Multisyllabic implementation fidelity in upper elementary and professional development considerations: a pilot

After an examination of 13 recent lists of characteristics of professional Mr. Guskey concludes that they vary widely and that the research that supports them is inconsistent and often contradictory. Nonetheless, he argues, we need to seek agreement on criteria for along with clear descriptions of contextual factors. DO WE KNOW what makes professional development effective? Have researchers and practitioners reached consensus about what factors contribute to a successful professional development experience? Do we even agree on what criteria should be used to judge professional development's effectiveness? A review of newly developed lists of the characteristics of effective professional development indicates that the answer to each of these questions is Maybe not. Recently I analyzed 13 different lists of the characteristics of effective professional development, all published within the last decade. These lists were drawn from publications of the American Federation of Teachers, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Education Development Center, Educational Research Service, Educational Testing Service, Eisenhower Professional Development Program, National Governors' Association, National Institute for Science Education, National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching, National Staff Development Council, and U.S. Department of Education. My goal was to find out the extent to which these various lists agreed. What I discovered is that they were derived in very different ways, used different criteria to determine effectiveness, and varied widely in the characteristics they identified. I also found that the research evidence regarding most of the identified characteristics is inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. In considering their development, I concluded that most of the lists could be described as research-based. But that research rarely includes rigorous investigations of the relationship between the noted characteristics and improvements in instructional practice or student learning outcomes. Instead, it typically involves surveys of the opinions of researchers and educators. In other words, researchers and practitioners generally favor these characteristics and believe they are important, despite the lack of verifying evidence. Only a National Institute for Science Education (NISE) analysis and an Educational Testing Service (ETS) study show a direct link between their identified characteristics and specific measures of student achievement.1 Of the 21 characteristics distinguished in the lists, the most frequently cited was enhancement of teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge. Helping teachers to understand more deeply the content they teach and the ways students learn that content appears to be a vital dimension of effective professional development. At present, however, nearly all of the studies relating this characteristic to improvements in student learning focus on achievement in mathematics or science. Whether the same is true for achievement in language arts, social studies, or other subject areas has yet to be thoroughly investigated. Most of the lists mention the provision of sufficient time and other resources as essential to effective professional development. Obviously, educators need time to deepen their understanding, analyze students' work, and develop new approaches to instruction. But significant contrary evidence exists. The NISE analysis, for example, showed that differences in time spent in professional development activities were unrelated to improvements in student outcomes. Similarly, the ETS study found that the amount of time spent in professional development was unrelated to achievement. So while effective professional development surely requires time, it's clear that the time must be well organized, carefully structured, and purposefully directed. Another consistently noted characteristic is the promotion of collegiality and collaborative exchange. …

Teacher feedback during active learning : the development and evaluation of a professional development program

Research has shown that not all children internalize the structure of English orthography as they learn to decode and spell. In fact, many children have difficulty mastering these two skills. In this paper, the relevance of word structure knowledge to decoding and spelling instruction and performance is discussed. It was anticipated that explicit, discussion oriented, and direct decoding instruction based on word origin and structure would result in improved reading and spelling performance. During the instruction, students compared and contrasted letter-sound correspondences, syllable patterns, and morpheme patterns in English words of Anglo-Saxon, Romance, and Greek origin. Upper elementary grade students receiving the decoding instruction made significant gains in word structure knowledge and in decoding and spelling achievement.

Visual imagery as a factor relating to spelling performance and retention was compared with auditory and kinesthetic factors among upper elementary students. When pretreatment achievement differences were controlled, significant effects of treatment on both spelling performance and retention were obtained.A posteriori pairwise comparison of adjusted means revealed that visual imagery was superior to auditory for both spelling performance and retention. The results support the hypothesis that visual imagery is an important factor in spelling performance and retention, particularly when coupled with appropriate imagery suggestions that serve as visual memory locations for the visual code.

This report provides evidence of the influence of professional development and curriculum on upper elementary students' understandings of fractions. Three groups of teachers and their students participated. Two groups implemented a fractions unit that emphasized problem solving and conceptual understanding. The Integrated Mathematics Assessment (IMA) group participated in a program designed to enhance teachers' understandings of fractions, students' thinking, and students' motivation. The Collegial Support (SUPP) group met regularly to discuss strategies for implementing the curriculum. Teachers in the third group (TRAD) valued and used textbooks and received no professional development support. Contrasts of student adjusted posttest scores revealed group differences on two scales. On the conceptual scale, IMA classrooms achieved greater adjusted posttest scores than the other two groups, with no differences between SUPP and TRAD groups. On the computation scale, contrasts revealed no differences between IMA and TRAD, although TRAD achieved greater adjusted scores than SUPP (p < 0.10). Our findings indicate that the benefits of reform curriculum for students may depend upon integrated professional development, one form exemplified by the IMA program.

