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Designing Effective Development: Lessons from the Eisenhower Program - December 1999
Chapter 6
Activity type, duration, and the extent of collective participation are the structural features of a professional development activity. Our results in Chapter 3 demonstrated that these characteristics are associated with core features—that is, the methods, curriculum, and practices that comprise the professional development activity. Key aspects of the substance or core of an activity are a focus on content knowledge and opportunities for active learning.
The Eisenhower legislation does not specifically describe how quality should be defined, but it provides some guidance. The legislation states that professional development provided under the Eisenhower program, whether by the state, district, or an IHE/NPO, should be a program that "includes strong academic content and pedagogical components" (Section 2002(2)(C)) and "reflects recent research on teaching and learning" (Section 2002(2)(B)). Although the law does not specifically require activities to have particular characteristics, the legislation is founded on recent research in professional development that describes attributes of high-quality professional development:
[P]rofessional development must be focused on teaching and learning in order to improve the opportunities of all students to achieve higher standards (Section 2001(4)(A)); effective professional development focuses on discipline-based knowledge and effective subject-specific pedagogical skills,?is interactive and collaborative, motivates by its intrinsic content and relationship to practice, builds on experience and learning-by-doing, and becomes incorporated into the everyday life of the school (Section 2001(4)(B)).
The literature on professional development also highlights the importance of content focus and active learning opportunities. The limited research that is available suggests that professional development is much more effective when it focuses on the content of subjects as well as on how students learn specific content, rather than general non-content-based teaching strategies (Cohen & Hill, 1998; Fennema et al., 1996; Kennedy, 1998). Also, studies have shown that professional development that offers opportunities for active learning, such as interacting with other participants, leading exercises, simulating practice, and obtaining feedback, are more likely to foster increased knowledge and skills and changes in teacher practice than other more passive learning techniques (Carey & Frechting, 1997; Darling-Hammond, 1997b; Lieberman, 1996; Schifter, 1996).
We measured both the content focus and active learning opportunities in each SAHE grantee?s primary professional development activity. To measure the extent to which a grantee?s primary activity is content-focused, we asked the project director how much emphasis the primary activity gives to deepening content knowledge; responses include "no emphasis," "some emphasis," or "strong emphasis." Results, shown in Exhibit 6.9a, indicate that five percent of teachers participating in SAHE-grantee projects are in projects whose primary activity places no emphasis on content knowledge, 23 percent of participating teachers are in projects whose primary activity places some emphasis on content knowledge in the primary activity, and 72 percent are in projects whose primary activity places a strong emphasis on content knowledge.
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The first bar shows that five percent of teachers participating in SAHE-grantee projects are in projects whose primary activity has no emphasis on content knowledge. Each bar and the number on top of it represent the percent of participating teachers for each category. |
Next we analyze content focus by institution type and departmental affiliation. Exhibit 6.9b shows that the means on the three-point content focus scale vary from one to three, but most are above two. Further, the interaction of institution type and departmental affiliation is significant. Exhibit 6.9c indicates that projects in mathematics/science departments have high content focus regardless of the type of IHE, while projects in education and other departments have a high content focus only if they are in research/doctoral universities.
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The first distribution shows that on average, teachers in SAHE-grantee projects are in projects whose primary activity has a content focus of 2.7, where zero=no emphasis on content and three=a strong emphasis on content. The interaction effects of institution type and departmental affiliation on content knowledge are significant. Each dot represents one IHE/NPO project. As the number of IHE/NPO projects at one data point (or value) increases, the dots form a horizontal line that increases in length. Each distribution represents the distribution for that particular category. The number to the right of the distribution is the mean. |
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The data point designated by the first square indicates that the average extent of content knowledge in the primary SAHE-grantee project in mathematics/science departments in nonresearch doctoral-granting universities is 2.8 (where zero=no emphasis on content and three=a strong emphasis on content). The line with data points designated by squares indicates the extent of content emphasis of projects at nonresearch/doctoral-granting institutions, in each of the three types of departments. The line with the data points designated by diamonds indicates the extent of content emphasis of projects at research/doctoral-granting institutions, in each of the three types of departments. |
These findings may reflect that SAHE grantees in research/doctoral-granting universities are more likely than those in nonresearch universities to be knowledgeable about the importance of content focus in professional development, and more equipped to provide strategies to learn substantive content. Also, mathematics/science departments may have a strong content focus across institutions types since those departments deal mainly with subject-specific topics, not pedagogical techniques.
