Professional Development Evaluation Research Articles

A City Learning Together

Concerns regarding professional preparation among practitioners and academics in the parks, recreation, and leisure profession demand real examples of people working together for the good of their overall community. Such reciprocal collaboration (two-way interaction from academics to practice and from practice to academics) has started to take place at the Chicago Park District(CPD) by bringing in academic professionals to implement practitioners' professional development and system-wide program evaluation. This article describes the collaborative experience occurring at the city park level and introduces added ways to “bridge the divide” between practitioners and academic professionals. We believe that a city, dedicated to learning together, can bring about promising outcomes, especially by implementing adult learning principles and practices; and by implanting academic professionals to work alongside practitioners in a long-term effort for improving the parks, recreation, and leisure services of an entire city.

Codification and Validation of Professional Development Questionnaire of Teachers

<p class="apa">Teacher in the educational system and the teaching-learning process, as a main leading should need to knowledge and professional skills. Therefore, evaluation of professional development is important. This study aims to design and modify Construction and Validation of professional development questionnaire of teachers. This research based on methodology and data collection procedure was descriptive-surveyed. The population consists of 400 teachers from high in Birjand in the academic year 2013-2014. A sample of 246 was estimated by Krejcie and Morgan. The instrument used in this study is a researcher's questionnaire of teachers’ professional development. In order to assess the reliability and validity was used the content and construct validity by using of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. Results show that the questionnaire has good reliability and validity. According to the results of a factor analysis of the eight factors (components) were identified for professional development of teachers that explains a total of 54/69% of total variance. It can be concluded that the questionnaire would be a suitable tool for the professional development of teachers.</p>

Teacher perception of outcome evaluation for professional development seminars

Outcome evaluation of professional development for educators is meant to enable an objective insight into participants' learning outcomes, practical application of these outcomes, as well as the effects of such application. Thus, the mechanisms of outcome evaluation for professional development seminars play a role in the overall assessment of the value of the seminar programme, of the seminar outcomes for the participants, the competencies they develop, as well as of the potential for increasing the programme's efficiency and effectiveness by implementing certain changes. Seminar participants are in fact the key evaluation actors, as they are expected to objectively view and assess seminar outcomes. In that sense, also important is the teacher's perception of the quality of evaluation of professional development seminars, and this is the subject of the study.

The Relationships Between the Results of Teacher Evaluation for Professional Development, Teachers’ Demographic Characteristics and their Perception of Expertise

The Relationships Between the Results of Teacher Evaluation for Professional Development, Teachers’ Demographic Characteristics and their Perception of Expertise

The Comparative Study and Development of Teaching Competency Standards in Higher Education Level Between Faculty Members and Senior Students Among 6 ASEAN Universities Under MOU.

The Comparative Study and Development of Teaching Competency Standards in Higher Education Level Between Faculty Members and Senior Students Among 6 ASEAN Universities Under MOU.

Evaluation of population health short courses: implications for developing and evaluating population health professional development initiatives.

Population health as an approach to planning is key to improving the health and well-being of whole populations and to reduce inequities within and between population groups. The Victorian Department of Health North and West Metropolitan Region, in collaboration with The University of Melbourne (School of Population Health), have delivered four annual population health short courses. The short courses were designed to equip participants with knowledge and skills to implement population health approaches upon their return to their workplaces. For three consecutive years, online surveys (n=41) and semi-structured interviews (n=35), underpinned by participatory and realist evaluation approaches, were conducted to obtain the perceptions and experiences of the population health short course participants. Evaluation findings indicate that participants' understanding of population health concepts increased; however, there were mixed outcomes in assisting participants' implementation of population health approaches upon their return to their workplaces. A core list of perceived requirements, enablers and barriers emerged at an individual, organisational and system level as influencing the capability of participants to implement population health approaches. Evaluation recommendations and actions taken to revise short course iterations are presented, providing evidence that the evaluation approaches were appropriate and increased the use of evaluation learnings. Implications of evaluation findings for professional development practice (i.e. shift from a 'Course' as a one-off event to a Population Health 'Program' of inter-dependent components) and evaluation (i.e. participatory realist evaluation approaches) are presented.

Design, implementation, and evaluation of an ePortfolio approach to support faculty development in vocational education

This article provides an account of the design, implementation, and evaluation of an ePortfolio approach to faculty development and performance evaluation at a Canadian post-secondary vocational education institute. The approach was piloted in two phases in 13 departments. Survey and interview data were collected and analyzed to determine adoption, reception by faculty, and impact of the approach on faculty development. While adoption of the approach in the pilots was limited, participants who adopted the approach reported collecting more and different feedback, developing increased awareness of areas for improvement, and planning their professional learning more explicitly. Further studies are needed to determine what design elements of the portfolio optimally support professional development and performance evaluation.

