Who participates in which type of teacher professional development? Identifying and describing clusters of teachers

ABSTRACT

Teacher professional development (TPD) courses can support teachers in building up pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and in improving the quality of teaching. Therefore, having teachers participate in TPD is of special interest for educational policy. Unfortunately, knowledge about the relation between teachers’ PCK and teachers’ attendance in TPD is unclear. That’s why the current study empirically contrasts teachers (N = 67, German middle-school classes) which do and do not take part in TPD courses exemplarily dealing with formative assessment (FA) in mathematics. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify four clusters of teachers (based on prior personal characteristics concerning formative assessment). Describing these clusters, it can be stated that there exists a cluster of teachers with critical values on all personal characteristics. These teachers mainly do not take part in TPD dealing with FA although they have little PCK concerning FA. Implications for further research and TPD are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher professional development
• clusters of teachers
• teacher expertise
• pedagogical content knowledge
• formative assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1.. Co²CA: Conditions and Consequences of Classroom Assessment. Principal researchers: E. Klieme, K. Rakoczy, W. Blum, and D. Leiss.

2.. Teachers could not be assigned to TPD randomly because making teachers take part in TPD involuntarily could not be justified morally and ethically.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Besser

Michael Besser is Professor for Empirical Educational Research in Mathematics Education at the Institute of Mathematics and its Didactics at the Leuphana University Lueneburg. His research interests include teachers’ competencies, the quality of teaching, and assessing learners’ competencies.

Dominik Leiss

Dominik Leiss is Professor for Empirical Educational Research in Mathematics Education at the Institute of Mathematics and its Didactics at the Leuphana University Lueneburg. His research interests include mathematical modeling, teacher interventions, feedback, formative assessment, and language and education.

Werner Blum

Werner Blum is Professor Emeritus for Mathematics Education at the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Kassel. His research interests include empirical investigations into self-regulated mathematics learning and into mathematics teachers’ competencies. A main focus of his work is on quality development in mathematics teaching and on modeling and applications in mathematics education.