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The Role of Instructional Materials in Professional Development:
Lessons Learned from the LSC Community

Joan Pasley, Editor
May 2002

The goal of the LSC program is to improve the teaching of science, mathematics, and technology by focusing on the professional development of teachers within whole schools or school districts. Each targeted teacher is to participate in a minimum of 130 hours of professional development over the course of the project (prior to 1999, the requirement for K-8 projects was 100 hours). In addition to its focus on involving all teachers in a jurisdiction, the LSC initiative is distinguished from previous teacher enhancement efforts by its emphasis on preparing teachers to implement designated exemplary mathematics and science instructional materials in their classrooms.

HRI worked with the National Science Foundation and PIs and evaluators of the LSC projects on the design and implementation of a core evaluation system to allow aggregating information across projects. The core evaluation is designed to answer the following questions:

1. What is the overall quality of the LSC professional development activities?
2. What is the extent of school and teacher involvement in LSC activities?
3. What is the impact of the LSC professional development on teacher preparedness, attitudes, and beliefs about mathematics and science teaching and learning?
4. What is the impact of the LSC professional development on classroom practices in mathematics and science?
5. To what extent are school and district contexts becoming more supportive of the LSC vision for exemplary mathematics and science education?
6. What is the extent of institutionalization of high-quality professional development systems in the LSC districts?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between questions 1 and 4, the quality of LSC professional development and classroom practices. Analysis of data from classroom observations conducted as part of the core evaluation indicate that lessons taught by teachers who had participated in at least 20 hours of LSC professional development were more likely to be judged by observers to be strong in a number of areas, including the extent to which:

• The mathematics/science content was significant and worthwhile;
• Teacher-presented information was accurate;
• There was a climate of respect for students' ideas, questions, and contributions;
• Students were intellectually engaged with important ideas relevant to the focus of the lesson;
• Intellectual rigor, constructive criticism, and the challenging of ideas were valued;
• The degree of closure or resolution of conceptual understanding was appropriate for the developmental levels/needs of the students and the purposes of the lesson; and
• The teacher's questioning strategies were likely to enhance the development of student conceptual understanding (e.g., emphasized higher order questions, appropriately used "wait time," identified prior [mis]conceptions).

However, many teachers continue to struggle with these last three areas, with fewer than half of the lessons of treated teachers receiving high ratings on these indicators. In an attempt to better understand how professional development around instructional materials could affect teachers' classroom practices, ten Principal Investigators (PIs) of NSF-funded Local Systemic Change Initiatives were asked to prepare case studies on the professional development conducted in their project focused on science or mathematics instructional materials, typically modules from IMP, Investigations, FOSS and STC. Specifically, PIs were asked to describe one instructional module, including the challenges teachers would likely face in teaching with this particular module; describe the professional development teachers experience for this module; observe at least three teachers teaching a lesson from this module, describing how well aligned the implementation was to the project's vision; and discuss modifications they would make to the professional development based on these observations.

While the module-based professional development described in the cases varied in length (from 4 to 60 hours) and extent of follow-up support, all of the cases describe the introductory professional development as workshops to familiarize teachers with the activities. In most professional development described, teachers spent time going through the activities, getting tips on implementation from the facilitators, and discussing the content in the unit.

The sample of teachers observed in each project was left to the discretion of the case study writers. The methods of sample selection included random selection, teacher volunteers, teachers in schools new to the project, and teachers with varying attitudes toward professional development. In most instances, each teacher was observed for one lesson. Four PIs supplemented the observations with interviews of the sample teachers.

PIs described variable quality in implementation of the instructional materials. Most of the case writers reported teachers using materials with students at a mechanical level, incorporating some of the specific strategies used in the professional development. However, the extent to which the implementation promoted student engagement with the concepts in the modules was limited. For example, teachers rarely exhibited higher-level questioning strategies or sense-making, e.g., of data students had collected in their investigations. Teachers did not demonstrate the meaning behind the particular activities or how particular activities fit into the "big picture" of the unit.

Based on the observations, PIs suggested a number of modifications that they would make to their professional development in the future: provide more professional development to the trainers, especially around the concepts underlying the modules; provide more emphasis in the professional development to questioning strategies, developing more quality student-student interactions, and lesson closure; take into account the range of learners when structuring the professional development; provide more illustrations of student-centered instruction; and increase the amount of support to teachers while they are implementing the unit.