Project Activities
Research question
- What was the average impact on (a) teachers' content knowledge, (b) teachers' classroom practices, and (c) student achievement of offering a specialized professional development intervention (in this case, Intel Math, Mathematics Learning Communities, and Video Feedback Cycles) relative to "business-as-usual" professional development?
- How was the professional development intervention implemented?
Structured Abstract
Design
Approximately 200 volunteer fourth-grade math teachers from 6 districts around the country participated in this randomized controlled trial. Within each participating school, fourth-grade teachers were randomly assigned to receive either the PD intervention or business-as-usual PD.
The Intel Math component consisted of 80 instructional hours during the summer, covering K-8 math topics aligned with the common core state standards. About 90 percent of the course was focused on content, while 10 percent was focused on pedagogy. The MLC component consisted of 10 instructional hours split into 5 interactive sessions throughout the fall, and involved activities such as analyzing student work to help teachers integrate content learned from Intel Math into the classroom. The VFC component consisted of 3 instructional hours split into 3 1-on-1 sessions throughout the fall, and involved practicing the delivery of three different lessons and receiving content-based feedback on the quality of instruction using expert coders and math coaches to help integrate content learned from Intel Math and MLCs into the classroom.
Tests of math content knowledge were administered to all study teachers in the summer (as baseline), fall (after Intel but prior to MLCs and VFCs), and spring (after the entire intervention had been delivered). Extant state math assessment data for these teachers' students were collected from districts for the pre and post study periods. In addition, study teachers were observed using the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI) classroom observation protocol once in the fall (after Intel but prior to MLCs and VFCs) and twice in the spring (after the entire intervention had been delivered). These data collection activities helped inform the study's first research question. Additional teacher survey data and data collected by the implementation team helped inform the second question.
Key findings
On the Math PD Program:
- The PD had a positive impact on teacher knowledge. Average scores on a study-administered math test were 21 percentile points higher for teachers who received the study PD than for those who did not.
- The PD had a positive impact on some aspects of instruction. Average ratings of teachers' use and quality of math explanations in the classroom were 23 percentile points higher for teachers who received the study PD than for those who did not.
- The PD did not have a positive impact on student achievement. Students of teachers who received the PD scored, on average, 2 percentile points lower than control teachers' students on both a study-administered math test and state assessment. In general, this difference was not statistically significant.
On Three Content-Focused PD Programs Tested Across Three IES Evaluations:
- The PD improved teachers' knowledge and some aspects of their practice.
- Improving teachers' knowledge and practice did not lead to positive impacts on student achievement.
- Most of the measured aspects of teachers' knowledge and practice were not correlated with student achievement.
- The consistent pattern of findings suggests that future studies might seek to better understand on what aspects of teacher knowledge and practice PD should focus, and how PD can achieve a larger impact on knowledge and practice that also impacts student achievement.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
A report, titled Focusing on Mathematical Knowledge: The Impact of Content-Intensive Teacher Professional Development, along with a video recap and study snapshot of findings, was released in September 2016.
Other publications from this study are listed below.
Briefs
- Does Content-Focused Teacher Professional Development Work? Findings from Three Institute of Education Sciences Studies A brief synthesizing findings from this study and two prior IES studies of teacher professional development in middle school mathematics and elementary school reading (November 2016)
Blog Posts
- Why We Still Can Learn from Evaluations that Find No Effects (November 2016)
A restricted-use file containing de-identified data is available for the purposes of replicating study findings and secondary analysis.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
