Teachers’ perceived values on the effect of literacy strategy professional development

Abstract

This study examined 299 Louisiana teachers from three school districts regarding their perceptions of the value provided by specific types of professional development (PD) including professional learning communities (PLC), demonstration lessons, and in-service as well as graduate hours in reading/literacy on implementation (frequency of use), familiarity, usefulness, and recommendation of content literacy strategies. Data analyses included the Kruskal–Wallis test, the Friedman test, and correlation matrices. Results indicate that type of in-service had a significant effect on teacher perceived values of PD with demonstration lessons (DL) having the highest and in-service the least value. The largest number of significant correlations were found among graduate hours in reading/literacy and the variables of familiarity with strategies, usefulness of strategies, and frequency of use of strategies. Significant correlations were also found among DL hours and both recommendation of strategies and frequency of use of strategies and between PLC hours and frequency of use of strategies. PD delivered on a weekly basis demonstrated the most value while the one-shot effort had the least value. In sum, this study demonstrated the most effective PD format actually involved university graduate courses followed by school district-initiated demonstration lessons with a pattern of weekly delivery.

Keywords:

• professional development
• implementation
• professional learning communities
• teacher development
• content literacy strategies