Structured Abstract
Setting
The study participants will be high school life science teachers and their students in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania region, from either a large urban school district serving a mainly minority student population, a suburban school district, or a disadvantaged rural school district. All of the districts will be implementing reform-based pedagogies.
Sample
The student populations will represent the typical racial, ethnic, and income diversity of student populations in each of the three types of districts chosen.
Intervention
The study will focus on a professional development program that covers several months of high school life science instruction in three different domains: (1) genomics and bioethics, (2) biotechnology and bio-informatics, and (3) microbiology/infectious diseases. The emphasis of the program will be on teachers' content knowledge, teachers' pedagogical knowledge, and teachers' application of pedagogies (pedagogic content knowledge). Hands-on inquiry tools and laboratory materials will be provided. The intervention involves summer academies, follow-up mentoring, and peer feedback.
Research design and methods
Three groups of teachers will participate in this study: the full treatment group, the delayed-treatment group, and a comparison group. The primary comparison in this study is between two groups of teachers who volunteer to participate in the professional development. These 60 volunteer teachers will be randomly assigned to either the treatment group or to the delayed-treatment/control group. Within each group, there will be 10 teachers from a large urban school district, 10 teachers from a suburban school district, and 10 teachers from a disadvantaged rural school district. In phase 1, the treatment group will receive the beginning-level professional development and will be compared to the delayed-treatment/control group (random assignment comparison between beginning-level professional development and business-as-usual professional development). In phase 2, the treatment group will receive the advanced-level professional development and will be compared to the delayed-treatment/control group that will receive the beginning-level training. In phase 3, the treatment group will move to mentor-level training and will be compared to the delayed-treatment/control group that will receive the advanced-level training. Participating teachers will receive monetary incentives and professional development credit hours.
Control condition
In phase 1, the delayed-treatment group teachers will receive whatever professional development their schools typically provide. In phases 1–3, the non-treatment, quasi-experimental comparison group teachers will receive whatever professional development their schools typically provide.
Key measures
A combination of standardized national, state, and local instruments adapted from other studies and instruments developed for this project will be used to measure teacher, classroom, and student variables.
Data analytic strategy
Pre- and post-test scores for teacher content, pedagogic, and pedagogic-content knowledge and skills as well as for student achievement scores will be compared using standard statistical procedures. The qualitative information will be quantified where possible and analyzed using qualitative research techniques.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
** This project was submitted to and funded under Teacher Quality: Mathematics and Science Education in FY 2005.
Supplemental information
A randomly selected sample of 5 teachers from each of the student population groups (rural, suburban, urban) each year will provide performance data on their students (15 teachers per year for 375 students per year, or approximately 750 students in all). One-third of the teachers will be chosen for more in-depth study. Classroom observation, survey, and interview data will be collected on how teacher expertise develops from beginner to mentor levels. In addition to the primary comparison between the randomly assigned treatment and delayed-treatment groups, the investigators will compare a non-treatment comparison group of thirty life-science teachers (not randomly assigned), serving similar student populations to the treatment and delayed-treatment groups throughout the three years of the study. Five comparison group teachers will provide student data for each of 3 years (about 25 students per teacher for each year). Similar monetary incentives will be provided for these teachers. Comparison group teachers will be able to participate in the summer academies at the end of phase 3.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
