Professional Development For Elementary Teachers Research Articles

Teachers in the Loop: Integrating Computational Thinking and Mathematics to Build Early Place Value Understanding

With increasing attention on the potential overlap between computational thinking (CT) and mathematical reasoning, STEM education researchers seek to understand how integrating CT and mathematics can deepen student learning across disciplines. Although there are various professional development programs that introduce teachers to CT concepts and strategies for curriculum integration, limited research exists on how teachers might apply this knowledge to create math + CT activities for use with their students. Additionally, the majority of research on CT integration through programming has focused on upper elementary grades, leaving the early grades (K-2) relatively unexplored. This qualitative exploratory study aims to examine how teachers in a graduate STEM education program collaborated with university STEM faculty to explore and critique a set of integrated math + CT block-based programming activities designed to build place value conceptual understanding. In-service elementary teachers enrolled in an online graduate CT course for educators (n = 13) explored these activities as learners and drew on their experiences as classroom teachers to offer feedback for program redesign. A sequence of deductive pattern coding and inductive holistic coding of course transcripts, collaborative problem-solving slides, and individual teacher reflections provided insights into how teachers were able to establish connections between their mathematical knowledge related to teaching place value and their emerging understanding of CT concepts, such as abstraction, algorithms, decomposition, and debugging. Implications for the design of professional development for elementary teachers on integrating CT and mathematics are offered.

What are primary teachers’ experiences of policy on shaping a context of sustainable mathematics professional development?

ABSTRACT The author explored the extent to which policy could be a source of sustainable professional development for elementary teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. The study involved three policies in England: the National Numeracy Strategy and the Primary National Strategy, introduced in response to concerns regarding mathematics teaching and student attainment, and a new National Curriculum. Professional development was offered to support teachers in the processes of changing their practice. This article focuses on the responses of eight teachers who suggest that the National Numeracy Strategy and the Primary National Strategy were useful sources of mathematical knowledge for teaching. However, the 2013 National Curriculum, along with the teaching for mastery policy, show how the teachers’ professional development had been rooted in policy enactments and was temporal. The author discusses the need for sustainable professional development to facilitate teachers’ continuous enhancement of their mathematical knowledge for teaching within a changing policy landscape.

Benefits of Mindfulness Professional Development for Elementary Teachers

Using an embedded quasi-experimental mixed-method approach, this exploratory study aimed to understand the benefits of mindfulness training for elementary school teachers and leaders in one rural school district. After the delivery of two 90-minute mindfulness professional developments with on-the-job practice of strategies over 2 weeks, quantitative statistical comparisons of the intervention and inactive control groups were made using survey results from the Mindfulness in Teaching Scale (Frank et al., 2016). Qualitative analyses used intervention participant journal entry responses along with one-on-one interviews. After analyses, the results suggest mindfulness training can benefit teachers, specifically in the use of intrapersonal mindfulness practices, reshaping daily interactions with students, and reducing stress.

Taking teachers' ideas seriously: Exploring the role of physics faculty in preparing teachers in the era of the Next Generation Science Standards

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) call for K-12 science instruction that centers on and substantively takes up students' science ideas. In this paper, we explore the question, “What role might physics faculties play in preparing teachers in the era of NGSS?,” as we also consider our field's adage that “most teachers tend to teach as they were taught.” In particular, we propose the importance of teacher education experiences that take teachers' own physics ideas seriously. We argue that physicists can play a critical role in this work by designing and facilitating teacher preparation and professional development that (1) elevates and maintains a focus on teachers' physics ideas and (2) collaboratively subjects teachers' ideas to the kinds of tests to which we subject our own ideas. We ground these considerations in two illustrative episodes from our local context: Focus on Energy professional development for elementary teachers. We highlight particular professional development instructor moves that take teachers' ideas seriously, and we discuss questions and implications that emerge from our analysis. Although the focus of our analysis is on taking teachers' ideas seriously, we suggest that most of our arguments also apply to taking students' ideas seriously in pre-college and university physics courses.