To measure the second core feature—opportunities for active learning—we asked SAHE-grantee project directors about how their primary activity helps participants use new skills in their classroom. We asked them the following questions:
Exhibit 6.10a shows that more than three-fourths of participating teachers are in projects whose directors report that in their primary Eisenhower activity, participants share work (83 percent), meet formally with other participants to discuss classroom implementation of the new skills that they learned in the professional development activity (82 percent), and communicate with the teacher (79 percent). Most participating teachers are in projects that offer activities that allow participants to lead a small-group discussion (71 percent), conduct a demonstration (71 percent), have informal meetings (70 percent), write a paper or report (68 percent), give a lecture (65 percent), develop a curriculum (63 percent), have the leader observe their teaching and provide feedback (61 percent), receive mentoring or coaching (57 percent), and practice under simulated conditions (57 percent).
A little less than half of participating teachers are in projects whose primary activity includes opportunities for teachers to review student work (48 percent), observe other teachers and provide feedback (47 percent), and lead whole-group discussions (45 percent). The least common active learning opportunity is having teachers score assessments; only 22 percent of participating teachers are in projects that include this method in their primary professional development activity. So it seems that most SAHE-grantee primary activities use a number of active learning strategies; among the most common strategies are communication and feedback with the activity leader, and among the least are strategies related to scoring and assessing student work.
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The first bar shows that 22 percent of teachers participating in SAHE-grantee projects are in projects whose primary Eisenhower-assisted professional development activity uses the active learning strategy of scoring assessments. Each bar and the number on top of it represent the percent of participating teachers for each category. |
Combining the 16 types of opportunities for active learning reported by the SAHE-grantees into a scale provides us with a measure of the number of types of opportunities for active learning that SAHE grantees offer, on a scale from 1 to 16. The index provides one measure of the diversity of learning strategies. Exhibit 6.10b illustrates the variation in the number of active learning opportunities that grantees provide in their primary Eisenhower-assisted activity. Some SAHE-grantee primary activities have as few as two active learning strategies in their primary activity, while others have as many as 15. Exhibit 6.10b also indicates that the interaction of institute type and affiliation is significant.
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The first distribution shows that on average, teachers in SAHE-grantee projects are in projects that have an average of 10 active learning opportunities for teachers in their primary Eisenhower-assisted professional development activity. The interaction effects of institution type and departmental affiliation on the number of types of opportunities for active learning is significant. Each dot represents one IHE/NPO project. As the number of IHE/NPO projects at one data point (or value) increases, the dots form a horizontal line that increases in length. Each distribution represents the distribution for that particular category. The number to the right of the distribution is the mean. |
An analysis of the pattern of interactions, shown in Exhibit 6.10c, reveals that among projects in education departments, those in research universities allow more opportunities for active learning than those in nonresearch universities. The opposite is true for projects in mathematics/science departments; they do better in nonresearch universities than in research universities. Among projects in research institutions, projects in the education departments provide many more active learning opportunities than projects in mathematics/science departments (12 compared to seven); but for projects in nonresearch universities, there is not much difference in the number of active learning opportunities provided by mathematics/science and education departments.
