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Teachers’ Continuing Education Teachers’ Continuing Education (Professional Development (Professional Development

Chapter)Chapter)

Heather C. HillSchool of Education

University of MichiganLearning Mathematics for Teaching/Study of Instructional Improvement

hhill@umich.edu

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Teachers’ Continuing Teachers’ Continuing EducationEducation

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?

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Graduate EducationGraduate 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

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Professional DevelopmentProfessional 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

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CanCan Professional Development Professional Development Affect Student Achievement?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

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DoesDoes Professional Development Professional Development Improve Student Achievement?Improve Student Achievement?

• Probably not– Few teachers report their experiences

match ideal– Few teachers report their experiences

change their practice– Quality problems

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Example: Writing Example: Writing MathematicsMathematics

• 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

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Writing Mathematics: Meeting the Writing Mathematics: Meeting the “Focus on Mathematics” “Focus on Mathematics”

Standard 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…”

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Writing Mathematics: Meeting the Writing Mathematics: Meeting the “Student Learning” Standard“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.

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DoesDoes Professional Development Professional Development Improve Student Achievement?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

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ConclusionsConclusions

• 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

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ConclusionsConclusions

• 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