Conditions and decisions of urban elementary teachers regarding instruction of STEM curriculum

AbstractThe study was situated in a National Science Foundation supported Math Science Partnership between a private university and an urban school district. This study sought to understand the decision‐making process of elementary teachers as they implement an integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum in their classrooms and the interactions that occur between the teachers and curriculum during that process. This qualitative study utilized a comparative case study approach to understanding the decision‐making process of three elementary teachers enacting the same lesson. Analysis of the interactions revealed that the teachers' perceptions of student ability, their pedagogical design capacity, and time were influences that impacted implementation. These findings have implications for STEM‐focused professional development of elementary teachers.

The principal’s influence on the novice teacher’s professional development in literacy instruction

Effective teachers and principals, who are viewed as their building’s curriculum leader, are of vital importance to the literacy success of elementary-age students. This article will explore the influences of school leadership and professional development which teachers say can positively or negatively impact their ability to effectively teach literacy in the elementary grades. Novice teachers in this study reported that the knowledge their principal held in the field of literacy made a significant impact on their ability to effectively deliver literacy instruction. Findings have implications for the effective design of continued professional development for elementary teachers in order to optimize literacy outcomes for students.

Teacher STEM Perception and Preparation: Inquiry-Based STEM Professional Development for Elementary Teachers

ABSTRACT Student foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is formed in their elementary education. Paradoxically, many elementary teachers have constrained background knowledge, confidence, and efficacy for teaching STEM that may hamper student STEM learning. The association between teacher preparation to teach STEM and student achievement in STEM motivated the authors' professional development program. The authors created and implemented a professional development program to address K–5 teacher confidence for, attitudes toward, knowledge of, and efficacy for teaching inquiry-based STEM. Using data from 2 independent cohorts the authors found significant and consistent increases in pre- to postinstitute assessments of teacher confidence, efficacy, and perceptions of STEM. Further, they found increased participant attention toward linking STEM curriculum and instruction to learning standards. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Deconstructing Diversity: Professional Development for Elementary Teachers

Organizing and facilitating professional development (PD) for teachers around issues of ethnicity, race, language, culture, and religion is an important area of research within Canadian education. The diversity in schools across Canada is growing, and meeting the needs of these students becomes essential as we reflect on the aims of teacher responsiveness to cultural diversity. This article examines the PD of a Calgary, Alberta school whose population consists of a majority of “visible minority” students and a predominantly White staff. Through a recounting and analysis of the feedback and reflection of teachers who partook in an initiative geared toward “getting out” into the actual community of the students, this article presents significant themes in the necessity around the PD of educators. The implications revealed in this action-based research include (a) a view of short-term and long-term planning, (b) the risk of essentializing others by applying experiences of a representative to an entire group, and (c) being aware of and taking ownership of one's own learning and understanding. These challenges and the benefits of PD, organized by a visible minority staff member, add more depth and knowledge to the growing understanding of multiculturalism and its impact on education in Canada.

The lived experiences of elementary prospective teachers in mathematics content coursework

Teaching mathematics to elementary children requires highly developed content knowledge, and questions of how teachers acquire this knowledge are of significant concern to teacher preparation programs. Even with research to the contrary, some policy makers in the USA propose additional advanced mathematics courses. One voice that is missing when considering this problem is the voice of the student (i.e. prospective teacher). To address this student‐vacant area of research and acknowledge the important role students should have in shaping research, we conducted a phenomenological inquiry into the experiences of elementary prospective teachers in mathematics content courses. The students described domains of mismatch between the courses and the professional program, affective reactions to the courses, and perceptions of effective classroom practices. These findings should inform decision making in the professional development of elementary teachers.

