Professional development to increase teacher behavior‐specific praise: A single‐case design replication

Effective classroom instruction is contingent upon successful classroom management. Unfortunately, not all teachers successfully manage classroom behavior and need in‐service professional development. In this study, we replicated a targeted professional development approach that included a brief one‐on‐one training session and emailed visual performance feedback to increase novice teachers’ use of behavior‐specific praise, an evidence‐based classroom management skill. Dependent variables collected through direct observation included teachers’ behavior‐specific praise along with average student engagement and disruptions. Four elementary teachers participated and, based on a multiple‐baseline single‐case design, we found a functional relationship between the targeted professional development and teachers’ increased use of behavior‐specific praise. However, because of variability and one teacher's limited response, effect sizes were small for behavior‐specific praise and little change was observed in student behaviors. These findings warrant further research to determine which classroom management skills affect student behaviors overall, as well as continued evaluation of this professional development model and using school‐based coaches.     

人工智能赋能课堂教学评价改革与技术实现的框架构建

作为强大技术推动力的人工智能正引发着一场技术革命,推动社会步入智能时代。开展人工智能下的课堂教学评价,能够辅助智慧评价的高效开展、关注情感信息的动态变化、还原真实课堂的精准采集、实现师生成长的轨迹追踪。通过对象层、数据层、技术层和应用层四个层面的系统架构,搭建人工智能下课堂教学评价的实践路径,指向课堂语言分析、课堂行为分析、课堂情感分析与课堂教学评价体系四大应用场景。未来人工智能下课堂教学评价的深度发展与广泛应用还需探索专业化的评价指标构建、加强个性化的教师行为反馈、着眼发展性的未来教育挑战。     

The impact of peer collaboration on teachers’ practical knowledge

Due to changes in Dutch mathematics education, teachers are expected to use new teaching methods such as enquiry-based teaching. In this study, we investigate how teachers design, implement and evaluate new methods for statistics teaching for 7^th-graders during a professional development trajectory based on peer collaboration. We monitored teachers’ development in a network of four mathematics teachers from the same school. By using a mixed-methods approach in which we combined data from interviews, concept maps and classroom observations, we describe changes in teachers’ practical knowledge. We found how the nature of these changes highly depends on teachers’ personal concerns that emerge during the trajectory. Some teachers considered their concerns as challenges stimulating their learning, while other teachers experienced their concerns as a reason to fall back to previous teaching methods. Based on our results, we give some recommendations for organising teacher networks.     

论教师专业发展之同行互助听课

同伴互助听课是建立在听课基础上的又不等同于传统听课的活动,它是以教师专业发展为目的的听课。对教师专业发展具有重要的促进作用。在教师专业发展视野下的同伴互助听课的实施应从听课的计划与准备、课堂听课、信息反馈及重构教学理念四个基本环节出发,实现教师之间的合作与经验的共享,加强反思来创新教育理念,精练教学技能,促进专业成长,提高教学水平。     

课堂教学自我诊断:教师专业发展的核心能力

课堂教学自我诊断是教师通过对自己课堂教学过程中诸要素的"诊视"与"判断",发现并总结经验,分析存在的问题并提出改进措施的一种方法和技能,诊断视角为人际关系、学习目标、学习内容、学习方法、学习环境、学习反馈等。课堂教学自我诊断,是教师专业化发展过程中必须具有的自我审视与自我完善的能力,也是教师专业核心能力,却是当前教师专业化发展的一个"短板"。只有提高教师课堂教学自我诊断能力,才能切实提高教师的教育教学能力、教学科研能力、自我反思能力、创新学习能力,从而提升教师专业能力,有效促进教师的专业化成长。     

Videotaping: A tool for enhancing the teacher’s understanding of cognitive science and teacher self-development

Follow-up research is required to investigate the effects of our beginning teacher preparation programs for secondary science teachers on classroom performance, student achievement, and higher order mental functioning of classroom teachers. Nevertheless, preliminary indications from working with students during the last several years show many encouraging outcomes among beginning teachers, including: increased knowledge of cognitive science, especially applications in instruction and learning; development of more analytical, self-directed classroom behavior; and enhanced capability of utilizing and powerful tool of video-taping for professional self-improvment.     

Technology enhanced feedback tools as a knowledge management mechanism for supporting professional growth and school reform

Attempts at school reform and improvement have experienced difficulty creating and implementing feedback systems that energize and sustain change efforts. If the call for reform at all levels of education is to be met, attention must be given to establishing effective feedback mechanisms in educational institutions as they embark on improvement efforts. The purpose of this article is to describe application of an educational design metaphor to create a Knowledge Management System that provides teachers with timely and constructive feedback about their professional practice. This system includes the way in which a corpus of professional knowledge about differentiated content and instruction, classroom grouping, evidence-based practice and classroom management can be embedded in a set of tools that provides multiple stakeholders (teachers, students, administrators) the opportunity to generate feedback about instructional practice. Use of the approach is discussed within the broader context of Knowledge Management as a vehicle to extend the role of feedback in school reform and improvement within a long term pilot application in one school.     

