Optimizing the Impact of Online Professional Development for K-12 Teachers (Resubmission)

K-12教育的许多变化增加了对教师有效专业发展的迫切需求。这些变化包括新的标准；新的课程和评估；学生人口统计的变化；教室技术的进步；合格教师的日益短缺。为了满足这一需求，许多教育组织正在转向基于网络的在线专业发展，它可以为教师提供灵活的日程安排和访问资源、导师和同行的途径，否则无法获得这些资源、导师和同行。大量研究使我们能够在面对面的环境中定义有效的专业发展原则，一些研究表明，在线课程在大学和高中水平可以有效。然而，关于在线专业发展的有效性的研究很少，在线专业发展的目标是影响K-12教师的教学知识和课堂实践。这项拟议的项目将通过解决以下三个主要问题，开始建立一个关于在线专业发展的坚实研究基础：1.在线专业发展的替代模式、面对面模式以及两者相结合的混合模式对教师的教学知识和教学实践的比较影响是什么？2.不同的在线专业发展模式下，参与者之间以及参与者和研讨会负责人之间的互动类型有何不同，这些差异是否与参与者的满意度、知识获取、在线专业发展对教师的教学知识和教学实践的影响最大的因素是什么？为了解决这些问题，该项目将开发和实施一系列对比专业发展研讨会，包括几种在线模式，将一些面对面的会议整合到在线研讨会环境中的混合模式，以及更传统的现场研讨会模式。工作坊将集中于从中学数学课程中选择的主题，旨在加深参与者对数学的理解，并增强他们教授这一内容的方法。在每个内容领域，参与者的目标、学习活动、教学方法和时间要求将在不同的工作坊模型中尽可能保持一致。研究将采用多种方法，包括在教学任务的背景下评估参与者的内容知识、参与者调查和访谈、对教案和学生工作的分析、课堂观察、学生调查和语篇分析。研究结果将为教育政策制定者、学校和地区行政人员、专业发展提供者、教师培训计划的教职员工和教师以及研究社区提供信息。

Many changes in K-12 education have created an increased and critical need for effectiveprofessional development for teachers. These changes include new standards; newcurriculum and assessments; changes in student demographics; advances in classroomtechnology; and a growing shortage of qualified teachers. To address this need, manyeducational organizations are turning to web-based, online professional development,which can provide teachers with flexible scheduling and access to resources, mentors,and peers that would not be available otherwise.A significant body of research enables us to define principles of effective professionaldevelopment in face-to-face settings, and some research is available showing that onlinecourses can be effective at the college and high school levels. However, very littleresearch is available about the effectiveness of online professional development in whichthe goals are to impact both the content knowledge and the classroom practices of K-12teachers. The proposed project will begin to establish a solid research base about onlineprofessional development by addressing three major questions, which fall under ROLEProgram Quadrant III, Research on STEM Learning in Education Settings:1. What is the comparative impact on teachers' content knowledge and instructionalpractices of alternative models of online professional development, face-to-facemodels, and hybrid models that combine the two?2. How do the types of interactions among participants and between participants andworkshop leaders differ across different online professional development models, andare these differences related to participants' satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, andchanges in practice?3. What are the factors that maximize the impact of online professional development onteachers' content knowledge and instructional practices?To address these questions, the project will develop and implement a series of contrastiveprofessional development workshops, including several online models, hybrid modelsthat integrate some face-to-face meetings into the context of online workshops, and amore traditional onsite workshop model. The workshops will focus on topics selectedfrom the middle school mathematics curriculum, and seek to both deepen participants'understanding of the mathematics and enhance their approaches to teaching this content.Within each content area, the goals, learning activities, teaching approach, and timerequirements for participants will be held as constant as possible across workshopmodels. Multiple measures, including assessments of participants' content knowledgewithin the context of teaching tasks, participant surveys and interviews, analyses oflesson plans and student work, classroom observations, student surveys, and discourseanalyses will be employed to address the three main research questions.The results will inform educational policy makers, school and district administrators,professional development providers, faculty in teacher preparation programs, andteachers, as well as the research community.