SBP: Collaborative Research: Improving Engagement with Professional Development Programs by Attending to Teachers' Psychosocial Experiences

随着美国学生群体日益多样化，长期以来在教育机会和成果方面的差距依然存在。纠正这些差异的努力通常使用重点专业发展（PD）来支持教育者更有效地教授不同的学生。PD涵盖了广泛的主题，如文化响应性教学，学生的包容性实践，以及吸引经历过逆境的学生的策略。将这些不同的PD方法结合在一起的是一个有意识和明确的重点，即理解具有不同经历和需求的学生所面临的问题，并为教育工作者提供克服这些挑战和支持学生成功的技能。虽然重点PD需求量很大，但对其有效性知之甚少。许多专注于PD的项目几乎没有效果，有些可能适得其反。例如，这些项目可能会在教育工作者中产生一种心理威胁感，导致被排斥、被评判或处于不利地位的感觉。这些结果可能会导致阻力和反弹，从而破坏项目目标。要使聚焦式PD取得成功，它需要关注教育者的经验。本项目研究了专注于PD的三个常见的心理威胁来源（身份、文化和教学法威胁）如何影响教育工作者在课堂上如何参与和使用专注于PD的内容，以及这种使用如何改善学生的学习体验和表现。两项研究使用焦点小组和调查设计来检查这些问题，这些问题是在全国范围内参与各种重点PD经验的教育工作者中进行的。另外三个研究使用随机对照实验来测试减轻教育工作者的身份、文化和教学威胁的策略。总之，这项工作为创造专注的PD环境提供了见解，在这种环境中，所有教师都感到受到重视，能够参与具有挑战性的想法，并能够提高他们的课堂技能。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。

As the U.S. student population grows more diverse, longstanding disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes persist. Efforts to remedy these disparities often use focused professional development (PD) to support educators in more effectively teaching diverse students. PD covers a wide array of topics, such as culturally responsive instruction, inclusive practices for students, and strategies for engaging students who have experienced adversity. What unites these diverse PD approaches is an intentional and explicit focus on understanding the issues facing students with diverse experiences and needs, and on equipping educators with skills to overcome these challenges and support student success. While focused PD is in high demand, little is known about its effectiveness. Many focused PD programs have little to no effect, and some may be counterproductive. For example, these programs can create a sense of psychological threat among educators, leading to feelings of being excluded, judged, or disadvantaged. These outcomes can result in resistance and backlash that undermine program goals.For focused PD to be successful, it needs to attend to educators' experiences. This project conducts studies that examine how three common sources of psychological threat in focused PDs (identity, culture, and pedagogy threats) shape how educators engage with and use focused PD content in their classrooms, and how this use improves students’ academic experiences and performance. Two studies use focus groups and survey designs to examine these issues among a national sample of educators who have participated in a wide variety of focused PD experiences. Three additional studies use randomized controlled experiments to test strategies for mitigating identity, culture, and pedagogy threats among educators. Together, this work provides insight for creating focused PD environments where all teachers feel valued, equipped to engage with challenging ideas, and capable of growing their classroom skills.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.