Types and frequencies of feedback interventions in classroom interaction in secondary education

Contributing to the growing amount of literature on learning–enhancing feedback, this article attempts to distinguish between progress feedback and discrepancy feedback. Building on relevant literature drawn from psychology, we propose the use of a ratio of 3:1, positive:negative feedback. We analyzed contiguous 10 min blocks of classroom interactions from 78 teachers. Findings indicate that teachers seldom provide the types of feedback interventions identified as effective in enhancing learning in the course of typical classroom interactions. We examine potential explanations for this, discuss the consequences of this finding on teacher education and professional development, and offer several opportunities for future research.     

Teacher Enactment Patterns: How Can We Help Move All Teachers to Reform-Based Inquiry Practice Through Professional Development?

The purpose of this study was to investigate high school teachers’ beliefs about inquiry instruction and determine how their beliefs influenced their use of inquiry after a professional development program. Thirty-six high school science teachers participated in this study. The professional development program consisted of a 2-week summer institute as well as academic year support. The summer program included discipline-specific content lessons that utilized inquiry-based instruction, pedagogical practice involving the use of a summer high school enrichment program, and reflection on this practice-teaching in content area groups. Both in-depth qualitative interview and written reflection data were collected as well as data from the teachers’ classroom implementation of inquiry. Based on the analysis of the teachers’ interviews and classroom enactments, the teachers were placed into four enactment categories: Integrated, Emerging, Laboratory-based, and Activity-focused. We used Windschitl’s (Rev Educ Res 72(2):131–175, 2002) four constructivist dilemmas as a framework to understand the teachers’ enactments. We describe the teachers’ beliefs and practices in each enactment category as well as the components of the professional development model that were important to making changes in the teachers’ practices. In the conclusion, we connect the enactment levels to the professional development experience and suggest future directions for professional developers to move teachers toward more integrated inquiry practices.     

Scaffolding Science Teachers in Open‐inquiry Teaching

The present study deals with a school‐based professional development trajectory for secondary science teachers, aiming at scaffolding teachers in open‐inquiry teaching for the topic of water quality. Its design was based on the leading principle of ‘guiding by scaffolding’. Seven experienced teachers participated in institutional meetings and teaching at school. The research focused on designing scaffolding tools, addressing these tools in the meetings, and implementing them in the classroom. The main research data were obtained from meetings, classroom discussions, and observations. The results indicated that the professional development trajectory has promoted teachers’ learning of scaffolding students in open inquiry, especially the ability to know when and how to give students a well‐balanced combination of ‘structure’ for open‐inquiry learning and sufficient ‘space’ for that. The implications for science teacher education are discussed.     

Better serving the needs of limited English proficient (LEP) students in the mainstream classroom: examining the impact of an inquiry‐based hybrid professional development program

In this study, the authors examine the impact of an English as a second language (ESL) professional development offering designed to meet this challenge: the Modular Design for English Language Learners (MODELL) instruction program. The authors were part of a team of faculty that designed and developed this hybrid professional development program to support classroom teachers challenged with assessing and addressing the educational needs of limited English proficient (LEP) students. The authors theorize that observing and describing the trajectory and complexities of the professional development process might offer significant insights for teacher educators regarding ways to prepare teachers for working in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. What was discovered through this study was that the teachers learned a lot about themselves and what they were capable of doing in the classroom; they learned that their peers struggled with similar issues and that out of this camaraderie, a solid support network could be established; and they learned that the multicultural classroom environment could be an asset to teaching and learning.     

Developing Summarization Skills through the Use of LSA-Based Feedback

This paper describes a series of classroom trials during which we developed Summary Street, an educational software system that uses Latent Semantic Analysis to support writing and revision activities. Summary Street provides various kinds of feedback, primarily about whether a student summary adequately covers important source content and fulfills other requirements, such as length. The feedback allows students to engage in extensive, independent practice in writing and revising without placing excessive demands on teachers for feedback. We first discuss the underlying educational rationale, then present some results of the trials conducted with the system. We describe the collaborative process among researchers and teachers which enabled the development of a viable and supportive educational tool and its integration into classroom instruction.     

The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching,Instruction, and Student Achievement

In this paper, we describe findings from a three-year evaluation of a well-developed mathematics professional development program that is commercially available on a wide scale. The professional development is designed to improve teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and to enable them to elicit more student thinking and reasoning during mathematics lessons. Specifically, it focused on helping teachers (a) learn more mathematics, (b) understand how children learn math, (c) use formative assessment to develop insight into what specific students know and do not know, and (d) develop effective classroom instructional strategies that enable student problem solving. Participants included 105 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers teaching in 19 low-income schools within a single district. Teachers were randomly assigned within schools either to a “business as usual” control group or to receive the professional development. The training consisted of a week-long summer institute and four to six in-service days during the school year. The training was run by full-time trained associates. We find some limited evidence of positive impacts on teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, but no effects on instructional practice or student outcomes.     

