Design teacher PD on differentiation to connect to daily practice, include active learning and collaboration, and sustain implementation through coaches and principals¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (3 for, 1 against) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article's PD programme operationalised characteristics of effective teacher PD from a literature review by Borko, Jacobs, and Koellner (2010): connect to daily teaching practice and focus on students' learning, include models of preferred instructional practice, offer opportunities for active teacher learning, stimulate collaboration and exchange between teachers, offer multiple contexts including classroom practice, and be long-term, intensive and sustainable. Sustainability was supported by training internal project coaches as change leaders who continued coaching after the PD ended, and by principals writing school-level plans for continued implementation.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Long-term, intensive design (ten three-hour team meetings across a schoolyear)
• Internal project coaches trained in additional meetings
• Active principal involvement and administrative support

Constraints¶

• On the continuum from highly specified to highly adaptive approaches to PD, the programme sought a balance, with the cycle of differentiation as common core and school-specific focus chosen in consultation

Target Learners¶

• Primary school mathematics teachers

Target Learning Goals¶

• Implementing differentiated mathematics instruction
• Sustained implementation of differentiation after PD ends

Affordances¶

• Cycle Of Differentiation Grow

Claims¶

• In Year 2, the PD programme showed neither short-term effects for newly trained teachers nor long-term effects for previously trained teachers [-W]
• Teacher PD on differentiated instruction produced a small significant positive effect on mathematics achievement growth in Year 1 (β = 0.15, p = .007) [+W]
• The Year 1 PD effect on achievement growth was similar for low-, average- and high-achieving students, with no evidence of differential effects [+W]
• Teachers evaluated the PD moderately positively, and about three-quarters reported actually using what they learned in their mathematics lessons [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Shift the locus of professional learning to school sites and classrooms, connected to teachers' everyday practice
• Provide various forms of follow-up to sustain new practices learned in PD
• Design professional development that is intensive, on-site, peer-based, responsive, and grounded in teachers' real classroom experiences

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Prast, E. J., Van de Weijer-Bergsma, E., Kroesbergen, E. H., & Van Luit, J. E. H. (2018). Differentiated instruction in primary mathematics: Effects of teacher professional development on student achievement. Learning and Instruction, 54, 22-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2018.01.009