Evaluative decision-making for high-quality professional development: cultivating an evaluative stance

Unprecedented policy attention to early childhood education internationally has highlighted the crucial need for a skilled early years workforce. Consequently, professional development of early years educators has become a global policy imperative. At the same time, many maintain that professional development research has reached an impasse. In this paper, we offer a new approach to addressing this impasse. In contrast to calls for a redesign of comparative studies of professional development programmes, or for the refinement of researcher-constructed professional development evaluation frameworks, we argue the need to cultivate what we refer to as an ‘evaluative stance’ amongst all involved in making decisions about professional development in the early years – from senior bureaucrats with responsibilities for funding professional development programmes to individual educators with choices about which professional development opportunities to take up. Drawing on three bodies of literature – evaluation capacity-building, personal epistemology and co-production – that, for the most part, have been overlooked with respect to early years professional learning, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to explain why cultivating an evaluative stance in professional development decision-making has rich possibilities for systemic, sustainable and transformative change in early years education.

Using student perceptions of the learning environment to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher professional development programme

The focus of this article is two-fold. First, it describes a model that can be used to guide the evaluation of teacher professional development. The model combines important components of existing models and incorporates the use of students’ perceptions for examining teacher change. Second, the article reports the evaluation of a teacher development programme that incorporated this model. In particular, this article focuses on the phases of the model that involved student perceptual measures. Using a pre-post design, the evaluation involved quantitative (students’ perceptions of the learning environment) and qualitative (observation and interview) data in investigating whether teaching practices changed over the course of a 1-year professional development programme. Data were collected before the commencement of the professional development programme and at the end of the programme from students in two classes of each of 33 teachers who attended the professional development programme (N = 2,417). These data were analysed using one-way MANOVA to provide a large-scale overview of the pre-post differences in students’ perceptions of their learning experience. Although there were statistically significant changes for six of the seven WIHIC scales (with all statistically significant differences showing an improvement), the effect sizes for all scales were too small (according to Cohen’s criteria) to be considered educationally important. These findings, that the success of the teacher professional development programme could have been limited, were corroborated by observations. Further, interviews with teachers provided information about contextual factors that influenced the translation of the professional development ideas into practice.

Evaluation of Professional Development in the Use of Arts-Integrated Activities with Mathematics Content: Findings About Program Implementation

In 2010, the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, was awarded an Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant to develop, implement, and disseminate a research-based program of professional development (PD) that equips prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers to infuse mathematics instruction with arts instruction in their classrooms. The PD includes summer institutes and classroom-based residencies in which music, dance, and drama performing artists work with teachers in teams. This instructional approach is often called arts integration. American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted an evaluation of the four-year grant from 2010-2014, examining the implementation of the PD and assessing its impact on teacher practices and student mathematics knowledge. This article reports on the experiences of the elementary school teachers and Wolf Trap teaching artists in the first cohort of participating schools during 2011–12 and 2012–13, drawing on data from a variety of sources (PD observations, residency artifacts, artist interviews, and teacher surveys). We find that the Wolf Trap PD program demonstrates features of effective PD. It is classroom-based, intensive, and focused on what teachers and students need to know to teach and learn mathematics. It is aligned with district standards and offers many opportunities to teachers for active learning. The Wolf Trap PD program delivered preparation to teachers to infuse performing arts-based strategies into their mathematics instruction, starting in the PD institutes and then continuing in the residencies and did so with fidelity to the planned model. Wolf Trap used several approaches to optimize fidelity: a planning year and practice sessions with teaching artists, consistent use of local content experts, and materials structured to reflect the concepts and approaches used in both institutes and residencies. The article concludes with suggestions for practitioners and questions for further research.

Build on Success: CIPHI Challenges for the Next Millennium

Build on Success: CIPHI Challenges for the Next Millennium

Evaluation as a Collaborative Activity to Learn Content Knowledge in a Graduate Course

Teaching graduate students to conduct evaluations is typically relegated to evaluation methods courses. This approach misses an opportunity for students to collaboratively use evaluation skills to explore content. This article examines a graduate course, Issues in Adult Basic Education, in which students learned evaluation methods concurrently with the course’s core content. Students and the professor collaboratively conducted an evaluation of professional development among adult basic education (ABE) providers exploring the following question: How is professional development conducted for ABE faculty, and how might it differ between community-based organizations and community and technical colleges? Based on the findings, students generated a report, which they shared with evaluation participants at local community and technical colleges and community-based organizations. The experiences described in this article suggest the applicability of this approach—infusing evaluation work into a content course—to graduate courses in other disciplines.

