Program Announcement: Teacher Quality CFDA 84.324A

Program Officer:
Dr. Robert Ochsendorf
Robert.Ochsendorf@ed.gov
(202) 219-2234

Purpose

The purpose of the Institute's Teacher Quality Research (Teacher Quality) program is to identify effective strategies for improving the performance of current teachers and other instructional personnel in ways that increase reading, writing, language, mathematics, science, or secondary transitional outcomes for students with disabilities from kindergarten through Grade 12. The Institute intends for the Teacher Quality research program to fulfill five goals: (1) exploring the relations between malleable factors¹ (e.g., practices of teachers and other instructional personnel; professional development experiences) and student outcomes, as well as mediators or moderators of the relations between these factors and student outcomes, for the purpose of identifying potential targets of intervention; (2) developing innovative programs and practices for professional development of teachers and/or other instructional personnel that are intended to improve instructional practices and through them student outcomes; (3) evaluating the efficacy of fully-developed programs and practices for professional development of teachers and/or other instructional personnel; (4) evaluating the effectiveness of programs and practices for professional development of teachers and/or other instructional personnel that are implemented at scale and intended for improving instructional practices and through them student outcomes; and (5) developing and validating new assessments of teacher quality for current classroom teachers or other instructional personnel, or validating existing assessments for teachers or other instructional personnel at any grade level from kindergarten through grade 12 against measures of student outcomes.

Long-term outcomes of the Teacher Quality program will be an array of tools and strategies (e.g., in-service programs, teacher supports, assessments) that have been demonstrated to be effective for improving and assessing performance of teachers and other instructional personnel in ways that are linked to improvements in student outcomes.

By "professional development," the Institute refers to in-service training and supports (e.g., information resources) for current personnel. By "teachers and other instructional personnel," the Institute refers to special education teachers, general education teachers, paraprofessionals, teacher consultants and specialists, and other personnel involved in the instruction of students with disabilities. Personnel involved in providing related services are not included under the Teacher Quality topic but can be included under the Related Services research topic.

Background

One approach to improving student outcomes is to identify effective curricula and instructional approaches; a second approach is to improve the knowledge and skills of teachers and other instructional personnel. This second approach is the approach taken by the Institute's Teacher Quality research program. Through this program, the Institute intends to improve the quality of teaching through development and evaluation of professional development programs for special education teachers as well as general education teachers and others who instruct students with disabilities. Those interested in improving teacher quality through systemic practices and polices (e.g., alternative certification, incentives for recruiting and retaining highly qualified special education teachers) should refer to the topic on Special Education Policy, Finance, and Systems.

Most students with disabilities (96%) are educated in school buildings attended by their peers without disabilities, and almost half of all students with disabilities (47%) are educated in the general education classroom for most of the school day (U.S. Department of Education, 2005). Thus, general and special educators share educational responsibilities for students with disabilities. In a survey conducted in 2000, only 32 percent of the public school teachers who taught students with disabilities indicated that they were very well prepared to address the needs of these students. Of the teachers surveyed, 49 percent had received professional development during the previous year on addressing the needs of students with disabilities, and 53 percent of the teachers who received this training said it improved their teaching moderately or a lot (Parsad, Lewis, & Farris, 2001).

In addition to general and special education teachers, a variety of other personnel may have responsibility for providing instruction to students with disabilities. These personnel include paraprofessionals, instructional aides, remedial teachers, one-on-one aides, student job coaches and behavior coaches, media and technology specialists, and other personnel. Through the Teacher Quality program, the Institute supports research to develop or evaluate professional development programs for teachers and other instructional personnel who instruct students with high- or low-incidence disabilities. For example, an applicant might propose to develop an in-service training program designed to improve the ability of special educators to assess and monitor skill levels of learners with visual impairments, using a progress monitoring system, and to provide special educators with guidance on using specific instructional strategies depending on the student's progress in acquiring knowledge and skills as tracked through the progress monitoring system.

Research on teacher professional development interventions should consider both the content of the programs (i.e., what is it that personnel are expected to learn) as well as the delivery of the content (e.g., coaches, online resources, workshops). Although many experts believe that most current professional development offerings are not effective for improving instructional practice and student outcomes, very little research exists that allows for clear causal interpretations of the effect of specific professional development programs or for knowing which elements of professional development programs (e.g., coaching) are critical or relatively more important than others. The Institute encourages researchers to test different delivery modes using a curriculum or instructional approach that has already been shown to be effective for improving student outcomes.

In addition to research on the development and evaluation of professional development programs, the Teacher Quality program supports research on the development of practical assessments of subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and instructional skills — such as measures that might be used for teacher certification purposes or by school administrators to provide feedback to teachers and improve the quality of classroom instruction — and validation of these assessments (or existing assessments) against measures of student outcomes. Ideally, assessments of pedagogical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, and instructional skills would not only be highly correlated with student outcomes, but also be practical to administer and cost-effective. The Institute is interested in proposals to develop and validate new assessments, as well as proposals to validate existing assessments of pedagogical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, and instructional skills against measures of student learning and achievement.

The Institute also encourages researchers to explore the relations between malleable factors (e.g., teachers' skills or knowledge, professional development experiences) and student outcomes, as well as mediators or moderators of the relations between these factors and student outcomes, for the purpose of identifying potential targets for intervention. This is translational research intended to inform development of innovative programs, practices, or products to improve outcomes for children with disabilities. By way of illustration, researchers might propose to collect detailed, quantifiable measures of teacher practices (e.g., types of instruction, frequency, duration, under what circumstances) and professional development experiences, and then use these data in conjunction with children's ability levels to predict subsequent child outcomes. The objective here is to identify the specific practices and strategies that teachers use that are associated with the most positive student outcomes and to describe the conditions under which they are acquired and used. Researchers who can successfully identify strong correlates of student performance can use this information as the basis for developing a professional development intervention.

References

Parsad, B., Lewis, L., & Farris, E. (2001). Teacher Preparation and Professional Development: 2000 (NCES 2001-088). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Office of Special Education Programs, 27th Annual (2005) Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, vol. 1, Washington, D.C., 2007.