Download Preparing Facilitators to Use and Adapt Video

Supporting Facilitators to Use
Professional Development Materials
Productively
Nanette Seago
WestEd, Redwood City, CA
Representing the collaborative work of colleagues:
Jennifer Jacobs, CU Boulder and Karen Koellner, Hunter College
Facilitating Professional Development
What
influences the
adaptations a
facilitator
makes and
how do they
play out in the
PD?
The dynamic relationship
between a facilitator, the
teachers and context, and
the critical features of a
PD program
Four elements of a professional development system
(Borko, 2004)
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Learning and Teaching Geometry PD
• NSF Funded Project ( #0732757)
• Built around authentic video clips (3-6 minutes)
• Uses “video in the middle” design:
– Before and after teachers watch each clip
there are activities designed to ensure that the teachers
engage deeply with the mathematics content and the focal
instructional components
• Highly-specified PD materials:
– Specify in advance learning trajectory and goals
– Make explicit design characteristics
– Provide extensive supports and resources for facilitators
(both mathematical and pedagogical)
LTG Efficacy Study
• New NSF-funded project (#1503399). First year of study.
• Explores whether the LTG PD program produces a beneficial impact on
teachers’ mathematical knowledge, classroom teaching practices, and
their students’ knowledge in the domain of geometry.
• Research question in year one: Can the facilitator implement the LTG
PD materials with fidelity?
• Randomized experimental design, 140 mathematics teachers (grades 612)
• Intervention: Summer 2016—Week-long institute (30 hours of PD); 24
hours of academic year PD (2016-2017)
• Trained Knowledgeable Facilitator 2015-2016 (Hannah)
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Defining Fidelity
The degree to which a facilitator adheres to the
goals of the PD program and adapts to the
participants ‘ and/or context as needed, while
maintaining the integrity of the PD design
(Borko, 2004; Seago, Jacobs & Koellner, 2016)
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Preparing Knowledgeable Facilitators
In order to facilitate the LTG PD with fidelity, the
facilitator participated in two phases of preparation
over 8 months:
• Phase I: Individually studied the PD materials,
session by session, and then discussed each
session with the co-PIs/ PD developers
• Phase II: Rehearsal facilitation observed by
co-PIs in order to document fidelity and
adaptations.
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Summary of Fidelity Findings
•
Adaptations to the PD structure:
– Timing adjustments were made to approximately half the PD activity categories
(mathematics tasks, video analysis)
•
Adaptations to the PD content:
Hannah adapted the LTG PD to fit the needs of her participants and their context:
– Hannah reorganized tasks and video clips in order to highlight the connection between
geometry & algebra because that was of particular interest to her participants.
– Hannah introduced the term “inspection method” in Session 1 to conceptually reference one
of the teacher’s method for solving the problem. She chose to use this new term to classify a
type of student strategy that was not highlighted in the materials, reasoning that it added to
the tools available for teachers to talk and think about a broader classification of student
approaches – especially less sophisticated approaches – in a more nuanced way.
•
Fidelity to learning goals: Hannah received perfect fidelity of implementation scores
on the Teacher Learning Goals instrument used in the study.
Emerging Questions
• What are productive adaptations and how can we
describe and measure them?
• Are there categories of productive adaptations?
• Why do facilitators made adaptations? What are
the contextual influences? What is their
reasoning?
• How can we generalize this information so that it
is useful for the field and especially for scaling up?
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