Professional Development Chapter) Heather C. Hill School of Education University of Michigan Learning Mathematics for Teaching/ Study of Instructional Improvement

Teachers’ Continuing Education 1. How much continuing education do teachers engage in? 2. What happens in ongoing education settings? 3. Are teachers’ learning opportunities effective in improving teaching knowledge and skill and, ultimately, student achievement? 4. How effective is the system of ongoing education in improving the knowledge and skills of the teaching force, and in improving student achievement?

Graduate Education Prevalent: 45% of teachers possess a Master’s degree Supported by incentives –Continuing education units/license renewal –Salary hikes Virtually nothing known about content Evidence of effects on student achievement mixed –General master’s degree: no effect –Master’s degree in subject taught (high school): positive

Professional Development Prevalent: ~99% of teachers report some each year But typically 1-2 days/year Content: –Format: varies –Length: varies –Theory of teacher learning: varies –Content: varies

Can Professional Development Affect Student Achievement? YES!!! –Carpenter et al., 1989; McCutchen et al., 2002, Saxe et al., 2001 –Characteristics of effective PD Time Content = from teachers’ practice, discipline- specific Alignment with policy, curricula, assessment

Does Professional Development Improve Student Achievement? Probably not –Few teachers report their experiences match ideal –Few teachers report their experiences change their practice –Quality problems

Example: Writing Mathematics Focused on helping teachers help students build mathematical explanations for state test Met many “best practices” in name –Collaborative –Teachers did mathematics problems –Used artifacts of student work –Follow-up to initial PD session

Writing Mathematics: Meeting the “Focus on Mathematics” Standard “Density” of mathematical problem-solving low –In six hours, teachers solve two problems, inspect state test, write two “open-ended” problems No elaboration on the mathematics Mathematical “explanation” really procedural description: –“first I subtracted 45 from 75, then I added 10…”

Writing Mathematics: Meeting the “Student Learning” Standard Graded student work on “open-ended” problems –Correctly identified student problem with regrouping –But remedy is purely procedural: [The leader] had a little colloquy with a teacher about learning place value and the idea of trading. He said when he goes into a classroom, he gets kids to make a list of “sad” (7,17,5,6) and “happy” (13,2,22,10) numbers in reference to the number 23. The teacher at my table immediately recognized the sad numbers as those you have to regroup, happy numbers as the ones which you didn’t. Leader said that every student should have a sense for that, if you’re working with 5, for instance, you have to regroup numbers that end in 4,3,2,1 and 0, that you don’t have to with 6,7,8,9.

Does Professional Development Improve Student Achievement? Probably not –Few teachers report their experiences match ideal –Few teachers report their experiences change their practice –Quality problems –No rigorous evaluation = irrationality

Conclusions Professional development significant undertaking in U.S. –Roughly 3% of district expenditures –Master’s degrees bump salaries 11-17% Both graduate level study and professional development experiences: untapped potential

Conclusions Stop rewarding non-relevant master’s degree Professional development –Increased time –Focus on content -- but ground that content in teacher’s work –Alignment with school goals and improvement efforts –Ensure quality Different system of incentives and rewards –For teachers: away from superficial experiences –For providers: toward expertise in topics taught