Financial literacy education in the curriculum: Making the grade or missing the mark?

Financial literacy education (FLE) has become a global priority. In Australia, FLE has been added to the primary and secondary school curriculum. Teachers now have the added responsibility of educating students after receiving some form of professional development. Of concern is how teachers are being financially educated and supported to teach FLE critically and effectively. We find that more is needed to guide, educate and support educators in this area with clearer policy objectives, improved professional development and programme evaluation required. Without a more robust and evidenced based approach we fear the policy intentions of FLE in schools may not be realised.

The Core Competencies for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

The Adolescent Sexual Health Work Group commissioned the development of core competencies that define the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for all providers of adolescent sexual and reproductive health. This article describes the background and rationale for this set of competencies, the history and use of competencies, and the process involved in creating the core competencies. It explores the ways that educators can use them to strengthen classroom instruction and improve outcomes for adolescents in the area of reproductive health. Several additional tools that guide the application of the competencies to human resources, self-assessment, performance assessment, professional development, and program evaluation are described.

The Teachers' Perspective on Teacher Professional Development Evaluation

This study constructs indicators and weights that can be used in the professional development evaluation (PDE) of elementary school teachers. The indicators were constructed using data collected from literature reviews, interviews with experts, and questionnaire surveys. The Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAPH) was used to analyze the collected data. The survey subjects were school principals, administrative directors, and teachers who were part of the teacher professional development evaluation (PDE) trials that have been started in Taiwan since 2005. They were selected as seed lecturers of teacher PDE in 2008 by the Ministry of Education. Therefore, purposive sampling was adopted, which yielded 24 (86%) valid questionnaires from a total of 36 questionnaires. The final results indicate three hierarchies for teacher PDE, which include 4 evaluation perspectives in the first level, 11 evaluation dimensions in the second level, and 47 evaluation indicators in the third level. Finally, some implications are presented for school administration when undertaking teacher professional development evaluation and for teachers who are interested in enhancing their professional development. Key words: professional development evaluation (PDE), indicator, weight, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP).

Understanding and Using Early Learning Standards for Young Children Globally

Abstract Around the world, there is an increasing focus on the importance of the early years, with growing numbers of countries specifying early learning and development standards. The authors find that differences in country context and pre-primary service delivery influence the content and use of standards documents. Generally, within their documents, countries favor either specifying precise indicators of what children should know and be able to do, or including many elements that guide early education more broadly, such as broad learning goals for children and pedagogical guidance for teachers. Although the standards’ documents vary, countries generally use their documents for the purposes of curriculum development, professional development, parent engagement, and national monitoring and evaluation. By using the standards for multiple purposes, early education is better aligned and countries are advancing the integration of their services. Standards have made numerous positive contributions to the early childhood field, but, lacking rigorous outcome evaluations, it is too early to discern the effect of standards on children’s performance and learning. The authors recommend that countries devote greater attention to developing their early childhood infrastructure so that the standards documents are more effectively understood, utilized, and evaluated.

Approaching Evaluation of Professional Development in Arts Integration

ABSTRACT An investigation of the methods, purposes, and meanings of professional development evaluation in arts integration.

Evaluating the impact of professional development: the need for a student-focused approach

This article argues that evaluation of professional development (PD) requires a focus on student learning and an evidential baseline to enable practitioners and school leaders to determine the impact of the PD in which they are engaged. Several models of evaluating PD are briefly considered and it is suggested that most of these enable programme developers or commissioners to evaluate the impact of what they offer. However, many still struggle with evaluating the impact of PD and are looking for practical yet rigorous ways to achieve this. This paper suggests how this can be achieved, thus enabling schools to know and demonstrate that PD has had an impact, whilst also offering a powerful method to raise both the quality of learning – for adults and students – and student outcomes. In so doing, an approach to impact evaluation is presented. The main findings of the Effective Practices in Continuing Professional Development project are drawn upon to illustrate how this approach to impact evaluation can be deployed. The key lessons learned in relation to effective PD and impact evaluation are outlined. The model outlined gives importance to establishing an evidential baseline and impact picture that supports both adult and student learning.

A Study on the Improvement and Operational Results of the In-service Training Linked by the New Teacher Evaluation for Professional Development

A Study on the Improvement and Operational Results of the In-service Training Linked by the New Teacher Evaluation for Professional Development

Guidebook for Clerkship Directors. 4th ed

Guidebook for Clerkship Directors. 4th ed