Background: Numerous studies show that active and engaging classrooms help students learn and persist in college, but adoption of new teaching practices has been slow. Professional development programs encourage instructors to implement new teaching methods and change the status quo in STEM undergraduate teaching, and structured observations of…

This brief research report examines the discursive shifts of a secondary mathematics teacher participating in a collaborative learning community centered on culturally responsive mathematics teaching. We draw on two frameworks to analyze the teacher's discursive moves. The first framework comes from Lefstein et al. (2020) on generative discourse…

Articulations of effective teacher professional development (PD) consistently foreground a focus on curriculum content and how best to teach it. Consequently, when teachers work together on pedagogy they typically work with colleagues who have similar specialisations, focusing on a specific subject or part of the curriculum. Arguably, however,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine what teachers notice in their own enactment of eight high leverage practices as well as the patterns of interactions between the teachers and their peers when participating in video-based lesson study. Design/methodology/approach: Each teacher taught and uploaded video from one lesson to a platform,…

We compared 236 geoscience instructors' histories of professional development (PD) participation with classroom observations using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) that describe undergraduate classes as Student-Centered (score [greater than or equal to] 50), Transitional (score 31-49) or Teacher-Centered (score [less than or equal…

Research over the last 15 years has reported that for professional development to be effective, in terms of changing teachers' knowledge and/or instructional strategies, it needs to be conducted taking into consideration the following factors: teachers' existing knowledge, experience and attitudes towards the professional development, school…

A core motivation for the widespread teacher evaluation reforms of the past decade was the belief that these new systems would promote teacher development through high-quality feedback. We examine this theory by studying teachers' perceptions of evaluation feedback in Boston Public Schools and evaluating the district's efforts to improve feedback…

A core motivation for the widespread teacher evaluation reforms of the last decade was the belief that these new systems would promote teacher development through high-quality feedback. We examine this theory by studying teachers' perceptions of evaluation feedback in Boston Public Schools and evaluating the district's efforts to improve feedback…

This study seeks to contribute to the research on mentored induction by investigating the practices mentors employ in their work with new teachers in two high-need, high-poverty urban elementary schools. Informed by Schwille's (2008) temporal framework of "educative" mentoring practices occurring "inside" and…

Why aren't more schools seeing significant improvement in students' reading ability when they implement Response to Intervention (RTI) or Multitiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in their literacy programs? These frameworks serve as a way for educators to identify struggling readers and provide the small-group instruction they need to improve their…

Superintendents of low income rural school district are challenged to close the achievement gap, specifically the disparity between classrooms. This study took the angle of looking at Equitable Classroom Practices and levels of rigor from classroom to classroom. The reasoning stems from the use of Job Embedded Professional Development for…

Teacher coaching is a powerful form of professional learning that improves teaching practices and student achievement, yet little is known about the specific aspects of coaching programs that are more effective. Researchers used a blocked randomized experiment to study the effects of one-to-one coaching on teacher practice. When pooled across all…

In this article the authors share their experience of Teacher Lab, a job-embedded form of professional learning that has been a critical addition to professional learning practice for nearly a decade in the Avondale School District in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Using a full-day released time format, Teacher Lab combines preobservation dialogue and…

This research aimed to assess three case studies of in-service science teachers regarding their practices of socio-scientific issue (SSI)-based teaching as they participated in a specially developed professional development (PD) program. Data were collected throughout the PD program from group discussions, observations, interviews, and the review…

The use of mentoring group conversations as a tool to support pre-service teachers' professional development has become more common. However, there is still a lack of research that shows how conversations are used to develop knowledge. The present paper is based on ethnographical observations of mentoring group conversations, and describes how…