Educational infrastructure, professional learning, and changes in teachers’ instructional practices and beliefs

Matthew Shirrell*, Megan Hopkins, James P. Spillane

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

School systems around the world are adopting more intellectually ambitious academic content in the hopes of improving their educational productivity. In the United States, these efforts have required significant changes to teachers’ instructional practices, and increased attention to teachers’ formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities. Focusing on the initial implementation of a reform-oriented approach to teaching mathematics in two local school systems in the United States, this paper examines whether–and under what circumstances–elementary teachers’ professional learning opportunities predict changes in their instructional practices and beliefs related to mathematics. Our findings reveal that teachers’ on-the-job interactions during the first year of reform predicted changes in their instructional practices; further, these changes were associated with the infrastructures that local school systems created to support teacher learning in mathematics. Teachers’ participation in formal professional development, in contrast, predicted changes in their instructional beliefs, but not their practices. These findings have implications for future efforts to design formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities that support ambitious educational reforms.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)599-613
Number of pages15
JournalProfessional Development in Education
Volume45
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 8 2019

Funding

This work was supported by the NebraskaMATH Study (http://www.distributedleadership.org/projects.html) at Northwestern University and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation [grant number DUE-0831835]. The work was also supported by the Distributed Leadership Studies (http:// www.distributedleadership.org), funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation [grant number REC-9873583], RETA [grant number EHR-0412510]. Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported this work. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.

Keywords

  • Teachers
  • beliefs
  • educational infrastructure
  • mathematics
  • practices
  • professional learning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Educational infrastructure, professional learning, and changes in teachers’ instructional practices and beliefs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this