Educational Infrastructure, Professional Learning, and Changes in Teachers’ Instructional Practices and Beliefs

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Title: Educational Infrastructure, Professional Learning, and Changes in Teachers’ Instructional Practices and Beliefs
Abstract/Description: 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.
Author/creator: Shirrell, Matthew; Hopkins, Megan; Spillane, James P.
Date: 2019
In publication: Professional Development in Education
Volume: 45
Issue: 4
Pages: 599-613
Resource type: en Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form: en Published Text
Scholarship genre: en Empirical
Keywords: beliefs; educational infrastructure; mathematics; practices; professional learning; Teachers
Open access/full-text available: en No
Peer reviewed: en Yes
ISSN: 1941-5257
DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2018.1452784
URL: Official Publisher's Webpage (Taylor & Francis)
Citation: Shirrell, M., Hopkins, M., & Spillane, J. P. (2019). Educational Infrastructure, Professional Learning, and Changes in Teachers’ Instructional Practices and Beliefs. Professional Development in Education, 45(4), 599–613. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2018.1452784
Cited in: Critical Social Network Analysis as a Method for Examining How Power Mediates Improvement Efforts

Item sets: Handbook Chapter 17 Citations

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