Abstract
This study is based on collaboration between a school and a university on professional development training of 4th and 5th grade elementary school teachers in a southeastern state in the USA. The study was three-pronged and focused on teacher knowledge, pedagogy, and student achievement. We examined how the building of teacher capacity affected the performance of underachieving students in math and literacy. Underachieving students were targeted with specific strategies, projects, problems solving stories, self-reflection, and higher-level thinking questions. Student performance was measured for literacy achievement, with quantitative and qualitative measures used for data collection purposes. Students showed progress over previous years in reading scores. Teachers’ growth in knowledge related to the content area was evidenced by the consistently high mean scores. Teachers’ self-ratings on the frequency of using the targeted strategies were indirect evidence of their implementation in the classroom. The results were positive and showed significant progress over previous years concerning student achievement.
Highlights
Current standards for student learning have been developed by the Commonwealth of Virginia over the past two decades and are inclusive of both content and practice standards; these are called Standards of Learning (The Standards & SOL-Based Instructional Resources, 2021)
The student achievement data consisted of scores related to reading achievement from the state’s annual Standards of Learning (SOL) and Benchmark tests
The items are organized by general topics covered in the professional development activities (i.e., Reading, Math, Classroom Management, and General Instructional Strategies)
Summary
Current standards for student learning have been developed by the Commonwealth of Virginia over the past two decades and are inclusive of both content and practice standards; these are called Standards of Learning (The Standards & SOL-Based Instructional Resources, 2021). The idea behind the Standards of Learning (SOL) is to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education. The SOLs set goals, tests are administered at the end of each school year to gauge the level to which students are achieving them, and school accreditation is based on student test scores. This puts tremendous pressure on schools to ensure their students pass the annual SOLs. This puts tremendous pressure on schools to ensure their students pass the annual SOLs This pressure affects administrators, teachers, and eventually trickles down to students. To support educators in their implementation of these standards, schools provide ongoing teacher training workshops. As the expectations for instructional practice have been raised, there is a need for more focused professional development through which teachers can develop knowledge and pedagogical skills to support the implementation of these practices in the classroom
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