How professional development program features impact the knowledge of science teachers

ABSTRACT

This national study of 1858 teachers participating in professional development(PD) summer programs in the United States encompasses a wide range of science subjects and grades. It was conducted to identify program features associated with increases in two types of teacher knowledge that are goals for most professional development programs: teacher subject matter knowledge and knowledge of student misconceptions. The frequency of occurrence of 25 common program features was estimated by participants in 231 different PD programs and used to model teacher gains on assessments keyed to the national science standards by grade-band and science subject, while controlling for teacher background. Surprisingly, gains in subject matter knowledge were small when aggregated across all programs (d = 0.06), with no gains observed in knowledge of student misconceptions, on average. Only a single program feature, focusing on foundational science concepts, was positively associated with gains in both types of teacher knowledge measured. Many popular program features were not associated with increases in teacher knowledge, including: developing original curricula / activities, learning the newest scientific thinking on a topic, conducting scientific research, observing and critiquing classroom instruction, nor designing assessments.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher professional development
• subject matter knowledge
• pedagogical content knowledge
• knowledge of student misconceptions
• in-service science teachers

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Grant No. 1417438 from the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions in this article are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work would not have been possible without an earlier National Institutes of Health pilot project (1RC1HD063686-0) and the many contributions and hard work of the PDMOST team, Annette Trenga, Cynthia Crockett, John Murray, and Sue Sunbury. We also thank those that gave us additional support and direction: Finbarr Sloane, Charles Alcock, Chen Chen, Harold Coyle, Eliza Garfield, R. Bruce Ward, and Wendy Berland, as well as our advisory board members, Marilyn Decker, Gregory T. Rushton, Chris Harper, Doug Stith, Susan Copley, and Mark Windschitl.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. MSP Program awards 2002–2012: NSF $505,604,751 and USEd $1,475,138,004. Federal funds include Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (Title II, Part A, and Title I, Part A), NSF and USEd MSPs.

2. By ‘provider,’ we mean the organization that ultimately exercises direction and control over the content and format of a program.

3. We found significant associations between years teaching and SMK pre-score (p < 0.001) and KOSM pre-score (p < 0.001).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1417438].