Despite wave after wave of educational reform in the United States our students continue to lag behind their peers in other industrialized countries on virtually all measures of academic achievement. Effective professional development (PD) is seen as a key to improving instructional practice and therefore student learning, but traditional forms of…

Adapting support contingently to student needs by first diagnosing their current understanding, that is, scaffolding, is considered a key aspect of excellent teaching. The use of classroom scaffolding is rare, however. We therefore investigated the benefits to teachers of a professional development program that was based upon a model of contingent…

This report provides the results of a comprehensive 4-year study of a statewide instructional improvement effort in Maryland; presents the characteristics of successful staff development for each of four implementation strategies (active teaching, mastery learning, student team learning, and teaching variables); and identifies the relationships…