Helping high school teachers to effectively engage students: exploring the potential of a professional development series

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a quasi-experimental pilot study of the impacts of a high school teacher professional development (PD) series. The 10-session series, “Engaging High School Students in Academic Work,” was designed to equip teachers to deepen students’ learning and engagement and thereby increase course-passing rates. The study took place in a district in the U.S. Southwest that selected two of its interested high schools with similar demographic characteristics to participate, one receiving the PD and the other serving as the comparison school. Longitudinal analyses found statistically and educationally significant impacts of the PD series on four of the five measures in the primary outcome domain (students’ course passing) and on teachers’ reports of providing extra help. The article discusses limitations of the study and the need for further exploration of how PD can lead teachers to adopt more engaging instructional practices. It offers readers access to all PD materials and invites them into dialogue about how to adapt the PD series and its implementation going forward.

KEYWORDS:

• High school
• instructional practices
• professional development
• student engagement

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A150449 to the Johns Hopkins University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Notes

1 In order for the student course passing measures to be reliable, the analytic sample included only students who were enrolled for at least 160 of the 180 days of the school year. Ten percent of the students in the specified minimum enrollment group at each school had not been enrolled at the school the previous year and had no baseline data.

2 Glass’s delta is calculated as the difference between treatment and comparison group means, divided by the standard deviation of the comparison group.

3 For numeric dependent variables we used ordinary least squares regression. For dichotomous dependent variable measures, we used logistic regression and reported effect sizes as odds ratios. Although we use the common term “effect size,” we acknowledge that it is not appropriate to draw causal conclusions from this study that does not meet all the requirements for a rigorous quasi-experimental study.

4 This was the case even when accounting for multiple comparisons by using Benjamini-Hochberg critical p-values.

5 Glass’s delta used as effect size.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha Abele Mac Iver

Martha Abele Mac Iver, Ph.D., is associate professor of education in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD. Her research articles have focused on addressing ninth grade early warning indicators as well as interventions to improve urban student outcomes.

Douglas J. Mac Iver

Douglas J. Mac Iver, Ph.D., is professor of education in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD. He is the author of numerous articles on middle school reform and other interventions to improve outcomes of urban students.

Emily Clark

Emily Clark, Ph.D., is a senior research assistant in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD.