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

Item

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.
Date
2019
In publication
Professional Development in Education
Volume
45
Issue
4
Pages
599-613
Resource type
en
Resource status/form
en
Scholarship genre
en
Open access/full-text available
en No
Peer reviewed
en Yes
ISSN
1941-5257
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

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