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Source: Telephone Survey of SAHE-grantee Project Directors, Spring 1998. How to read this exhibit: The data point designated by the first square indicates that in mathematics/science departments in nonresearch/ doctoral-granting universities, the average number of active learning opportunities in the primary SAHE-grantee project is 9.8. The line with data points designated by squares indicates the number of active learning opportunities in projects at nonresearch/doctoral-granting institutions, in each of the three types of departments. The line with the data points designated by diamonds indicates the number of active learning opportunities in projects at research/doctoral-granting institutions, in each of the three types of departments. |
Thus, projects in research universities do better only if they are affiliated with the education department; otherwise, nonresearch universities have more active learning opportunities. This may indicate that, unless they are in an education department, research university professors are more inclined to practice traditional lecturing and non-active learning techniques than professors in other types of universities. Education departments are more equipped to offer alternative pedagogical strategies, and are more knowledgeable about learning techniques, perhaps because pedagogy and learning techniques are a fundamental part of their focus and curricula. In contrast, mathematics and science departments in research universities are more likely to focus on subject matter and less on pedagogical techniques such as active learning.
Further, projects in non-mathematics/science or education departments at nonresearch universities do almost as well in providing active learning opportunities as projects in education departments at research universities. These are departments such as media and broadcasting, whose activities are likely to focus on active, hands-on programs.
SAHE-grantee project directors generally report that their primary Eisenhower-sponsored activity has a strong emphasis on content and offers many types of active learning opportunities. These findings are consistent with our data from teachers, reported in Chapter 3, which indicate high levels of content focus and active learning opportunities in IHE-sponsored professional development activities. It seems that IHE/NPOs structure their activities in ways that facilitate high-quality core features, by establishing activities of long duration, and IHE/NPOs implement the pedagogical strategies that the Eisenhower legislation and the professional development literature emphasize as important for changing teacher knowledge and behavior. Further, projects in education and "other" departments have a strong content focus only in research/doctoral-granting universities, while projects in mathematics/science departments have a high content focus regardless of institution type. Projects in education departments in research/doctoral-granting universities do better than others in active learning.
The question for policy is to identify the reasons for the high average quality of SAHE-grantee activities. One explanation is that IHE/NPO projects are competitive, and the SAHE review process may favor depth over breadth, and may in some cases require grantees to provide activities of a certain duration. Another explanation is that IHE/NPOs spend more than twice as much Eisenhower money per teacher participation as districts do; conversely, IHE/NPOs may spend more money per teacher because the high-quality activities that they design require it. In 1997-98, districts spent an average of $185 per teacher participation, while IHEs spent an average of $512 per teacher participation.12 Thus on average IHE/NPOs distribute their funds across fewer teachers than districts do. Apparently, districts seek to reach as many teachers as possible (breadth), while IHE/NPOs seek to provide a high-quality professional development experience to teachers (depth), even though this means reaching fewer teachers. This may reflect the different roles that IHE/NPOs and districts play. Perhaps districts feel a responsibility to serve all of their teachers, while IHE/NPOs do not have a specific constituency of teachers to whom they feel responsible.
Our analyses of differences by institution type and departmental affiliation can perhaps shed some light on these suppositions. Perhaps a large part of the reason that projects in education departments at research/doctoral institutions support activities that last longer and offer more opportunities for active learning than projects in mathematics/science departments is that the directors in education departments are more familiar with the research on high-quality professional development.
Finally, projects in mathematics/science departments emphasize content knowledge regardless of the type of university they are housed in, while projects in education and other departments emphasis content knowledge only if they are in a research university. This may suggest that project directors at nonresearch universities affiliated with education or other (non-mathematics/science) departments need more training and knowledge about the importance of focusing on content and how children learn specific content in the structure and implementation of their professional development activities.
IHE/NPO-provided Eisenhower-assisted in-service activities, described in this chapter generally, have several characteristics of high quality. The competitive process of the SAHE component of the Eisenhower program may promote quality; and it may be that only the most qualified faculty members pursue and receive awards to direct Eisenhower projects.
 [Structural Features of SAHE-Grantee-Provided Professional Development] |
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 [Targeting and Recruitment of Teachers] |