Heather Johnson

Comparing the Impact of Online and Face-to-Face Professional Development in the Context of Curriculum Implementation

This study employed a randomized experiment to examine differences in teacher and student learning from professional development (PD) in two modalities: online and face-to-face. The study explores whether there are differences in teacher knowledge and beliefs, teacher classroom practice, and student learning outcomes related to PD modality. Comparison of classroom practice and student learning outcomes, normally difficult to establish in PD research, is facilitated by the use of a common set of curriculum materials as the content for PD and subsequent teaching. Findings indicate that teachers and students exhibited significant gains in both conditions, and that there was no significant difference between conditions. We discuss implications for the delivery of teacher professional learning.

Developing Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Science Teaching Through Video Clubs

Though an adequate understanding of content is a natural prerequisite of teaching (Carlsen in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 30:471–481, 1993), teachers also need to be able to interpret content in ways that facilitate student learning. How to best support novice teachers in developing and refining their content knowledge for teaching is a crucial and ongoing question for preservice teacher educators. Recently, video clubs are being explored as potential contexts for teacher learning (Barnhart & van Es in Teaching and Teacher Education 45:83–93, 2015; Sherin & Han in Teaching and Teacher Education 20:163–183, 2004). We hypothesized that pairing video clubs with student teaching experiences would provide a forum for preservice teachers to discuss issues relevant to their professional trajectory through exposure to models of peer teaching and opportunities to reflect on practice. In this study, we explored how secondary science preservice teachers used video club to restructure their overall science knowledge into science knowledge for teaching. Our findings suggest that video clubs allowed preservice teachers to access and leverage student thinking and instructional resources to deepen their understanding of science content and trajectories for science learning.

Curriculum-Aligned Professional Development for Geospatial Education

Professional development (PD) designed to accompany curriculum materials prepares teachers for specific classroom practices, guides them during practice, and creates opportunities for reflection. We present the theoretical underpinnings for our model of curriculum-linked PD and describe a hybrid (face-to-face and online) professional development program for curriculum materials that make use of the My World™ Geographic Information System software. Research-derived design principles for curriculum-aligned PD include the following: (1) identify goals for the professional development, (2) adopt a learning theory and use it, and (3) evaluate whether learning goals were met and then revise PD practices according to this feedback. We do not intend our design to be the model for online PD, but rather an example of an approach successfully applying our design principles.