Mathematics professional development for elementary teachers: Building trust within a school-based mathematics education community

Despite increased attention in professional development to building communities of teachers, few studies have investigated the development of trust in these communities. This paper presents issues related to trust in a professional development project at an elementary school. The project aimed for school-based elementary teachers and university-based mathematics educators to work together to improve mathematics instruction at the school by developing a mathematics education community of learners, where learners were conceived of as both the teachers and the mathematics educators. This paper addresses the following question: What factors in the project supported the development of trust among mathematics educators and teachers as the community was formed? More specifically, the paper is about one aspect of trust, namely, building school-based elementary teachers’ trust in the university-based mathematics educators. We point to three factors that helped the development of trust and we use care theory to further understand and discuss these factors in the context of in-service teacher education initiatives.

Research, Reflection, and Practice: Show Me the Evidence: Mathematics Professional Development for Elementary Teachers

Once teachers enter the profession, the United States education system has no proven mechanism to systematically improve mathematics teaching in our classrooms (Stigler and Hiebert 1999). Over the past decade, many researchers have described effective features of professional development. This article reviews the features of mathematics professional development for elementary teachers that have been empirically supported over the past several decades, if only by one or a few small-scale studies.

Quantity and Quality: Not Enough to Go Around

Education and teacher education continue to be topics of national discussion. The National Research Council released a report on beginning reading in which 17 reading experts called for an end to the reading wars over phonics and whole language, careful use of the best of both approaches, and intensive help for children with learning difficulties as early as possible. The panel also recommended smaller class sizes, closer coordination between teachers and specially trained tutors, and more intensive professional development of elementary teachers in reading (Steinberg, 1998). The recent release of results of U.S. high school seniors in general mathematics and science from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study has generated much discussion about the nature of curriculum and pedagogy in those fields. In an Op-Ed article in the Boston Globe (Schmidt & McKnight, 1998), William Schmidt, professor of education at Michigan State University and national coordinator for the study, and Curtis McKnight, professor of mathematics at Oklahoma University, note that the achievement results reflect different topics emphasized, both in science and math. No country did well in everything (p. A1). They note that the United States continued to emphasize arithmetic basics long after other countries had moved to more advanced topics, and that U.S. curricula tend to cover far more topics in math and science in a more global fashion than other countries do. Many American schools also use tracking in math and science in the later elementary grades and middle school by assigning students to levels or courses of varying difficulty and complexity, thus widening the gap and exaggerating achievement differences among students. Schmidt and McKnight suggest that it is no surprise that high school seniors' scores were low; they noted a consistent decline in the comparative standards of fourth, and eighth-grade students in mathematics and science. They attribute much of the decline to inherent flaws in mathematics and science curriculum and pedagogy in the United States: Our curriculum doesn't focus on key topics. Our curriculums and textbooks are highly repetitive and unchallenging, grade after grade. How could they provide a sound foundation on which to build during the high school years? (p. C5). Education and teacher education continue to be topics of political discussion as well. In his 1998 State of the Union address, President Clinton proposed a $12 billion initiative over a 7-year period to help reduce primary grade class size to a nationwide average of 18 students per class. In subsequent speeches, he has proposed the hiring of an additional 100,000 new primary teachers, all of whom should be well prepared and required to pass state competency tests. Even before adding the 100,000 additional primary teachers that President Clinton proposes, school districts face record enrollments, current shortages of qualified teachers in some fields, and a projected need for many more teachers. Darling-Hammond (1998) reports, By 1998, America's schools will enroll more children--52 million--than they have ever enrolled before, even at the height of the baby boom. With more than one quarter of all teachers over the age of 50 and attrition of beginning teachers hovering around 30% over the first three to five years of teaching, the demand for teachers will be pressing for years to come (Darling-Hammond, 1998, p. 8). In a front-page story, the Boston Globe (Daley, 1988), describes the impending problem from an urban district's perspective. Almost half of Boston's 4,600 teachers are expected to retire in the next 10 years, at a time when enrollment is growing by about 1.4% each year. The district currently has 84% minority students and about 39% minority teachers. Boston, like most urban districts, wants to increase the percentage of minority teachers as it recruits replacement teachers for the upcoming retirements. …