Experiments in teacher professional learning: Testing design features that accelerate instructional improvement in mathematics

教师专业学习是数学教育的重要组成部分。几十年来，专业学习一直是培养教师技能和改变教师与学生在课堂上围绕学术内容互动方式的主要策略。专业学习对学区来说也很昂贵，无论是在财政上还是在教师时间上。考虑到这些投资，大多数学校领导希望有效地使用他们的专业发展资金，制定专业学习设计决策，最大限度地提高教师和学生的学习。然而，尽管对专业学习计划进行了二十多年的严格研究，但实践者几乎没有因果证据表明专业学习设计特征能够加速教师的学习。该项目旨在确定教师专业学习经验的特征，这些特征可以为教师和学生带来更好的数学成果。该项目通过在全国多个地区进行的一系列随机实验来探索这个核心问题。该项目利用了一个名为“专业学习研究伙伴关系”（RPPL）的研究实践伙伴关系，该伙伴关系将以数学课程为重点的专业发展的大型供应商与布朗大学和哈佛大学的研究人员聚集在一起。研究人员和RPPL合作者将共同进行实验性的A/B测试，对理论和现有证据表明有希望的专业学习特征进行测试。由于这些实验将在RPPL提供者定期向地区提供的服务中进行，因此可以有效地进行实验并迅速产生知识。该项目旨在探讨三个关键主题，以及它们是否对教师专业学习的有效性产生影响：是强调教师变革的概念方法还是具体方法；如何加强教师在专业学习环境中的能动性以及增加教师学习的持久性或“粘性”的方法。该项目将使用数据源对变化进行建模，这些数据源包括教师教学实践、学生学习和来自专业学习制定的工件的度量。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Teacher professional learning is a critical part of the mathematics education landscape. For decades, professional learning has been the primary strategy for developing the skills of the teaching workforce and changing how teachers interact with students in classrooms around academic content. Professional learning also can be expensive for districts, both financially and in terms of teacher time. Given these investments, most school leaders wish to spend their professional development dollars efficiently, making decisions about professional learning design that maximize teacher and student learning. However, despite more than two decades of rigorous research on professional learning programs, practitioners have little causal evidence on which professional learning design features work to accelerate teacher learning. This project seeks to identify features of teacher professional learning experiences that lead to better mathematics outcomes for both teachers and students. The project explores this central question through a series of randomized experiments in a range of districts across the country. The project leverages a research-practice partnership known as the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL) that brings together large-scale providers of math curriculum-focused professional development with researchers at Brown and Harvard Universities. Together, researchers and RPPL collaborators will conduct experimental A/B tests of professional learning features indicated as promising by both theory and, where available, prior evidence. Because these experiments will be housed within RPPL providers’ regularly-provided services to districts, experiments can be conducted efficiently and generate knowledge quickly. The project seeks to explore three critical topics and whether they make a difference in the efficacy of the teacher professional learning: whether to emphasize conceptual or concrete approaches to teacher change; ways to enhance teacher agency in professional learning settings; and ways to increase the persistence—or “stickiness”—of teacher learning. The project will model changes using data sources that include measures of teacher instructional practice, student learning, and artifacts from the professional learning enactments.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.