Using student feedback to improve teaching

Gathering student feedback on teaching practice is commonly used in educational settings as an improvement tool and performance measure. Typically this feedback is collected using rating style surveys when a subject concludes; however, whether this practice improves the quality of teaching requires further research. This study was designed using an action research methodology to investigate the impact of student feedback on teacher practices in a secondary setting. Specifically, the efficacy of an ongoing, collaborative feedback model in which teachers collected student feedback regularly, were guided in reflecting on the data, and were supported through professional development to improve their practices was explored. Results supported student feedback as a valuable improvement tool, and powerful stimulus for teacher reflection. Student feedback informed teachers on the effectiveness of their practice and identified areas for future professional learning. Additionally, it opened up a dialogue around teaching and learning in the classroom, and gave the teachers insights into the unique challenges experienced by their students.     

透视小学低年级新教师课堂管理困惑

刚步入工作岗位的新教师在课堂管理方面存在许多困惑,影响了其专业化发展。本文运用访谈法,以低年级课堂新教师为研究对象,调查其对课堂问题行为的理解及处理方式,并在此基础上进行反思,从政府、学校和新教师自身专业化发展三个角度提出建议。     

Teachers’ use of research evidence in practice: a pilot study of feedback to enhance learning

Background: There is worldwide interest in improving the effectiveness of teachers and teaching. This paper considers two strands of that interest. It revisits the impact of using enhanced feedback from teachers to pupils as a way of improving attainment, and it looks at the feasibility of teachers using research evidence to create their own interventions. Current evidence on the causal impact of effective feedback on learning is unclear: many studies have mixed results, are small in scale, lack randomisation or are not conducted in real classroom conditions. Purpose: The aim of this paper is to describe the experience of schools as they engage with research evidence to support their own enquiry into the effectiveness of feedback in the classroom. Research design: This study took place over one academic year, involving nine treatment schools in one local authority. The study involved teachers themselves using research findings to create an intervention, which took, as its focus, enhanced feedback in the classroom. Test results from these schools were compared to the results in 5 participating comparator schools, to the 49 other schools in the borough and to all state-funded primary schools in England. Results: Although teachers showed that they could engage with research evidence, the study indicated that the process was complex in practice. In addition, the independent impact evaluation suggested that enhanced feedback in itself does not necessarily lead to improved pupil test performance. Discussion and conclusions: The paper considers some of the challenges faced by teachers as they attempted to use research evidence, and discusses implications for schools wishing to use research evidence in practice. The findings of the study suggest that it may be feasible for practitioners to use research evidence to inform their own practice. However, to do it well would require clearer guidance, professional development and modelling of any strategies suggested. These findings have implications for policy on teacher development, and for the research community to make research outputs more comprehensible and accessible to research users.     

The “least intrusive intervention” strategy for behavior change procedures: The use of public and private feedback in school classrooms

Many classroom behavior modification procedures have failed to be adopted by practicing classroom teachers because the procedures are overly intrusive into the regular classroom routine. A strategy for teachers and consultants which moves from less to more intrusive interventions is described and demonstrated with a case example. Private feedback was ineffective in reducing a child's inappropriate behavior, but the introduction of public feedback resulted in a decrease in inappropriate behavior to below the class average. Attitudinal measures of the teacher's evaluation of the child and his selfevaluation were related to the child's behavior during the public feedback procedure.     

Noticing and weighing alternatives in the reflection of regular classroom teaching: Evidence of expertise using mobile eye-tracking

Instructional videos are widely used to study teachers’ professional vision. A new technological development in video research is mobile eye-tracking (MET). It has the potential to provide fine-grained insights into teachers’ professional vision in action, but has yet been scarcely employed. We addressed this research gap by using MET video feedback to examine how expert and novice teachers differed in their noticing and weighing of alternative teaching strategies. Expert and novice teachers’ lessons were recorded with MET devices. Then, they commented on what they observe while watching their own teaching videos. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that expert and novice teachers did not differ in the number of classroom events they noticed and alternative teaching strategies they mentioned. However, novice teachers were more critical of their own teaching than expert teachers, particularly when they considered alternative teaching strategies. Practical implications for the field of teacher education are discussed.

     

提高小学教师解决学生课堂问题行为能力的个案研究

采用个案研究法,以一所小学的4位教师为研究对象,深入实践,通过3个月中的12次活动探索提高教师解决学生课堂问题行为能力的途径和方法。结果发现,通过12次活动,教师的课堂洞察力得到提高,学会了从多个角度,尤其是从教师自身的角度来寻找学生课堂问题行为产生的原因。教师解决学生课堂问题行为的能力得以提升,学生的行为发生了转变。教师认为课堂观察与专业引领下的反思相结合是最有效的专业学习方式。研究者还提出了对教师教育的有关建议。