Dive Brief:
- A study by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) assessed a three-part, content-intensive professional development program, finding it had a greater impact on teacher knowledge and instruction techniques than student achievement.
- The professional development program was made up of 80 hours of Intel Math, a summer workshop intended to deepen content knowledge of K-8 math topics, and 13 hours of school-year PD that worked to transfer the content knowledge into effective classroom instruction.
- The study, which randomly assigned teachers within schools to the program, found the professional development was well-implemented and teachers who took it improved their content knowledge relative to their peers, as well as their ability to explain math concepts, but it did not positively impact student achievement.
Dive Insight:
This study was the third in a series by AIR for the Institute of Education Sciences. All three studied the impact of professional development programs on teachers and students. The first covered second-grade reading and the second was on seventh-grade math. All three of the studies found no evidence of statistically significant impacts on student achievement. The findings are frustrating, considering math teachers in the latest study objectively improved their content knowledge as well as a portion of their instructional practices.
While intensive, perhaps the math professional development program needed additional ongoing support for improving classroom instruction. Content knowledge is a first step. The work of designing lesson plans to meet the needs of individual students is difficult. A useful follow-up study might assess whether students of teachers who received the original PD had higher achievement in subsequent school years as they had more time to improve their lessons.