Development of a Validated Self-Report Instrument for Measuring the Classroom Impact of Student-Centered Professional Development for College Instructors

如果专业发展服务的设计有关于它是否有效以及如何发挥作用的良好评估证据，那么扩大大学辅导员专业发展范围的努力将更加成功。虽然提高学生的学习水平是高校辅导员专业发展的最终目标，但直接测量学生的成绩作为一种评估手段是困难和昂贵的。此外，在教师参与和可以检测到对学生结果的明显影响之间往往有很长一段时间的滞后。该项目正在开发一种更有效和更快速的方法来评价专业发展的有效性，特别是确定教员是否以及如何因参与而改变他们的教学。它致力于构建和验证一份自我报告调查工具，该工具可以用来调查大学数学教师专业发展的初始课堂影响，特别是他们在使用课堂时间和选择教学活动方面的变化。PI小组意识到自我报告的调查答复中可能存在偏见的来源，并专注于开发一种尽可能不受提供有偏见答复的激励因素影响的工具。课堂观察正在与来自多个地点的调查数据进行比较，以确定自我报告在什么条件下准确地探查专业发展导致的教学实践的变化。目标是一种经过验证的调查工具，它将提供一种通用且廉价的工具，用于衡量专业发展在数学领域以及最终在科学领域的影响。

Efforts to broaden the reach of college instructor professional development will be more successful if the design of professional development services is informed by good evaluation evidence about whether and how it is working. While improving student learning is the ultimate goal of college level instructor professional development, measuring student outcomes directly is difficult and expensive as a means of evaluation. Moreover, there is often a long time lag between instructor participation and when a discernible impact on student outcomes can be detected. This project is developing a more efficient and rapid way to evaluate the effectiveness of professional development and in particular to determine whether and how the instructors are changing their instruction as a result of participation. It is engaged in constructing and validating a self-report survey instrument that can be used to probe the initial classroom impact of professional development of college mathematics instructors, especially shifts in their use of class time and choice of instructional activities. The PI team is aware of sources of potential bias in self-reported survey responses and is focused on developing an instrument that is as free as possible from incentives to provide biased responses. Classroom observations are being compared with survey data from multiple sites to determine the conditions under which self-report accurately probes shifts in instructional practice that result from professional development. The goal is a validated survey instrument that will offer a general and inexpensive tool for measuring the impact of professional development in mathematics and, eventually, in science as well.