Synchronous Online Professional Learning Experiences for Middle Grades Mathematics Teachers in Rural Contexts

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All teachers need access to high quality professional development in order to meet the needs of students and teach mathematics as outlined in college and career-ready standards. Online professional development has the potential to expand access to under-resourced areas, including urban districts, and teachers who wish to participate in communities of inquiry but do not have local access to such communities. Building on research on effective face-to-face professional development, including research from the emerging fields of content-focused coaching and video coaching, this project will design and study professional development for middle grades mathematics teachers in rural communities. As schools turn to digital learning contexts, it is inevitable that professional development will follow a similar trend. It is imperative to have research-based models that demonstrate how the features of high-quality face-to-face professional development can be matched or augmented in online contexts. The study has the potential to contribute to research on professional development, especially in the growing areas of online professional development and coaching, and will build from and contribute to the literature on the impact of multiple modalities and synchronicities in online contexts. The project will address the critical need for models of professional development for teachers in rural areas, which has a limited research base. This project is funded by the Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) Program. The DRK-12 program supports research and development on STEM education innovations and approaches to teaching, learning, and assessment. The project will develop and implement an innovative online mathematics professional development model designed to provide growth opportunities for teachers in rural districts who normally lack access to such opportunities. The study will take place in two geographically disparate locations in order to research the effectiveness of the model across contexts and to explore the resources and constraints involved in scaling up the model. The project will focus on developing teacher capacity to enact ambitious, responsive instruction aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), and thus will be sustained, interactive, and of sufficient duration to help teachers transform their practices. In the design of the professional development, the project will leverage features of emerging technologies that are multimodal and involve a mix of synchronous/ asynchronous communication. The most innovative feature is the online video coaching in which a teacher and coach separately will view and notate video of the teacher's enactment of a collaboratively planned lesson as a precursor to the online post-lesson debriefing. Building from design-based research principles, the project will incorporate iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, reflection, and revision that will explore the effectiveness of the model and inform revisions.