BackgroundProfessional development is a key component of effective public health infrastructures. To be successful, professional development programs in public health and health promotion must adapt to practitioners’ complex real-world practice settings while preserving the core components of those programs’ models and theoretical bases. An appropriate balance must be struck between implementation fidelity, defined as respecting the core nature of the program that underlies its effects, and adaptability to context to maximize benefit in specific situations. This article presents a professional development pilot program, the Health Promotion Laboratory (HPL), and analyzes how it was adapted to three different settings while preserving its core components. An exploratory analysis was also conducted to identify team and contextual factors that might have been at play in the emergence of implementation profiles in each site.MethodsThis paper describes the program, its core components and adaptive features, along with three implementation experiences in local public health teams in Quebec, Canada. For each setting, documentary sources were analyzed to trace the implementation of activities, including temporal patterns throughout the project for each program component. Information about teams and their contexts/settings was obtained through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with HPL participants, colleagues and managers from each organization.ResultsWhile each team developed a unique pattern of implementing the activities, all the program’s core components were implemented. Differences of implementation were observed in terms of numbers and percentages of activities related to different components of the program as well as in the patterns of activities across time. It is plausible that organizational characteristics influencing, for example, work schedule flexibility or learning culture might have played a role in the HPL implementation process.ConclusionsThis paper shows how a professional development program model can be adapted to different contexts while preserving its core components. Capturing the heterogeneity of the intervention’s exposure, as was done here, will make possible in-depth impact analyses involving, for example, the testing of program–context interactions to identify program outcomes predictors. Such work is essential to advance knowledge on the action mechanisms of professional development programs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0903-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A DIACHRONIC CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH TEACHERS' ONLINE EMOTION REGULATION

Professional development (PD) programs are considered as essential for improving the teacher quality and performance in schools. Despite introducing several PD programs, the teachers’ quality in the public schools is a matter of concern for Pakistan. It has become a challenge for policymakers and school leaders to design PD programs which can be effective for all teachers. PD programs in Pakistan normally undertakes a standard approach without considering the strengths and weaknesses of different groups of teachers which may not address the specific needs of these groups. There is a need of structuring PD programs to make these learning opportunities more effective for teachers. Therefore, the current study evaluates the teacher competencies of different groups of teachers in Pakistan’s public schools. For that purpose, the study first identifies three key themes of teacher competencies required in 21st century from extant review of recent literature. Interview guide then is designed based on these key teacher competencies to solicit information from seven principals of public schools. The public schools were selected using the criteria of size of school and principal working experience in that school. Structured interviews been used as a medium for collecting data from the principals. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The deductive content analysis approach was used in analyzing the data. The analytical tool used for the coding of themes was the MAXQDA software. The results highlighted certain differences in teacher competencies varying from gender to age. Female teachers and teachers who are younger in general are found to have more competencies compared to male teachers and senior teachers. The results of this study offer vital information for planning and tailoring TPD programs for teachers. These specially designed learning opportunities can be more effective for the professional development of teachers and can foster teachers’ competence.

Implementation fidelity relates to the degree of adherence to implementation protocols and content and helps to guide replication of evidence-based programs. In settings-based research, notions of fidelity have been applied more often to delivery of education content rather than whole of setting change. The aims of this paper were firstly, to analyse how contextual factors influenced implementation of a whole school program on respectful relationships education, and secondly given the findings, discuss whether a more flexible approach to implementation fidelity may have yielded increased school engagement. The project was conducted in 19 secondary schools in Victoria in 2015. This paper reports on focus groups and interviews which were conducted with 81 school staff and 28 staff from the lead agency, community agency partners, and departmental staff to understand the contextual factors influencing implementation. The program followed a traditional implementation fidelity approach of considering core elements and some minor scope for adaption which engaged some regions and schools but not others. An alternative notion of implementation fidelity, "fidelity to function," may have permitted increased flexibility to tailor the intervention components to suit different school and community contexts and potentially, increasing both the reach and impact of the program. SO WHAT?: Understanding how to apply notions of fidelity to guide whole of setting change are important considerations if programs are to be replicated to have wider reach and greater impact and effectiveness.

I enjoyed reading the articles contained in this special issue not only because they report research findings on general education teachers' implementation of new classroom practices, but because they reflect progress on the fundamental problem in education-the misalignment of specific professional development experiences with changes in instructional practice within the general education classroom with improvement in student outcomes. For too long, strong links between these critical elements of professional development, teaching, and learning have not been forged (Carnine, 1995). Because each of the authors in this issue addressed elements of the solution to this problem in their research, we now know more about solving it. For example, realizing that teachers are not traditionally consumers of educational research (e.g., Kaestle, 1993) and that traditional inservice training is insufficient to result in high-quality classroom implementation, Vaughn et al. selected four research-based practices and taught them to volunteer teachers in an intensive, year-long program of professional development that combined inservice, meetings, and weekly coaching. Recognizing that much of educational research has few implications for teachers in real classrooms (Viadero, 1994), Marks and Gersten sought to engage classroom teachers in interactions organized around their interests and needs as a basis for introducing and sustaining their use of researchbased practices. Further realizing that traditional general education instruction does not adapt easily to the needs of individuals with learning disabilities (LD) (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Bishop, 1992a, 1992b), Fuchs and Fuchs developed and evaluated the effectiveness of combining computerbased assessments and peer-mediated instructional strategies on the rate of individualizing instruction and the resulting improvements in students' rate of academic progress in the curriculum. Also concerned about general educators' adaptation of instruction to fit the needs of diverse learners, Simmons et al. sought to understand teachers' beliefs about influences on stu-

This study investigated how contextual factors influenced the sustainability of outcomes from a 3-year, state-funded professional development program that provided science assistance for K-2 teachers in small, rural school districts. The research used a case-study approach with a purposive sample of five elementary schools that varied in instructional time in science several years after the funding period. The primary data sources were teacher surveys and interviews conducted 2 and 3 years after the end of the professional development program. The findings highlight variations across schools and the influence of principal support, resources, collegial support, personal commitment, and external factors. The research holds practical implications for enhancing long-term sustainability of professional development outcomes in science education.

Make It So: Harnessing Technology to Provide Professional Development to Regional Museum Workers

Construction industry comprises a high degree of competition; the performance of construction projects is highly affected by the performance of civil engineers who are the core of construction productivity. Professional development is one of the essential milestones toward improving the performance of civil engineers. This paper, critically, evaluates the professional development and training of civil engineers in Baghdad. This encompassed the study of the existing programs offered for the professional development, the expected impact, and suggestions. Data were collected from 113 professional civil engineers about the existing professional development programs and training courses and analyzed. Large variations were found in terms of the time spent for professional development, despite the fact that they are comparable to some developed countries. Pitfalls in the field of professional training and development were clear. Remedial suggestions including professional development program and appraisal system were presented. It was emphasized that collaborative efforts by all stakeholders are required to ensure sustainable professional development.

The Next Generation Science Standards present a way for engineering lessons to be formally integrated into elementary classrooms at a national level in the United States. Professional development programs are an important method for preparing teachers to enact the new engineering practices in their science classrooms. To better understand what contextual factors help a professional development program have a sustained effect on the implementation of engineering, we closely examined two elementary schools within the same school district that participated in the same professional development program but had very different outcomes in their lasting implementation of engineering. Using the case study method, we corroborate quantitative and qualitative sources of data measuring students’ learning and attitudes; teachers’ learning, attitudes, and implementation fidelity; perceived teacher community; and administrative support. Our analysis revealed that although the professional development program had district-level administrative support, there was considerable variation between schools in how teachers’ perceived school level support. In addition, teachers at the sustaining school collaborated and co-taught with one another. Our findings support previous literature on the role of administrative support and teacher learning communities. We discuss practical ways that professional development programs can seek to foster a context which is supportive of sustaining curriculum change for engineering.

A large and growing body of literature has investigated the role of teachers’ agency in their career trajectories. However, far too little attention has been paid to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’, especially female EFL teachers’, professional agency for their career development in the Chinese higher education setting. To address this gap, this study explores female EFL teachers’ professional agency from a self-discrepancy theory perspective, namely, how the participating teachers have perceived discrepancies in their professional development and how they have enacted their professional agency to realize sustainable development. Based on a metaphor investigation of 167 teachers and interviews with nine of them, the current study found that (1) there are certain discrepancies between female EFL teachers’ self-guides and actual selves concerning their professional identity construction; (2) female EFL teachers’ professional agency is manifested in the continuum of iteration, practical evaluation, and projectivity processes, as well as in the entity of personal and environmental factors; and 3) female EFL teachers’ professional agency and gender identity are closely intertwined with each other. This study can offer implications for teacher agency research and female teachers’ sustainable development at large.